May 6, 2025 • 57 mins
Before Rome dominated the Mediterranean, Carthage reigned as its wealthiest maritime power. Born as a distant colony of Phoenician traders seeking escape from Assyrian control, this "New City" on North Africa's coast would evolve into something far greater than its founders imagined.
The fascinating origin story begins with Queen Dido, who fled Tyre after her brother murdered her husband. Landing in Tunisia around the 9th century BCE, she negotiated with local Libyans for "as much land as an oxhide could cover" – then cleverly cut the hide into thin strips to claim an entire hill. From this resourceful beginning grew a civilization that would transform Mediterranean commerce.
Unlike their Phoenician ancestors who operated as merchant vassals under regional powers, Carthaginians developed political independence alongside commercial dominance. Their innovative republic balanced aristocratic councils with elected officials called suffets and a people's assembly. This sophisticated constitutional system impressed even Aristotle, who praised its checks and balances – and likely influenced Rome's own republican government.
What made Carthage exceptional wasn't just what they traded (purple dye, silver, agricultural expertise) but how they traded. They pioneered silent trading techniques with indigenous Africans, established trans-Saharan caravan routes, and developed complex credit systems that challenge our assumptions about ancient economies. Rather than simple barter, Carthaginians created sophisticated financial arrangements that enabled trade across vast distances.
The transition from purely commercial power to naval military force occurred gradually as Greek expansion threatened Carthaginian interests in Sicily. This shift from their Phoenician forebears' commercial focus would eventually lead to confrontations with emerging Mediterranean powers – setting the stage for the epic Punic Wars that would determine the future of Western civilization.
Want to discover more about this fascinating civilization whose story comes primarily through their enemies' accounts? Subscribe to the History of Money, Banking and Trade podcast and join us next time as we explore Carthage's conflicts with the Greeks and eventual showdown with Rome.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D, and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations topresent-day market innovations.
Since we just finished with thePhoenicians, it made sense to
(00:25):
transition to Carthage.
After all, these are theirdistant cousins, who were
originally from Tyre.
The interesting thing is howthis Phoenician colony differed
so much from their cousins inthe Levant.
Trade was their main function,but unlike the Phoenician
cousins, they were also amilitary power their main
(00:46):
function, but unlike thePhoenician cousins, they were
also a military power.
Now, to be honest with you, upuntil maybe a few years ago, I
really didn't know a whole lotabout Carthage.
The only thing I did know wasthat they had a major war three
of them in fact with Rome, butother than that, I really didn't
know much about it.
I did hear a little bit ofstuff about child sacrifice and
things like that, but other thanthat, I did not really have
(01:08):
much information as far as thepeople and their culture.
In addition, maybe I stilldon't have much information
because much of the informationthat we get doesn't come from
firsthand sources.
It comes from the Romans andthe Greeks, people that may or
may not have their bestinterests in mind when telling
the story.
Now, in a way, carthage is mucholder than the Romans.
(01:31):
I mean, when Rome was just asmall regional power in central
Italy, carthage was colonizingNorth Africa, from Algeria to
Morocco and even southern Spainto Sicily.
So ultimately, if you turn theclock back to say 500 BCE, you
would see vastly differentplaces where Rome was just kind
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of almost a nobody and Carthagewas maybe the biggest player in
the Mediterranean.
Now, every culture has to have astart from somewhere and as far
as Carthage goes, they camefrom the Phoenicians, who came
from the Mediterranean coast, onits eastern shores, in a region
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known as the Levant.
But before they were thePhoenicians they would have come
from the Canaanites, who livedin modern-day Syria, lebanon,
jordan, israel and Palestine.
They generally lived in smallcity-states, just like the
ancient Greeks.
It was around 1500 BCE that thePhoenicians had diverged from
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other Canaanites in that trade,not agriculture, became their
main focal point of theirsociety.
In fact, the Phoenicians wereprobably the first ever sea
power merchant state, wellbefore the Greeks.
As a result, they were able toconnect all major powers through
sea and overland trade.
When I say major powers, I'mreferring to the various
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kingdoms in Mesopotamia, inEgypt, anatolia and even
Southern Europe.
And when I say Mesopotamia Ijust want to be clarified that's
Assyria, babylonia and Sumer,and even Elam to the east.
The Phoenicians were a smallregion.
They didn't have largepopulations and therefore they
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never created an empire and justrelied on trade, and then they
would have paid their tributeand taxes to the local hegemon.
At the time, the Phoeniciansweren't really trying to conquer
new lands and create empires asmuch as they were trying to
expand their trade network andget access to tradable goods.
In addition, just like theother Canaanites and Greeks,
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they never united into a singlestate.
Therefore, each state wouldhave had basically its own
country right, just kind of likehow the Greeks were set up.
But the biggest differencebetween the Phoenicians and the
Greeks was the Phoenicians gotalong quite well, whereas the
Greeks were constantly at eachother's throats.
The only time the Greeks everreally united is if there was an
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outside force coming in.
But even then sometimes certainGreeks would take the side of
the outside forces, so theydidn't even really necessarily
unite.
When they were being attacked itwas shortly after the late
Bronze Age collapse that thePhoenician trade colonization
picked up its pace.
(04:23):
These were trade colonies whichallowed them to get access to
local commodities and evenfinished goods in some
circumstances.
From Tunisia to Spain thePhoenicians expanded its
colonies, but also being inplaces like Spain meant that
they could keep some distancefrom the Assyrians and the
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Babylonians as well.
So therefore they could kind ofget some space between them,
because there was just no waythe Assyrians and the
Babylonians were ever going tobe able to sail out and conquer
any kind of distant Phoeniciancolony, because the Phoenicians
were the sea people and theAssyrians and the Babylonians
were land armies and theAssyrians and the Babylonians
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were land armies.
As the populations grew fromtrade settlements into urban
centers, the Phoenicians wereprobably aided by the fact that
these colonies were places thatdidn't have much of a population
.
They're very sparsely populatedand the local indigenous
population wasn't really nearlyas advanced as the Phoenicians
that were encroaching into theterritories.
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So in other words, thePhoenicians would have had
access to certain weapons andtools and defensive measures
that possibly the localindigenous population just
couldn't deal with.
Once the Assyrians expandedinto the Levant, this gave them
even more reason to expand intotheir trade colonies outside of
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the Levant in order to escapethe grip of the Assyrians.
However, the Assyriansgenerally treated the
Phoenicians better than otherkingdoms, because they would pay
their tribute and theygenerally didn't revolt the way
other societies did.
Nonetheless, they still knewthat life was probably going to
be better the farther they gotaway from Assyria.
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Carthage on the African coastmeant that they could safely
keep their distance from theAssyrians, or even the Egyptians
or whoever was the localhegemon in the Near East.
Now, it should be noted thatCarthage wasn't the first
settlement in North Africa.
In fact, it was Utica.
That Carthage wasn't the firstsettlement in North Africa.
In fact, it was Utica that hadalready established itself, but
not far from there.
(06:30):
Also, carthage was not the namethe Phoenicians had given it.
It appears that it was known asthe New City, or Kartadas in
the Phoenician language.
The name was later transcribedas Karkadon by the Greeks.
Then it was the Romans thatappropriated the Hellenized
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version and called it the cityof Kartego.
The legendary story of thefounding of the city is as
famous and colorful as any ofthe city is as famous and
colorful as any.
I'd compare it to the foundingof Rome.
However, it starts with Dido,the sister of the Tyre king,
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pygmalion, who had cheated herfrom the shared rule by killing
her husband.
Dido, being heartbroken, leftthe city, first sailing to the
west, and then on her way toNorth Africa.
Dido and her followers stoppedat the Phoenician colonies on
Cyprus.
There she saved 80 virgins fromritual prostitution, and from
there she was also joined by apriest of Baal, which Baal is
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the Phoenician god equivalent toZeus, if you want to make a
comparison.
From there, dido made her waytowards Africa and landed in
modern-day Tunisia.
She was met by the indigenouspopulation, as well as the
Phoenician colonists from Utica.
Now, the local indigenouspopulation may have been the
Libyans and, let us not forget,they were no pushover, as they
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had conquered Egypt for a brieftime.
Despite this, the local groupswelcomed Dido without hostility.
It appears that the locals weremore interested in trade.
However, this is something thatthe Phoenicians would say.
So maybe it was true, maybe itwasn't, and despite their warm
reception, they still weren'tgoing to just give up their land
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to some strangers that cameashore.
So this is where the legendgets interesting, as the locals
allowed the queen and herfollowers to stay only on the
land that a single ox hide couldcover.
In response, dido cut the hideinto the thinnest of strips and
enclosed the hill of Versa, ofwhich this would become the
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citadel of Carthage.
The king accepted this, butimposed a yearly rent Due to its
location.
The newly built city flourishedand grew quickly, which,
according to myths, led tonumerous suitors asking for
Dido's hand in marriage.
According to myths, led tonumerous suitors asking for
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Dido's hand in marriage.
Yet she was stillgrief-stricken and she refused
them all out of respect for herlate husband.
She eventually threw herselfonto a funeral pyre because she
was forced to marry a local king.
Another version of the storysays that she threw herself on
the pyre because the Trojan hero, Aeneas, refused to marry her
and sailed away to Italy.
(09:31):
Like a lot of these ancientstories, these ones came from
either Roman or Greek writerswho had lived centuries after
the founding of the city.
As there is no survivingwritten records by the
Carthaginians surviving writtenrecords by the Carthaginians,
that fact alone is true for boththe Carthaginians as well as
the Phoenicians, because much oftheir history had been wiped
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clean for one reason or another.
Most likely it's due to theRomans or the Greeks, who
basically wanted to banish themfrom the historical written
record.
Another is that some of therecords were given to the local
Libyans and they did with whatthey pleased.
This is obviously a problem,considering that they were the
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enemies through much of thehistory.
So one really needs to questionthe validity of much of the
ancient written records as itpertains to the Carthaginians
and even their Phoeniciancousins.
Normally we can get around thisissue through archaeological
digs.
The issue here is that Carthageis still inhabited, so it's not
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like you can just movebuildings or other residences to
get underneath.
Another major issue is the sameissue that we have with the
Indus civilization, in that wehaven't fully deciphered their
language, so anything writtenwon't be fully understood.
Some scholars think theyunderstand certain words or
(10:59):
phrases, but these are oftendebated, so in the end
oftentimes there isn't a generalconsensus.
Now, with the power of AI,these tools can help with
certain issues with long deadlanguages that may have scripts
that we just haven't gotten ahandle on because there isn't
(11:20):
any Rosetta Stone.
So in the end, hopefully, aican kind of pick up the gaps
that human knowledge just cannotdecipher or understand.
Now, the one thing thatscholars generally agree on is
that the first Phoeniciansettlement was founded in the
9th century BCE or the veryearly 8th century.
(11:40):
This is also when the date ofthe story of Dido was arriving
to Africa.
Unlike Romulus and Remus,historians believe Dido and her
brother were in fact realpersons, but that doesn't mean
that the city founding story wasreal, though.
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The one question that I alwayshad was why weren't the
Egyptians in the region to beginwith?
Why would the Phoenicians bethe first outsiders to try to
colonize North Africa?
Well, the answer is reallysimple, in that the Egyptians
didn't concern themselves toomuch with the outside world.
In fact, the Egyptians didn'teven have a single specific name
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that directly translates tonon-Egyptian because their
primary focus was on their ownculture and their own land.
So they left most of theexternal trade in the hands of
foreigners, of which theycreated a port on the Nile, but
they didn't have a coastalharbor until really the Greeks
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had conquered Egypt.
So, in other words, they weremore concerned with internal
trade than taking to the sea andtrading with people from
Southern Europe or the Levantthrough the sea routes.
Now, don't get it wrong Egyptstill traded with people in the
Levant and Arabia and otherplaces nearby, but they did it
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through, basically, landcaravans.
They weren't building ships andsailing the Nile and out into
the Mediterranean.
That just wasn't a prerogativefor them and in fact the
priesthood would have frownedupon it because they saw the sea
as a corrupting force.
And of course they probably sawthe sea as a corrupting force
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because this would have meantthese foreign ideas that could
have been dangerous to their ownlivelihood could have crept
into Egypt.
So that's why I think a lot oftimes they kind of looked inward
, because the priest classdidn't want to have any outside
competition, because ultimatelynew ideas could have changed the
way people viewed their ownpersonal gods, which obviously
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changes their livelihood.
So what I'm getting at is theidea that the Egyptians would
have sailed the Mediterraneanand set up shop in places like
either Carthage or Utica wouldhave been unthinkable because
the only way they could havegotten there was if they
traversed the western desert toLibya In the early days of
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Carthage.
It's not really sure if theywere initially a monarchy or not
.
The founding myth of Dido wouldindicate that it was a monarchy
, but since there really isn'tany early sources, it is really
hard to tell one way or theother.
The reason why Carthage workedfrom the get-go was the location
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.
The reason why Carthage workedfrom the get-go was the location
.
The location was ideal in thatit was on a hill that overlooked
the shores beneath, which wouldhave acted as a natural defense
mechanism from the sea, and, aswell as the land On the north
side of the harbor laid fertilelands.
These lands were initiallyfarmlands that supplied the
early inhabitants food, but asthe city grew, this region
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became an early suburb.
In addition, the city had amplefreshwater springs capable of
servicing the needs of the cityand the farmers.
However, it wasn't the springwater that made Carthage.
It was the fantastic naturalharbor of Tunis that had calm
waters needed for a good harbor,while the city had easy access
to inland as well.
This enabled the people ofCarthage to move goods from the
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sea to inland to the localLibyan population.
This was potentially a keyaspect that kept the locals from
rising up right away againstthese foreigners if they knew
that they can get them access toFinnish goods and commodities
that they would have never hadaccess to without the people of
the new city.
(15:49):
It sounds as though the peopleof the new city, or Carthage,
who were Phoenicians, kind ofjust continued to do what they
had been doing previously in theLevant, in that they began to
produce their own goods, such aspottery and their famous
crimson clothing dye fromshellfish.
Archaeologists also foundevidence of iron foundries and
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other metallurgy shops from theearliest peoples of the city,
which were used for localconsumption or even export to
other places.
At some point, theCarthaginians developed the
smelting technique of addingcalcium to the furnaces, which
would have neutralized thesulfur in the iron.
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That meant that they would haveimproved quality.
Therefore, one could concludethat their iron products were
highly desirable by their tradepartners throughout the
Mediterranean.
In its early periods, carthageretained its Phoenician cultural
heritage.
My guess is and it's just aguess is it was probably sort of
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like when the early Britishcame to the United States and
Canada, as they probably justsaw themselves as British, not
Americans or Canadians, as theystill held the idea of being
British in high regard.
So the people of Carthage mayhave felt the same way about
being Phoenician.
So what I'm trying to say isthis is quite common.
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Look at the Assyrians, forexample.
They held their Babylonianheritage in high regard as well.
Carthage, or the new city,however you want to call it was
far away from the control of theAssyrians as such.
This probably played a majorpart in the fact that they grew
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rather quickly.
However, just like earlyAmerica and Canada with Great
Britain, the new city remained apart of the Phoenician network
politically and economically.
The success of Carthage wasprobably the reason why the
Phoenicians looked to expandeven further as they founded new
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Phoenician colonies on Sardiniaduring the 7th century BCE.
In case you're wondering,sardinia is an Italian island
west of the Italian peninsula.
It's almost equal distance fromTunisia as it is to Rome,
distance from Tunisia as it isto Rome.
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The expansion into Sardinia andCarthage meant that the
Phoenicians were able to expandtheir crop yields and get access
to more raw metal ore forfinished goods in terms of
metallurgy.
Thus, they were able to expandits trade even further.
The one metal that was becomingmore and more important
throughout the Mediterranean andthe Near East was silver, with
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gold being important, but to alesser extent.
Whoever had control or easyaccess to it meant that they had
mercantile power in the region.
Tyre was kind of the big brotherof all the Phoenician cities,
and they were the ones whofounded Carthage.
Therefore, tyre was heavilyrelied upon by places like the
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Assyrians to pay tribute insilver, along with providing
goods acquired through theMediterranean, especially from
Carthage, as Tyre was clearly ina vassal relationship and
leaned on Carthage.
Tyre was clearly in a vassalrelationship and leaned on
Carthage.
Being a vassal meant that theypaid tribute but weren't under
direct control.
All the Phoenician cities werebasically in the same boat.
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However, the simple supply anddemand curve played a major part
in international trade becauseof Carthage, because in the late
7th century BCE, the value ofsilver began to collapse due to
the oversupply.
In fact, the collapse in theprices of silver may have been
the underlying reason why Tyrerevolted from the Babylonians.
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Let us not forget that it wastheir Carthage cousins who were
probably most responsible forthe oversupply of silver in the
Near East, as they wereimporting a large amount of
silver from the IberianPeninsula, which is modern day
Spain.
Additionally, this is whenLydia also started minting its
(20:12):
own electrum coins, so silverwas flooding the market from
Europe and Anatolia.
Despite this, the unintendedconsequence was Carthage ended
up breaking free from Phoenicia.
This was because Tyre initiallysided with the Egyptians over
the Babylonians, who were theenemies of Babylon.
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As such, the Babylonians laidsiege to Tyre for 13 years, but
because it was on an island city, it never fell, but it was
damaged physically andeconomically as its trade was
almost totally cut off.
In the end, the citysurrendered, after which Tyre
never recuperated completely.
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It was at this point thatCarthage could no longer depend
on Tyre and therefore broke freefrom it completely.
Now, in a weird way, theCarthage-Venetian relationship
reminds me a lot of how, whenthe United States broke free
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from Great Britain, that theUnited States was able to kind
of thrive because Great Britainhad a lot of laws in place that
you know, with regards toproperty and minting coins and
other things, that the people inthe early days of America just
felt constrained by Britishover-regulation.
But the obvious differencebeing that the Phoenicians and
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the Carthaginians didn't go towar for Carthage to break free,
like the United States and GreatBritain went to war, even
though Carthage had grown outfrom Phoenicia and Tyre in
particular.
Carthage had evolved into a newculture, sort of how the
various countries in America hasevolved into their own unique
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culture countries, and theAmericas evolved into their own
unique culture.
Carthage assimilated the Greekand Egyptian influences, and
then there was the additionalimmigration from Italian and
North Africans that were notrestricted by ethnicity or class
, and they allowed forintermarriage.
You add all these ingredientstogether and you end up building
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a society that is differentfrom the one that their
Phoenician forefathers had leftthem.
In addition, the Carthaginiansadopted certain Hellenistic
military ideas, but they did notabsorb them all.
For example, they never adoptedthe mindset of an all-consuming
military culture and sacrificeand honor.
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Like their Tyrian founders,they preferred to use their navy
money and hire mercenaries Ifneeded.
They would eventually raisearmies with great reluctance, as
they typically wage limitedwartime conflicts, usually for
control of, or to protect ormaintain crucial trade routes,
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along with their island basesand their resources.
The combined army and navywould be a combination of fleets
built and manned byCarthaginians with expandable
mercenary armies.
Sometime in the 7th century BCE,carthage had abandoned its
traditional monarchy system andopted for a republic instead.
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Why this happened, no onereally knows for sure, but it is
quite clear that theCarthaginians were run by
oligarchs, meaning that thecountry was in the hands of the
aristocracy.
So having a king kind ofwouldn't make a lot of sense,
since there was a ruling classthat would override one single
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person.
Andrew Lambert's book on seapower states indicated that, in
order for society tocollectively take to the sea and
become a sea power state, itwould need to be dependent upon
a progressive and inclusivepolitical system, which would
have been primarily run byoligarchs and the social elites,
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and not by a hereditarymonarchy.
Andrew Lambert pointed out thatPhoenicia and Carthage, along
with Athens, britain, venice andthe Dutch Republic, all became
sea power states by collectivelyconstruction their cultural
identity focusing on the sea.
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This collectivism is importantbecause the sustained naval
power entails very high costsand thus its political system
would have to be geared towardsshaping and serving the
interests of trade.
Therefore, the politicalleaders would have to ensure
that the fleet is funded bytaxing trade to fund their
fleets, and these funds would beused to enhance their trade
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capabilities along withprotecting their fleets and
their trade routes.
It would be very hard for thisto happen if you had a monarchy,
because what could probablyhappen is any particular king or
queen would eventuallypotentially be destructive to
the navy.
In other words, it's kind of aroll of dice.
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It's kind of what Dan Collinwould say about monarchies you
roll the dice and you got agreat king.
You roll the dice again, youget another great king, and then
you roll the dice again andsnake eyes.
Everything gets destroyed.
So that's why having anoligarchy in charge of the
government would have been a lotmore conducive to having
long-term success on the sea.
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The thing is, long-distance seatrade creates its own set of
unique challenges and expenses.
While you wouldn't have toworry about facing off with
dangerous land armies, you wouldstill have to worry about rival
states and, of course, thedangerous pirates that roamed
the Mediterranean.
So the government would have tofund warships to defend off
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these potential threats.
But there was also otherlong-term costs, such as
maintenance fees and buildingnew ships that were lost at sea,
paying its sailors, buildingthe infrastructure to store the
ships.
This new political system hadto incentivize the merchants and
the traders, along with thesailors who were willing to take
the risks to the open seas, sotherefore they would also need
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to get a share of the politicalpower, and therefore an absolute
monarchy just wouldn't work,especially when you're doing the
long-distance trade thing.
For one.
Carthage was founded in partbecause the Phoenicians were
looking for a way to get awayfrom the Assyrians and the
Babylonians, and they can easilydo this when they had ships, so
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having a system that allowedfor them to share in their gains
politically makes sense, orelse these merchants might not
have come back home, just likethe Phoenicians didn't come back
home to the Levant, becausethey had to deal with the
Assyrians, babylonians and laterthe Persians.
Additionally, these foreignpowers kind of annihilated the
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Levantine sea power, which wouldhave created an opportunity for
Athens and Carthage, becausethese were states that were well
beyond the immediate reach ofthe Mesopotamian military power,
so therefore they could developinto true sea powers.
So ultimately, this is why theAlgarcs took control of Carthage
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.
In Carthage, genealogy wouldhave obviously played a major
role in where one would end upin society, but it was possible
for one to work their way upfrom humble beginnings, unlike a
lot of other places at thistime.
It was also possible for thereverse to happen.
Whereas someone in thearistocracy could lose it all
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and the family could be indestitute and lose status
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evidence as to how one becomes alegal citizen, or even how they
defined a citizen, or if theyhad limited citizenship just to
men there were certain familiesthat became much more powerful
than the others, such as theMagonids and the Barsits.
It also appears that commonersin Carthage could sometimes play
a role in the leadership in thestate, but it doesn't appear
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that it was all too often, as itmostly fell to the aristocracy
or the party.
But that could be a combinationof the both of them.
The assembly known as Ham in thePunic language, which meant the
people, just like in Greekcities, the Ham gathered in the
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city's great marketplace.
How exactly this assemblyfunctioned is unknown, but it's
possible that people voted ingroups or maybe there were some
sort of representations ofcertain neighborhoods or clans.
But this is just purespeculation.
But it appears that the powerof the assembly grew through the
centuries.
The first mention of the hamwas in the mid-6th century BCE.
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Aristotle claims that the hamwas not only a place of voting
but also a place of debate, andhe praised his democratic nature
.
But let us not forget, the ideaof democracy in Aristotle's
days is a lot different thanwhat we would think of as
democracy today, as it was muchless liberal.
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Back then there was also a highcouncil that was called Adrium,
which roughly translated intothe Great Ones, which gives us
an idea that there was kind of asuperior governing body to that
of the Ham and was probablyalso around a lot longer, or a
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bit longer than the Ham as well,and probably around during the
times of the monarchy, and wouldhave probably functioned as
sort of an advisory council tothe king.
But that's just speculation, assuch, a lot of historians tend
to think that the high council,or the adrum, was probably
(30:18):
responsible for deposing themonarchy and installing the
republic.
Thus the reason why it more orless had the supremacy of the
state.
In fact, all of its 200 to 300members were from the
aristocracy.
Their functions were quitebroad, from diplomatic relations
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, decisions on peace and wartreaties, and members often
acted as judges and acted onbehalf of the state.
In addition to the ham and theadoram, the state was also ruled
by suffets, who were an electedpair of officials.
These initially were a pair ofjudges, but the adoram had
(31:00):
transformed them into executivelevel positions.
Now, not much is known aboutthis position.
We are not exactly sure howthey got to this position, but
it appears that they must havehad significant amounts of
wealth and they probably wererequired to have certain
ancestry to become a suffet.
(31:23):
Aristotle wrote that the factthat he admired the Carthaginian
system and how the threebranches kind of balanced each
other out.
What he said was if the suffetsand Adam clashed, the ham would
break the tie.
Now I get the sense fromreading certain sources that a
lot of people feel that theRomans got their form of
(31:44):
government from Carthage and, inparticular, the use of two
councils would have comedirectly from Carthage, as they
had elected soffits.
And you can see thesimilarities in that the
councils had to come from a verywealthy background and, more
importantly, they had to havethe right backgrounds.
You can also see how theirsystem is very similar to the
(32:05):
Roman system of electing twocouncils.
In fact, a lot of, if not most,historians would say that Rome
did in fact get the idea fromCarthage.
Now, ultimately, becauseCarthage was founded from the
wealthy Phoenician city-state ofTyre, based on long-distance
trade, and now Carthage wasindependently wealthy from its
(32:29):
Phoenician cousins and one ofthe wealthiest, if not
wealthiest, states in the worldat the time.
Well, money pretty much is goingto control most of, if not all
aspects of government.
Pretty much is going to controlmost of, if not all aspects of
government.
So, therefore, politicsrevolved around wealth.
It is really not unlike today.
If you think about it, theUnited States is the richest
country in the world, not percapita, but the richest country
(32:51):
in the world, and it is quicklydevolving into a country run by
oligarchs.
And the same thing happened inCarthage.
In Carthage you had to haveenough money to run for the top
office and money would have beenused to apply for state office
positions, or money would havebeen used for straight up
bribery.
In the United States we don'tcall it bribery, we just call it
(33:12):
lobbying, or we pardon peopleafter the fact.
Or my favorite part is, in theUnited States you can get around
by essentially breaking the law, by generating a ton of money
knowing that you're breaking thelaw, and you can just beg for
forgiveness afterward and pay asmall fine of a few million
dollars, which is peanuts whenyou just made a few billion
(33:32):
dollars.
The Carthaginians, just likeAmericans of today, were very
fond of money and oriented theirentire government and economy
around it, pretty much as theUnited States is now.
Of course, in the United Statesit's kind of ebbs and flows,
but really since 1980, theUnited States has clearly been
taking the view that generatingmoney is the most important
(33:54):
thing for the country.
That's why the United States isthe wealthiest country in the
world, but it is also the mostunhappy country in the world and
Carthage carried a lot of theircultural norms forward from
their Phoenician cousins andthey also carried forward
foreign people's views of themfrom their Phoenician cousins as
well, and that a lot of peopleunderstood that their whole
(34:15):
government and society wasbasically oriented around making
money and profit.
Society was basically orientedaround making money and profit
and that was the main goal,above all else because this was
a merchant society and thereforea lot of other countries and
foreign peoples developed anegative opinions of the
Carthaginians.
But it's worth noting that alot of the information that we
get regarding the Carthage andthe Phoenicians comes from
(34:38):
third-party sources that may nothave had firsthand information.
So a lot of the information waslost due to time and also a lot
of people had the negative viewso they would have kind of put
out negative propaganda.
Therefore, the feelings onCarthage has kind of evolved a
bit over the years, as a lot ofpeople think that this idea of
(35:02):
money above all may have been anexaggeration to a certain
extent and maybe it wasn't asbad as people have led others to
believe it was.
But I can see how things arehappening in the United States,
so I can see how a countrythat's dominated by the merchant
class could put profits aboveall else.
Because in the United Statesthat's obviously what we're
(35:23):
doing here we put profits abovepeople's well-being, above
people's welfare in particular.
So why wouldn't this happen inan ancient society?
And it should be noted that thegovernment, because it was run
by merchants had encouraged itsmerchants to basically trade
anything they can get theirhands on.
So Carthage would have beendealing in raw materials such as
(35:46):
crops and metals, includinggold and silver, along with tin,
copper and iron, but they wouldhave also dealt in animal skins
and ivory and timber.
But then they also would havetraded in finished goods,
including textiles, with theirpurple dye cloth.
Because, remember, the purpledye was what put the Phoenicians
on the map to begin with.
(36:06):
The purple dye was anindication of exclusivity and
high-grade materials that wereworn by the elites and the
royals, and even today, thecolor purple is still associated
with royalty.
And even today, the colorpurple is still associated with
royalty.
No-transcript.
(36:39):
According to Herodotus, theCarthaginians would lay out
their wares on the beach, thenthey board their ships and light
a signal fire.
This fire would summon thelocal Libyans who would approach
and place gold besides thegoods.
The Carthaginians would observetheir offerings from their
boats and would wait until theydeemed the amount of gold
(37:00):
satisfactory before returning tothe shore to exchange the items
.
Each party would then taketheir respective goods.
The sale would be completedwithout any party having to come
in direct contact with theother.
Now there is a lot to unpackhere.
With this claim made byHerodotus, the use of signifiers
and the placement of goods andgold served as a form of
(37:22):
non-verbal communication.
But obviously, if this was true, there would have had to have
been some kind of priorcommunications or the
establishment of this procedurefor trade to begin with.
But either way, herodotus makesit appear that these actions
conveyed intentions andarrangements without the need of
spoken language.
These actions conveyedintentions and arrangements
(37:42):
without the need of spokenlanguage.
Of course, this would have beenan obvious thing, because if
they didn't have a means tocommunicate through language,
they'd have to have another wayto communicate that they wanted
to make trade deals.
So, since they didn't have anyform of translators, this method
would have highlighted theimportance of using symbols and
actions in conveying trust andestablishing trade agreements.
(38:05):
Since it's obvious that thereweren't any written contracts,
trade would have relied uponhonesty, social norms,
reputation and, of course,non-verbal communication, and
the fact that Carthage, and thePhoenicians for that matter, had
such long-standing trade withvarious ethnic groups from
(38:26):
various parts of the world, onecould easily have concluded that
they held up their end of thebargain and operated ethically
when dealing with people thathad foreign language and foreign
customs.
Herodotus appears to make theCarthaginians seem fair and
respectful, as no one was evercheated in these deals.
Therefore, he presented animage of mutual respect and
(38:48):
honest economic interactionbetween two parties.
Now I find this part kind ofinteresting because Herodotus
and a lot of other Greek andRoman writers were kind of
notorious for taking their shotsat the Carthaginians and the
Phoenicians, so in a weird way,it's kind of unusual to see
(39:09):
Greek and Roman writers writeabout them in a fair and
equitable way.
Since the government was run bymerchants, the government wanted
to make sure that long-distancetrade would have been safe as
possible.
The one thing is, the open seashave always brought on
(39:30):
dangerous conditions.
This danger can come in variousforms.
For one, mother Nature wasunpredictable, as violent storms
could just appear out ofnowhere and wreak havoc and
death and loss of revenue.
The other concern would havebeen pirates, which in many
circumstances would have beenjust as equally as bad.
And the third thing would havebeen foreign competition.
(39:51):
So the government couldn't doanything about mother nature,
but it could do something aboutpirates and competition.
The first thing it did wouldhave been protecting its
merchant fleets with itsmilitary fleet, and, of course,
using the navy would have madethe merchants a lot safer when
they're sailing in the open seas.
The Romans were prettynotorious for this.
(40:13):
Whenever they got reports ofpirate activity in certain
places, they took extrememeasures to put the piracy down.
So not only did they sink theirships in the open seas, they
would also chase them down overland.
I did mention that there was athird aspect that makes
long-distance trade lessprofitable, in that there was
(40:35):
the prospect of foreigncompetition.
Therefore, the government ofCarthage actively looked to do
certain trade treaties and tradedeals with foreign governments
that would have made sure thatboth sides didn't encroach into
each other's territories.
This was set up so that theywould have trade dominance or
establish new markets for theirgoods.
(40:56):
For example, carthage and Romesigned a trade treaty in 509 BCE
which would have opened uptrade for Carthage and set
boundaries for both sides.
At this point.
Carthage was clearly thedominant player in this deal, so
they had most of the leverage.
Now, despite the fact thatCarthage was this massive force
(41:20):
in the Mediterranean and Rome,was this really kind of tiny
city-state in the middle ofItaly?
They were off to a good start.
It appears that both sidesviewed each other as a potential
place for growth opportunitiesand even a place where they
could share knowledge and wisdom, especially when it comes to
the supernatural.
(41:41):
One notable convergence of anaspect of religion that was
shared by both sides was theirreverence for the god of
commerce.
It shouldn't be surprised thatCarthage worshipped the deity of
trade, whom they believed wasan invocation of Mercury, the
Roman god of finance, grains,trade, luck, tricks and thieves.
(42:01):
This shared belief facilitateda deeper cultural and spiritual
connection between the twocivilizations.
The name Mercury is derivedfrom the Latin word mercs,
meaning merchandise.
The etymological connectionextends to mercari, which means
to trade or exchange, and mercis, meaning wages.
(42:23):
This linguistic associationunderscores the significance of
trade and commerce in Romansociety, along with its
parallels in the Carthageculture.
Merchants and traders from bothcivilizations invoked Mercury
for success in their endeavors,believing that his favor would
bring prosperity and protectionthe uncertainties of trade.
(42:46):
This shared invocation ofMercury as a divine protector of
commerce created a spiritualbond that transcended rivalries,
whether it was political or,later, military.
One thing that does start tochange for Carthage was the fact
that they started to expandinto the African hinterland, and
(43:09):
because of that you start tosee a new class of citizens
emerge, that is, the wealthylandowner, not the wealthy
merchant.
So now not all the aristocratsare tied to the seas.
This also meant that theimmediate farmlands outside the
city proper and the suburbswould have been capable of
feeding its entire populationand producing a surplus.
(43:33):
In fact, aristotle and otherancient writers had praised the
people of Carthage in theirabilities to grow crops.
Praised the people of Carthageand their abilities to grow
crops.
Their expertise was so wellknown that a retired general
wrote a book, or basicallymanual, on farming that was used
by the Romans, along with a fewother writings of the
Carthaginian peoples that weresaved after the Romans destroyed
(43:57):
Carthage.
Unfortunately, the entiremanuscript wasn't saved, as only
excerpts from the Roman authorswho referenced the Carthaginian
general were saved, and I'mgetting a little ahead of myself
here.
But the reason why a lot ofthese manuscripts and certain
writings of the people ofCarthage wasn't saved because
(44:20):
when Rome destroyed Carthage, itbasically wanted to wipe its
memory off the map.
So that's why at the beginningof the show, in the beginning of
the Phoenicians episode, I kindof mentioned that basically
everything is secondhand sourcesand that is due to the fact
that when, especially Carthage,when, they were destroyed,
(44:41):
basically they just want to wipeany kind of reference them away
.
So no one really knows for surewhat happened in a lot of
circumstances.
So, like I said, this all comesfrom secondhand information and
that obviously is a problem,because the secondhand
information is people that havewarred with Carthage, so you're
probably not going to get themost honest opinions or even
(45:06):
facts.
As it pertains to Carthage, asCarthage was expanding into
Africa and they were prominentmerchants, it would only make
sense that they would expandtrade into Africa.
Just like the Phoenicians, theyrelied upon overland trade as
well.
Carthage had overland traderoutes into Africa, utilizing
(45:29):
the caravan routes across theSahara Desert to trade with
indigenous populations in theinterior of the continent.
They would primarily acquiregoods like gold, ivory and other
African commodities.
Acquire goods like gold, ivoryand other African commodities.
Now, this trade was facilitatedby taking over existing Berber
trading networks along the NorthAfrican coast.
(45:51):
Some historians believed aCarthaginian named Mago even
crossed the desert several timesto facilitate this trade.
These exchanges were oftenconducted through intermediary
tribes along the trade routes.
As it appears that Carthage waslooking for a Trans-Saharan
trade route, some of these traderoutes had rudimentary roads
(46:15):
that were established beforethey started to trade in the
interior, and these roads wouldhave often been expanded upon by
the Romans after they hadconquered Carthage.
While Carthage is expanding itstrade routes into the interior
of Africa and establishing tradetreaties throughout the
(46:36):
Mediterranean, there was one ofthe great inventions that was
taking place in Lydia, which waslocated in the western half of
Anatolia.
In the 6th century BCE, theystarted minting electrum coins,
which were a mix of silver andgold.
This invention well, it wasn'tpicked up by everybody
immediately, but it did maketrade much more efficient.
(46:59):
It did make trade much moreefficient.
The Phoenicians in particularwere somewhat slow to pick up on
this, but they eventuallystarted minting their own coins
as well.
Carthage began minting coins inthe late or early 4th century
BCE.
The fact that Carthage andPhoenicia were a bit behind the
curve does give a bit of anindication that they may have
(47:23):
had a bit of a conservativestreak and that they may not
have been quick to adapt tochange as quickly as one might
think they would have, which isquite strange and odd
considering that they weremerchants and they needed to
rely on technology as theiradvantage because they were
smaller and they were dealingwith much bigger land powers,
(47:45):
especially the Phoenicians.
So therefore, when it comes tocoinage, before they were
minting coins they would havestill been relying on using
ingots of metal in trade, andthe most likely scenario would
have been that they haddeveloped a credit system and
kind of settled up at a giventime using the agreed upon metal
, such as silver, as the mediumof exchange.
(48:06):
Once coinage came into play andthere wasn't enough coins to
complete the transaction, theywould have relied on a credit
system.
This would be a very commonsystem that they would have used
in medieval and earlyrenaissance Europe, because they
were constantly dealing withcoin shortages.
One of the reasons why they mayhave been a little late to the
(48:30):
game with regards to coinagecould be due to the fact that
they did a lot of transactionswith the people of the western
Mediterranean, who were muchless developed economically in
comparison to the people in theEast, in Mesopotamia, iran and
Anatolia, for example.
Another thing, too, is a lot ofthe people that adopted coinage
(48:52):
early on were using it as ameans to pay soldiers and
mercenaries.
If this is the case andCarthage really isn't warring
with a lot of people at thistime the idea of paying
mercenaries wasn't necessarilyneeded at this particular point.
(49:12):
Therefore, setting up a creditsystem where they would settle
up at a specific time would havemade a lot of sense for them.
Would have made a lot of sensefor them and if you really don't
understand what I'm getting at,it was they would have tracked
all their transactions and then,at a specific date, they would
have had a transfer of theagreed upon item.
It was usually something likesilver or it could have been
(49:45):
copper, and that would have beendone in a large amount at the
specific time that they had inthe near future as part of the
agreement.
And this would always be set upbecause most of the time or I
shouldn't say most of the time,but a lot of the times when they
did this particular trade,whatever it may be usually the
one side didn't have the metalsthat they were looking for on
hand.
Usually the one side didn'thave the metals that they were
looking for on hand.
I just mentioned it a fewmoments ago, but this was very
(50:07):
common in medieval Europe.
No-transcript fairs would havehappened all over Europe.
(50:34):
But obviously I'm getting wayahead of myself because that's
not part of Carthage, but I justkind of wanted you to get an
idea of how the system wouldhave worked as it pertains to
credit.
Now I'm bringing all this upspecifically because the one
thing that I was always taughtin college, undergrad and even,
I think, grad school, but Ican't recall because it's been a
(50:56):
while I was always taught thatbarter was how transactions
would have been done prior toany kind of money that was
created, like coins when I saymoney, I mean coins or if there
was some kind of silver orwhatever it was.
But the thing is about barteris.
(51:19):
There's been no historicalevidence of it happening.
So therefore, that's why a lotof people have been shifting of
late to say, well, it wasn'tbarter, it was more of a credit
system that they had set up.
So it wasn't like people weregoing to go and exchange purple
(51:40):
dyed fabrics, for the persondidn't have silver or even gold
or sometimes copper on hand.
They just set up a system andsaid OK, we're going to make a
deal where I'll give you thisnow and then you'll pay me later
at a specific time.
The fact is is barter was alwaysassumed as a primary means of
(52:04):
exchange and I think it'sbecause even on a smaller scale,
people will barter even to thisday.
But on a large scale tradenetwork that the Phoenicians and
then the people of Carthage hadset up, barter was just
impossible.
It was too cumbersome and therewould have to be the double
coincidence of wants and just ingeneral it just wouldn't work
(52:28):
for most transactions.
And the biggest reason whythere's been a shift that barter
really wasn't what was going onis because there just have not
been historical written recordsto confirm that, written records
to confirm that, and in a wayHerodotus kind of backs that
claim up because what he saidwas Carthage only accepted gold.
(52:50):
But that probably isn'taccurate, especially in the
Iberian Peninsula, because theyhad large reserves of silver and
silver was an accepted means oftransfer and really the most
common medium of exchangethroughout the Near East.
When I say Near East, I'mbasically referring to Western
Asia, so we're talking theMesopotamia, the Levant,
(53:13):
anatolia, places like that, andeven Iran, for that matter and
the Near East, gold was used asa medium of exchange, but
generally speaking, it was onlyused when a luxury item was
being purchased.
In other words, gold as amedium of exchange was quite
rare.
So the idea of Herodotus sayingthat Carthage would only accept
(53:36):
gold kind of doesn't make anysense.
To be honest with you, in thisepisode my goal was to more or
less lay the groundwork as howCarthage came to be and then
eventually became one of themost successful and wealthiest
states in the ancient world.
(53:57):
This was all done, obviously,of trade, and they just picked
up where their Phoenicianforefathers had left off.
Now, at this point in the story, carthage is that the Greeks
(54:25):
were starting to expand theirsphere of influence and they
were becoming a great navalpower and therefore they wanted
to establish themselves inSicily.
But the problem for Carthagewas Sicily was one of their most
(54:46):
prized possessions at the time.
So obviously, if you haveCarthage on one side of the
island and Greeks on the otherside, it's almost certain that
there's going to be some kind ofconflicts.
And this is when Carthage kindof goes from just a merchant
power to a navy power, and thisright here is an extreme example
(55:10):
of a change in philosophy ofthe people of Carthage compared
to their Phoenician forefathers,because their Phoenician
forefathers really didn't wantany part of any kind of military
conflicts.
If they were involved in amilitary conflict, say with the
Greeks, they would have beenmore or less forced to because
(55:31):
they were under Persian rule.
In this particular case,carthage is the ones that are
kind of the aggressors in Sicily.
But that's for the next episode.
In the next episode I'll kindof get a little bit more into
the history of Carthage and howthey had many conflicts with the
(55:53):
Greeks and eventually this kindof bleeds over even to their
problems with Rome.
But that's for the next coupleepisodes.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
(56:15):
Also, you can help out the showa ton by leaving a five star
review ton by leaving afive-star review.
Also recently I started to makethe show into video format.
The shows are a bit more formaland if you could stop by the
(56:35):
show and like and subscribe atMoney Banking Trade in YouTube
format.
I've already created a coupleepisodes.
They are quite long becausewhat I did is I combined all my
Sumer episodes and then Babylonepisodes to make one episode.
So there's two videos One isSumer, one is Babylon.
However, going forward, I planon start jumping around in the
(56:58):
timeline, being around in thetimeline.
For example, in the nextepisode that I will post to
YouTube, it's going to be aboutthe rise of the goldsmiths in
1600 England and how it foreverchanged banking.
And once again, that's atYouTube, at Money Banking Trade.
Thank you very much.
I'll talk to you soon.
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D, and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations topresent-day market innovations.
Since we just finished with thePhoenicians, it made sense to
(00:25):
transition to Carthage.
After all, these are theirdistant cousins, who were
originally from Tyre.
The interesting thing is howthis Phoenician colony differed
so much from their cousins inthe Levant.
Trade was their main function,but unlike the Phoenician
cousins, they were also amilitary power their main
(00:46):
function, but unlike thePhoenician cousins, they were
also a military power.
Now, to be honest with you, upuntil maybe a few years ago, I
really didn't know a whole lotabout Carthage.
The only thing I did know wasthat they had a major war three
of them in fact with Rome, butother than that, I really didn't
know much about it.
I did hear a little bit ofstuff about child sacrifice and
things like that, but other thanthat, I did not really have
(01:08):
much information as far as thepeople and their culture.
In addition, maybe I stilldon't have much information
because much of the informationthat we get doesn't come from
firsthand sources.
It comes from the Romans andthe Greeks, people that may or
may not have their bestinterests in mind when telling
the story.
Now, in a way, carthage is mucholder than the Romans.
(01:31):
I mean, when Rome was just asmall regional power in central
Italy, carthage was colonizingNorth Africa, from Algeria to
Morocco and even southern Spainto Sicily.
So ultimately, if you turn theclock back to say 500 BCE, you
would see vastly differentplaces where Rome was just kind
(01:54):
of almost a nobody and Carthagewas maybe the biggest player in
the Mediterranean.
Now, every culture has to have astart from somewhere and as far
as Carthage goes, they camefrom the Phoenicians, who came
from the Mediterranean coast, onits eastern shores, in a region
(02:14):
known as the Levant.
But before they were thePhoenicians they would have come
from the Canaanites, who livedin modern-day Syria, lebanon,
jordan, israel and Palestine.
They generally lived in smallcity-states, just like the
ancient Greeks.
It was around 1500 BCE that thePhoenicians had diverged from
(02:35):
other Canaanites in that trade,not agriculture, became their
main focal point of theirsociety.
In fact, the Phoenicians wereprobably the first ever sea
power merchant state, wellbefore the Greeks.
As a result, they were able toconnect all major powers through
sea and overland trade.
When I say major powers, I'mreferring to the various
(02:59):
kingdoms in Mesopotamia, inEgypt, anatolia and even
Southern Europe.
And when I say Mesopotamia Ijust want to be clarified that's
Assyria, babylonia and Sumer,and even Elam to the east.
The Phoenicians were a smallregion.
They didn't have largepopulations and therefore they
(03:20):
never created an empire and justrelied on trade, and then they
would have paid their tributeand taxes to the local hegemon.
At the time, the Phoeniciansweren't really trying to conquer
new lands and create empires asmuch as they were trying to
expand their trade network andget access to tradable goods.
In addition, just like theother Canaanites and Greeks,
(03:43):
they never united into a singlestate.
Therefore, each state wouldhave had basically its own
country right, just kind of likehow the Greeks were set up.
But the biggest differencebetween the Phoenicians and the
Greeks was the Phoenicians gotalong quite well, whereas the
Greeks were constantly at eachother's throats.
The only time the Greeks everreally united is if there was an
(04:03):
outside force coming in.
But even then sometimes certainGreeks would take the side of
the outside forces, so theydidn't even really necessarily
unite.
When they were being attacked itwas shortly after the late
Bronze Age collapse that thePhoenician trade colonization
picked up its pace.
(04:23):
These were trade colonies whichallowed them to get access to
local commodities and evenfinished goods in some
circumstances.
From Tunisia to Spain thePhoenicians expanded its
colonies, but also being inplaces like Spain meant that
they could keep some distancefrom the Assyrians and the
(04:43):
Babylonians as well.
So therefore they could kind ofget some space between them,
because there was just no waythe Assyrians and the
Babylonians were ever going tobe able to sail out and conquer
any kind of distant Phoeniciancolony, because the Phoenicians
were the sea people and theAssyrians and the Babylonians
were land armies and theAssyrians and the Babylonians
(05:07):
were land armies.
As the populations grew fromtrade settlements into urban
centers, the Phoenicians wereprobably aided by the fact that
these colonies were places thatdidn't have much of a population
.
They're very sparsely populatedand the local indigenous
population wasn't really nearlyas advanced as the Phoenicians
that were encroaching into theterritories.
(05:27):
So in other words, thePhoenicians would have had
access to certain weapons andtools and defensive measures
that possibly the localindigenous population just
couldn't deal with.
Once the Assyrians expandedinto the Levant, this gave them
even more reason to expand intotheir trade colonies outside of
(05:48):
the Levant in order to escapethe grip of the Assyrians.
However, the Assyriansgenerally treated the
Phoenicians better than otherkingdoms, because they would pay
their tribute and theygenerally didn't revolt the way
other societies did.
Nonetheless, they still knewthat life was probably going to
be better the farther they gotaway from Assyria.
(06:10):
Carthage on the African coastmeant that they could safely
keep their distance from theAssyrians, or even the Egyptians
or whoever was the localhegemon in the Near East.
Now, it should be noted thatCarthage wasn't the first
settlement in North Africa.
In fact, it was Utica.
That Carthage wasn't the firstsettlement in North Africa.
In fact, it was Utica that hadalready established itself, but
not far from there.
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Also, carthage was not the namethe Phoenicians had given it.
It appears that it was known asthe New City, or Kartadas in
the Phoenician language.
The name was later transcribedas Karkadon by the Greeks.
Then it was the Romans thatappropriated the Hellenized
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version and called it the cityof Kartego.
The legendary story of thefounding of the city is as
famous and colorful as any ofthe city is as famous and
colorful as any.
I'd compare it to the foundingof Rome.
However, it starts with Dido,the sister of the Tyre king,
(07:16):
pygmalion, who had cheated herfrom the shared rule by killing
her husband.
Dido, being heartbroken, leftthe city, first sailing to the
west, and then on her way toNorth Africa.
Dido and her followers stoppedat the Phoenician colonies on
Cyprus.
There she saved 80 virgins fromritual prostitution, and from
there she was also joined by apriest of Baal, which Baal is
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the Phoenician god equivalent toZeus, if you want to make a
comparison.
From there, dido made her waytowards Africa and landed in
modern-day Tunisia.
She was met by the indigenouspopulation, as well as the
Phoenician colonists from Utica.
Now, the local indigenouspopulation may have been the
Libyans and, let us not forget,they were no pushover, as they
(08:03):
had conquered Egypt for a brieftime.
Despite this, the local groupswelcomed Dido without hostility.
It appears that the locals weremore interested in trade.
However, this is something thatthe Phoenicians would say.
So maybe it was true, maybe itwasn't, and despite their warm
reception, they still weren'tgoing to just give up their land
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to some strangers that cameashore.
So this is where the legendgets interesting, as the locals
allowed the queen and herfollowers to stay only on the
land that a single ox hide couldcover.
In response, dido cut the hideinto the thinnest of strips and
enclosed the hill of Versa, ofwhich this would become the
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citadel of Carthage.
The king accepted this, butimposed a yearly rent Due to its
location.
The newly built city flourishedand grew quickly, which,
according to myths, led tonumerous suitors asking for
Dido's hand in marriage.
According to myths, led tonumerous suitors asking for
(09:08):
Dido's hand in marriage.
Yet she was stillgrief-stricken and she refused
them all out of respect for herlate husband.
She eventually threw herselfonto a funeral pyre because she
was forced to marry a local king.
Another version of the storysays that she threw herself on
the pyre because the Trojan hero, Aeneas, refused to marry her
and sailed away to Italy.
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Like a lot of these ancientstories, these ones came from
either Roman or Greek writerswho had lived centuries after
the founding of the city.
As there is no survivingwritten records by the
Carthaginians surviving writtenrecords by the Carthaginians,
that fact alone is true for boththe Carthaginians as well as
the Phoenicians, because much oftheir history had been wiped
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clean for one reason or another.
Most likely it's due to theRomans or the Greeks, who
basically wanted to banish themfrom the historical written
record.
Another is that some of therecords were given to the local
Libyans and they did with whatthey pleased.
This is obviously a problem,considering that they were the
(10:12):
enemies through much of thehistory.
So one really needs to questionthe validity of much of the
ancient written records as itpertains to the Carthaginians
and even their Phoeniciancousins.
Normally we can get around thisissue through archaeological
digs.
The issue here is that Carthageis still inhabited, so it's not
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like you can just movebuildings or other residences to
get underneath.
Another major issue is the sameissue that we have with the
Indus civilization, in that wehaven't fully deciphered their
language, so anything writtenwon't be fully understood.
Some scholars think theyunderstand certain words or
(10:59):
phrases, but these are oftendebated, so in the end
oftentimes there isn't a generalconsensus.
Now, with the power of AI,these tools can help with
certain issues with long deadlanguages that may have scripts
that we just haven't gotten ahandle on because there isn't
(11:20):
any Rosetta Stone.
So in the end, hopefully, aican kind of pick up the gaps
that human knowledge just cannotdecipher or understand.
Now, the one thing thatscholars generally agree on is
that the first Phoeniciansettlement was founded in the
9th century BCE or the veryearly 8th century.
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This is also when the date ofthe story of Dido was arriving
to Africa.
Unlike Romulus and Remus,historians believe Dido and her
brother were in fact realpersons, but that doesn't mean
that the city founding story wasreal, though.
(12:01):
The one question that I alwayshad was why weren't the
Egyptians in the region to beginwith?
Why would the Phoenicians bethe first outsiders to try to
colonize North Africa?
Well, the answer is reallysimple, in that the Egyptians
didn't concern themselves toomuch with the outside world.
In fact, the Egyptians didn'teven have a single specific name
(12:23):
that directly translates tonon-Egyptian because their
primary focus was on their ownculture and their own land.
So they left most of theexternal trade in the hands of
foreigners, of which theycreated a port on the Nile, but
they didn't have a coastalharbor until really the Greeks
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had conquered Egypt.
So, in other words, they weremore concerned with internal
trade than taking to the sea andtrading with people from
Southern Europe or the Levantthrough the sea routes.
Now, don't get it wrong Egyptstill traded with people in the
Levant and Arabia and otherplaces nearby, but they did it
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through, basically, landcaravans.
They weren't building ships andsailing the Nile and out into
the Mediterranean.
That just wasn't a prerogativefor them and in fact the
priesthood would have frownedupon it because they saw the sea
as a corrupting force.
And of course they probably sawthe sea as a corrupting force
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because this would have meantthese foreign ideas that could
have been dangerous to their ownlivelihood could have crept
into Egypt.
So that's why I think a lot oftimes they kind of looked inward
, because the priest classdidn't want to have any outside
competition, because ultimatelynew ideas could have changed the
way people viewed their ownpersonal gods, which obviously
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changes their livelihood.
So what I'm getting at is theidea that the Egyptians would
have sailed the Mediterraneanand set up shop in places like
either Carthage or Utica wouldhave been unthinkable because
the only way they could havegotten there was if they
traversed the western desert toLibya In the early days of
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Carthage.
It's not really sure if theywere initially a monarchy or not
.
The founding myth of Dido wouldindicate that it was a monarchy
, but since there really isn'tany early sources, it is really
hard to tell one way or theother.
The reason why Carthage workedfrom the get-go was the location
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.
The reason why Carthage workedfrom the get-go was the location
.
The location was ideal in thatit was on a hill that overlooked
the shores beneath, which wouldhave acted as a natural defense
mechanism from the sea, and, aswell as the land On the north
side of the harbor laid fertilelands.
These lands were initiallyfarmlands that supplied the
early inhabitants food, but asthe city grew, this region
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became an early suburb.
In addition, the city had amplefreshwater springs capable of
servicing the needs of the cityand the farmers.
However, it wasn't the springwater that made Carthage.
It was the fantastic naturalharbor of Tunis that had calm
waters needed for a good harbor,while the city had easy access
to inland as well.
This enabled the people ofCarthage to move goods from the
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sea to inland to the localLibyan population.
This was potentially a keyaspect that kept the locals from
rising up right away againstthese foreigners if they knew
that they can get them access toFinnish goods and commodities
that they would have never hadaccess to without the people of
the new city.
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It sounds as though the peopleof the new city, or Carthage,
who were Phoenicians, kind ofjust continued to do what they
had been doing previously in theLevant, in that they began to
produce their own goods, such aspottery and their famous
crimson clothing dye fromshellfish.
Archaeologists also foundevidence of iron foundries and
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other metallurgy shops from theearliest peoples of the city,
which were used for localconsumption or even export to
other places.
At some point, theCarthaginians developed the
smelting technique of addingcalcium to the furnaces, which
would have neutralized thesulfur in the iron.
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That meant that they would haveimproved quality.
Therefore, one could concludethat their iron products were
highly desirable by their tradepartners throughout the
Mediterranean.
In its early periods, carthageretained its Phoenician cultural
heritage.
My guess is and it's just aguess is it was probably sort of
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like when the early Britishcame to the United States and
Canada, as they probably justsaw themselves as British, not
Americans or Canadians, as theystill held the idea of being
British in high regard.
So the people of Carthage mayhave felt the same way about
being Phoenician.
So what I'm trying to say isthis is quite common.
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Look at the Assyrians, forexample.
They held their Babylonianheritage in high regard as well.
Carthage, or the new city,however you want to call it was
far away from the control of theAssyrians as such.
This probably played a majorpart in the fact that they grew
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rather quickly.
However, just like earlyAmerica and Canada with Great
Britain, the new city remained apart of the Phoenician network
politically and economically.
The success of Carthage wasprobably the reason why the
Phoenicians looked to expandeven further as they founded new
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Phoenician colonies on Sardiniaduring the 7th century BCE.
In case you're wondering,sardinia is an Italian island
west of the Italian peninsula.
It's almost equal distance fromTunisia as it is to Rome,
distance from Tunisia as it isto Rome.
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The expansion into Sardinia andCarthage meant that the
Phoenicians were able to expandtheir crop yields and get access
to more raw metal ore forfinished goods in terms of
metallurgy.
Thus, they were able to expandits trade even further.
The one metal that was becomingmore and more important
throughout the Mediterranean andthe Near East was silver, with
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gold being important, but to alesser extent.
Whoever had control or easyaccess to it meant that they had
mercantile power in the region.
Tyre was kind of the big brotherof all the Phoenician cities,
and they were the ones whofounded Carthage.
Therefore, tyre was heavilyrelied upon by places like the
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Assyrians to pay tribute insilver, along with providing
goods acquired through theMediterranean, especially from
Carthage, as Tyre was clearly ina vassal relationship and
leaned on Carthage.
Tyre was clearly in a vassalrelationship and leaned on
Carthage.
Being a vassal meant that theypaid tribute but weren't under
direct control.
All the Phoenician cities werebasically in the same boat.
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However, the simple supply anddemand curve played a major part
in international trade becauseof Carthage, because in the late
7th century BCE, the value ofsilver began to collapse due to
the oversupply.
In fact, the collapse in theprices of silver may have been
the underlying reason why Tyrerevolted from the Babylonians.
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Let us not forget that it wastheir Carthage cousins who were
probably most responsible forthe oversupply of silver in the
Near East, as they wereimporting a large amount of
silver from the IberianPeninsula, which is modern day
Spain.
Additionally, this is whenLydia also started minting its
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own electrum coins, so silverwas flooding the market from
Europe and Anatolia.
Despite this, the unintendedconsequence was Carthage ended
up breaking free from Phoenicia.
This was because Tyre initiallysided with the Egyptians over
the Babylonians, who were theenemies of Babylon.
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As such, the Babylonians laidsiege to Tyre for 13 years, but
because it was on an island city, it never fell, but it was
damaged physically andeconomically as its trade was
almost totally cut off.
In the end, the citysurrendered, after which Tyre
never recuperated completely.
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It was at this point thatCarthage could no longer depend
on Tyre and therefore broke freefrom it completely.
Now, in a weird way, theCarthage-Venetian relationship
reminds me a lot of how, whenthe United States broke free
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from Great Britain, that theUnited States was able to kind
of thrive because Great Britainhad a lot of laws in place that
you know, with regards toproperty and minting coins and
other things, that the people inthe early days of America just
felt constrained by Britishover-regulation.
But the obvious differencebeing that the Phoenicians and
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the Carthaginians didn't go towar for Carthage to break free,
like the United States and GreatBritain went to war, even
though Carthage had grown outfrom Phoenicia and Tyre in
particular.
Carthage had evolved into a newculture, sort of how the
various countries in America hasevolved into their own unique
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culture countries, and theAmericas evolved into their own
unique culture.
Carthage assimilated the Greekand Egyptian influences, and
then there was the additionalimmigration from Italian and
North Africans that were notrestricted by ethnicity or class
, and they allowed forintermarriage.
You add all these ingredientstogether and you end up building
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a society that is differentfrom the one that their
Phoenician forefathers had leftthem.
In addition, the Carthaginiansadopted certain Hellenistic
military ideas, but they did notabsorb them all.
For example, they never adoptedthe mindset of an all-consuming
military culture and sacrificeand honor.
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Like their Tyrian founders,they preferred to use their navy
money and hire mercenaries Ifneeded.
They would eventually raisearmies with great reluctance, as
they typically wage limitedwartime conflicts, usually for
control of, or to protect ormaintain crucial trade routes,
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along with their island basesand their resources.
The combined army and navywould be a combination of fleets
built and manned byCarthaginians with expandable
mercenary armies.
Sometime in the 7th century BCE,carthage had abandoned its
traditional monarchy system andopted for a republic instead.
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Why this happened, no onereally knows for sure, but it is
quite clear that theCarthaginians were run by
oligarchs, meaning that thecountry was in the hands of the
aristocracy.
So having a king kind ofwouldn't make a lot of sense,
since there was a ruling classthat would override one single
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person.
Andrew Lambert's book on seapower states indicated that, in
order for society tocollectively take to the sea and
become a sea power state, itwould need to be dependent upon
a progressive and inclusivepolitical system, which would
have been primarily run byoligarchs and the social elites,
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and not by a hereditarymonarchy.
Andrew Lambert pointed out thatPhoenicia and Carthage, along
with Athens, britain, venice andthe Dutch Republic, all became
sea power states by collectivelyconstruction their cultural
identity focusing on the sea.
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This collectivism is importantbecause the sustained naval
power entails very high costsand thus its political system
would have to be geared towardsshaping and serving the
interests of trade.
Therefore, the politicalleaders would have to ensure
that the fleet is funded bytaxing trade to fund their
fleets, and these funds would beused to enhance their trade
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capabilities along withprotecting their fleets and
their trade routes.
It would be very hard for thisto happen if you had a monarchy,
because what could probablyhappen is any particular king or
queen would eventuallypotentially be destructive to
the navy.
In other words, it's kind of aroll of dice.
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It's kind of what Dan Collinwould say about monarchies you
roll the dice and you got agreat king.
You roll the dice again, youget another great king, and then
you roll the dice again andsnake eyes.
Everything gets destroyed.
So that's why having anoligarchy in charge of the
government would have been a lotmore conducive to having
long-term success on the sea.
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The thing is, long-distance seatrade creates its own set of
unique challenges and expenses.
While you wouldn't have toworry about facing off with
dangerous land armies, you wouldstill have to worry about rival
states and, of course, thedangerous pirates that roamed
the Mediterranean.
So the government would have tofund warships to defend off
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these potential threats.
But there was also otherlong-term costs, such as
maintenance fees and buildingnew ships that were lost at sea,
paying its sailors, buildingthe infrastructure to store the
ships.
This new political system hadto incentivize the merchants and
the traders, along with thesailors who were willing to take
the risks to the open seas, sotherefore they would also need
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to get a share of the politicalpower, and therefore an absolute
monarchy just wouldn't work,especially when you're doing the
long-distance trade thing.
For one.
Carthage was founded in partbecause the Phoenicians were
looking for a way to get awayfrom the Assyrians and the
Babylonians, and they can easilydo this when they had ships, so
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having a system that allowedfor them to share in their gains
politically makes sense, orelse these merchants might not
have come back home, just likethe Phoenicians didn't come back
home to the Levant, becausethey had to deal with the
Assyrians, babylonians and laterthe Persians.
Additionally, these foreignpowers kind of annihilated the
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Levantine sea power, which wouldhave created an opportunity for
Athens and Carthage, becausethese were states that were well
beyond the immediate reach ofthe Mesopotamian military power,
so therefore they could developinto true sea powers.
So ultimately, this is why theAlgarcs took control of Carthage
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.
In Carthage, genealogy wouldhave obviously played a major
role in where one would end upin society, but it was possible
for one to work their way upfrom humble beginnings, unlike a
lot of other places at thistime.
It was also possible for thereverse to happen.
Whereas someone in thearistocracy could lose it all
(27:42):
and the family could be indestitute and lose status
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evidence as to how one becomes alegal citizen, or even how they
defined a citizen, or if theyhad limited citizenship just to
men there were certain familiesthat became much more powerful
than the others, such as theMagonids and the Barsits.
It also appears that commonersin Carthage could sometimes play
a role in the leadership in thestate, but it doesn't appear
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that it was all too often, as itmostly fell to the aristocracy
or the party.
But that could be a combinationof the both of them.
The assembly known as Ham in thePunic language, which meant the
people, just like in Greekcities, the Ham gathered in the
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city's great marketplace.
How exactly this assemblyfunctioned is unknown, but it's
possible that people voted ingroups or maybe there were some
sort of representations ofcertain neighborhoods or clans.
But this is just purespeculation.
But it appears that the powerof the assembly grew through the
centuries.
The first mention of the hamwas in the mid-6th century BCE.
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Aristotle claims that the hamwas not only a place of voting
but also a place of debate, andhe praised his democratic nature
.
But let us not forget, the ideaof democracy in Aristotle's
days is a lot different thanwhat we would think of as
democracy today, as it was muchless liberal.
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Back then there was also a highcouncil that was called Adrium,
which roughly translated intothe Great Ones, which gives us
an idea that there was kind of asuperior governing body to that
of the Ham and was probablyalso around a lot longer, or a
(29:56):
bit longer than the Ham as well,and probably around during the
times of the monarchy, and wouldhave probably functioned as
sort of an advisory council tothe king.
But that's just speculation, assuch, a lot of historians tend
to think that the high council,or the adrum, was probably
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responsible for deposing themonarchy and installing the
republic.
Thus the reason why it more orless had the supremacy of the
state.
In fact, all of its 200 to 300members were from the
aristocracy.
Their functions were quitebroad, from diplomatic relations
(30:38):
, decisions on peace and wartreaties, and members often
acted as judges and acted onbehalf of the state.
In addition to the ham and theadoram, the state was also ruled
by suffets, who were an electedpair of officials.
These initially were a pair ofjudges, but the adoram had
(31:00):
transformed them into executivelevel positions.
Now, not much is known aboutthis position.
We are not exactly sure howthey got to this position, but
it appears that they must havehad significant amounts of
wealth and they probably wererequired to have certain
ancestry to become a suffet.
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Aristotle wrote that the factthat he admired the Carthaginian
system and how the threebranches kind of balanced each
other out.
What he said was if the suffetsand Adam clashed, the ham would
break the tie.
Now I get the sense fromreading certain sources that a
lot of people feel that theRomans got their form of
(31:44):
government from Carthage and, inparticular, the use of two
councils would have comedirectly from Carthage, as they
had elected soffits.
And you can see thesimilarities in that the
councils had to come from a verywealthy background and, more
importantly, they had to havethe right backgrounds.
You can also see how theirsystem is very similar to the
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Roman system of electing twocouncils.
In fact, a lot of, if not most,historians would say that Rome
did in fact get the idea fromCarthage.
Now, ultimately, becauseCarthage was founded from the
wealthy Phoenician city-state ofTyre, based on long-distance
trade, and now Carthage wasindependently wealthy from its
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Phoenician cousins and one ofthe wealthiest, if not
wealthiest, states in the worldat the time.
Well, money pretty much is goingto control most of, if not all
aspects of government.
Pretty much is going to controlmost of, if not all aspects of
government.
So, therefore, politicsrevolved around wealth.
It is really not unlike today.
If you think about it, theUnited States is the richest
country in the world, not percapita, but the richest country
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in the world, and it is quicklydevolving into a country run by
oligarchs.
And the same thing happened inCarthage.
In Carthage you had to haveenough money to run for the top
office and money would have beenused to apply for state office
positions, or money would havebeen used for straight up
bribery.
In the United States we don'tcall it bribery, we just call it
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lobbying, or we pardon peopleafter the fact.
Or my favorite part is, in theUnited States you can get around
by essentially breaking the law, by generating a ton of money
knowing that you're breaking thelaw, and you can just beg for
forgiveness afterward and pay asmall fine of a few million
dollars, which is peanuts whenyou just made a few billion
(33:32):
dollars.
The Carthaginians, just likeAmericans of today, were very
fond of money and oriented theirentire government and economy
around it, pretty much as theUnited States is now.
Of course, in the United Statesit's kind of ebbs and flows,
but really since 1980, theUnited States has clearly been
taking the view that generatingmoney is the most important
(33:54):
thing for the country.
That's why the United States isthe wealthiest country in the
world, but it is also the mostunhappy country in the world and
Carthage carried a lot of theircultural norms forward from
their Phoenician cousins andthey also carried forward
foreign people's views of themfrom their Phoenician cousins as
well, and that a lot of peopleunderstood that their whole
(34:15):
government and society wasbasically oriented around making
money and profit.
Society was basically orientedaround making money and profit
and that was the main goal,above all else because this was
a merchant society and thereforea lot of other countries and
foreign peoples developed anegative opinions of the
Carthaginians.
But it's worth noting that alot of the information that we
get regarding the Carthage andthe Phoenicians comes from
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third-party sources that may nothave had firsthand information.
So a lot of the information waslost due to time and also a lot
of people had the negative viewso they would have kind of put
out negative propaganda.
Therefore, the feelings onCarthage has kind of evolved a
bit over the years, as a lot ofpeople think that this idea of
(35:02):
money above all may have been anexaggeration to a certain
extent and maybe it wasn't asbad as people have led others to
believe it was.
But I can see how things arehappening in the United States,
so I can see how a countrythat's dominated by the merchant
class could put profits aboveall else.
Because in the United Statesthat's obviously what we're
(35:23):
doing here we put profits abovepeople's well-being, above
people's welfare in particular.
So why wouldn't this happen inan ancient society?
And it should be noted that thegovernment, because it was run
by merchants had encouraged itsmerchants to basically trade
anything they can get theirhands on.
So Carthage would have beendealing in raw materials such as
(35:46):
crops and metals, includinggold and silver, along with tin,
copper and iron, but they wouldhave also dealt in animal skins
and ivory and timber.
But then they also would havetraded in finished goods,
including textiles, with theirpurple dye cloth.
Because, remember, the purpledye was what put the Phoenicians
on the map to begin with.
(36:06):
The purple dye was anindication of exclusivity and
high-grade materials that wereworn by the elites and the
royals, and even today, thecolor purple is still associated
with royalty.
And even today, the colorpurple is still associated with
royalty.
No-transcript.
(36:39):
According to Herodotus, theCarthaginians would lay out
their wares on the beach, thenthey board their ships and light
a signal fire.
This fire would summon thelocal Libyans who would approach
and place gold besides thegoods.
The Carthaginians would observetheir offerings from their
boats and would wait until theydeemed the amount of gold
(37:00):
satisfactory before returning tothe shore to exchange the items
.
Each party would then taketheir respective goods.
The sale would be completedwithout any party having to come
in direct contact with theother.
Now there is a lot to unpackhere.
With this claim made byHerodotus, the use of signifiers
and the placement of goods andgold served as a form of
(37:22):
non-verbal communication.
But obviously, if this was true, there would have had to have
been some kind of priorcommunications or the
establishment of this procedurefor trade to begin with.
But either way, herodotus makesit appear that these actions
conveyed intentions andarrangements without the need of
spoken language.
These actions conveyedintentions and arrangements
(37:42):
without the need of spokenlanguage.
Of course, this would have beenan obvious thing, because if
they didn't have a means tocommunicate through language,
they'd have to have another wayto communicate that they wanted
to make trade deals.
So, since they didn't have anyform of translators, this method
would have highlighted theimportance of using symbols and
actions in conveying trust andestablishing trade agreements.
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Since it's obvious that thereweren't any written contracts,
trade would have relied uponhonesty, social norms,
reputation and, of course,non-verbal communication, and
the fact that Carthage, and thePhoenicians for that matter, had
such long-standing trade withvarious ethnic groups from
(38:26):
various parts of the world, onecould easily have concluded that
they held up their end of thebargain and operated ethically
when dealing with people thathad foreign language and foreign
customs.
Herodotus appears to make theCarthaginians seem fair and
respectful, as no one was evercheated in these deals.
Therefore, he presented animage of mutual respect and
(38:48):
honest economic interactionbetween two parties.
Now I find this part kind ofinteresting because Herodotus
and a lot of other Greek andRoman writers were kind of
notorious for taking their shotsat the Carthaginians and the
Phoenicians, so in a weird way,it's kind of unusual to see
(39:09):
Greek and Roman writers writeabout them in a fair and
equitable way.
Since the government was run bymerchants, the government wanted
to make sure that long-distancetrade would have been safe as
possible.
The one thing is, the open seashave always brought on
(39:30):
dangerous conditions.
This danger can come in variousforms.
For one, mother Nature wasunpredictable, as violent storms
could just appear out ofnowhere and wreak havoc and
death and loss of revenue.
The other concern would havebeen pirates, which in many
circumstances would have beenjust as equally as bad.
And the third thing would havebeen foreign competition.
(39:51):
So the government couldn't doanything about mother nature,
but it could do something aboutpirates and competition.
The first thing it did wouldhave been protecting its
merchant fleets with itsmilitary fleet, and, of course,
using the navy would have madethe merchants a lot safer when
they're sailing in the open seas.
The Romans were prettynotorious for this.
(40:13):
Whenever they got reports ofpirate activity in certain
places, they took extrememeasures to put the piracy down.
So not only did they sink theirships in the open seas, they
would also chase them down overland.
I did mention that there was athird aspect that makes
long-distance trade lessprofitable, in that there was
(40:35):
the prospect of foreigncompetition.
Therefore, the government ofCarthage actively looked to do
certain trade treaties and tradedeals with foreign governments
that would have made sure thatboth sides didn't encroach into
each other's territories.
This was set up so that theywould have trade dominance or
establish new markets for theirgoods.
(40:56):
For example, carthage and Romesigned a trade treaty in 509 BCE
which would have opened uptrade for Carthage and set
boundaries for both sides.
At this point.
Carthage was clearly thedominant player in this deal, so
they had most of the leverage.
Now, despite the fact thatCarthage was this massive force
(41:20):
in the Mediterranean and Rome,was this really kind of tiny
city-state in the middle ofItaly?
They were off to a good start.
It appears that both sidesviewed each other as a potential
place for growth opportunitiesand even a place where they
could share knowledge and wisdom, especially when it comes to
the supernatural.
(41:41):
One notable convergence of anaspect of religion that was
shared by both sides was theirreverence for the god of
commerce.
It shouldn't be surprised thatCarthage worshipped the deity of
trade, whom they believed wasan invocation of Mercury, the
Roman god of finance, grains,trade, luck, tricks and thieves.
(42:01):
This shared belief facilitateda deeper cultural and spiritual
connection between the twocivilizations.
The name Mercury is derivedfrom the Latin word mercs,
meaning merchandise.
The etymological connectionextends to mercari, which means
to trade or exchange, and mercis, meaning wages.
(42:23):
This linguistic associationunderscores the significance of
trade and commerce in Romansociety, along with its
parallels in the Carthageculture.
Merchants and traders from bothcivilizations invoked Mercury
for success in their endeavors,believing that his favor would
bring prosperity and protectionthe uncertainties of trade.
(42:46):
This shared invocation ofMercury as a divine protector of
commerce created a spiritualbond that transcended rivalries,
whether it was political or,later, military.
One thing that does start tochange for Carthage was the fact
that they started to expandinto the African hinterland, and
(43:09):
because of that you start tosee a new class of citizens
emerge, that is, the wealthylandowner, not the wealthy
merchant.
So now not all the aristocratsare tied to the seas.
This also meant that theimmediate farmlands outside the
city proper and the suburbswould have been capable of
feeding its entire populationand producing a surplus.
(43:33):
In fact, aristotle and otherancient writers had praised the
people of Carthage in theirabilities to grow crops.
Praised the people of Carthageand their abilities to grow
crops.
Their expertise was so wellknown that a retired general
wrote a book, or basicallymanual, on farming that was used
by the Romans, along with a fewother writings of the
Carthaginian peoples that weresaved after the Romans destroyed
(43:57):
Carthage.
Unfortunately, the entiremanuscript wasn't saved, as only
excerpts from the Roman authorswho referenced the Carthaginian
general were saved, and I'mgetting a little ahead of myself
here.
But the reason why a lot ofthese manuscripts and certain
writings of the people ofCarthage wasn't saved because
(44:20):
when Rome destroyed Carthage, itbasically wanted to wipe its
memory off the map.
So that's why at the beginningof the show, in the beginning of
the Phoenicians episode, I kindof mentioned that basically
everything is secondhand sourcesand that is due to the fact
that when, especially Carthage,when, they were destroyed,
(44:41):
basically they just want to wipeany kind of reference them away
.
So no one really knows for surewhat happened in a lot of
circumstances.
So, like I said, this all comesfrom secondhand information and
that obviously is a problem,because the secondhand
information is people that havewarred with Carthage, so you're
probably not going to get themost honest opinions or even
(45:06):
facts.
As it pertains to Carthage, asCarthage was expanding into
Africa and they were prominentmerchants, it would only make
sense that they would expandtrade into Africa.
Just like the Phoenicians, theyrelied upon overland trade as
well.
Carthage had overland traderoutes into Africa, utilizing
(45:29):
the caravan routes across theSahara Desert to trade with
indigenous populations in theinterior of the continent.
They would primarily acquiregoods like gold, ivory and other
African commodities.
Acquire goods like gold, ivoryand other African commodities.
Now, this trade was facilitatedby taking over existing Berber
trading networks along the NorthAfrican coast.
(45:51):
Some historians believed aCarthaginian named Mago even
crossed the desert several timesto facilitate this trade.
These exchanges were oftenconducted through intermediary
tribes along the trade routes.
As it appears that Carthage waslooking for a Trans-Saharan
trade route, some of these traderoutes had rudimentary roads
(46:15):
that were established beforethey started to trade in the
interior, and these roads wouldhave often been expanded upon by
the Romans after they hadconquered Carthage.
While Carthage is expanding itstrade routes into the interior
of Africa and establishing tradetreaties throughout the
(46:36):
Mediterranean, there was one ofthe great inventions that was
taking place in Lydia, which waslocated in the western half of
Anatolia.
In the 6th century BCE, theystarted minting electrum coins,
which were a mix of silver andgold.
This invention well, it wasn'tpicked up by everybody
immediately, but it did maketrade much more efficient.
(46:59):
It did make trade much moreefficient.
The Phoenicians in particularwere somewhat slow to pick up on
this, but they eventuallystarted minting their own coins
as well.
Carthage began minting coins inthe late or early 4th century
BCE.
The fact that Carthage andPhoenicia were a bit behind the
curve does give a bit of anindication that they may have
(47:23):
had a bit of a conservativestreak and that they may not
have been quick to adapt tochange as quickly as one might
think they would have, which isquite strange and odd
considering that they weremerchants and they needed to
rely on technology as theiradvantage because they were
smaller and they were dealingwith much bigger land powers,
(47:45):
especially the Phoenicians.
So therefore, when it comes tocoinage, before they were
minting coins they would havestill been relying on using
ingots of metal in trade, andthe most likely scenario would
have been that they haddeveloped a credit system and
kind of settled up at a giventime using the agreed upon metal
, such as silver, as the mediumof exchange.
(48:06):
Once coinage came into play andthere wasn't enough coins to
complete the transaction, theywould have relied on a credit
system.
This would be a very commonsystem that they would have used
in medieval and earlyrenaissance Europe, because they
were constantly dealing withcoin shortages.
One of the reasons why they mayhave been a little late to the
(48:30):
game with regards to coinagecould be due to the fact that
they did a lot of transactionswith the people of the western
Mediterranean, who were muchless developed economically in
comparison to the people in theEast, in Mesopotamia, iran and
Anatolia, for example.
Another thing, too, is a lot ofthe people that adopted coinage
(48:52):
early on were using it as ameans to pay soldiers and
mercenaries.
If this is the case andCarthage really isn't warring
with a lot of people at thistime the idea of paying
mercenaries wasn't necessarilyneeded at this particular point.
(49:12):
Therefore, setting up a creditsystem where they would settle
up at a specific time would havemade a lot of sense for them.
Would have made a lot of sensefor them and if you really don't
understand what I'm getting at,it was they would have tracked
all their transactions and then,at a specific date, they would
have had a transfer of theagreed upon item.
It was usually something likesilver or it could have been
(49:45):
copper, and that would have beendone in a large amount at the
specific time that they had inthe near future as part of the
agreement.
And this would always be set upbecause most of the time or I
shouldn't say most of the time,but a lot of the times when they
did this particular trade,whatever it may be usually the
one side didn't have the metalsthat they were looking for on
hand.
Usually the one side didn'thave the metals that they were
looking for on hand.
I just mentioned it a fewmoments ago, but this was very
(50:07):
common in medieval Europe.
No-transcript fairs would havehappened all over Europe.
(50:34):
But obviously I'm getting wayahead of myself because that's
not part of Carthage, but I justkind of wanted you to get an
idea of how the system wouldhave worked as it pertains to
credit.
Now I'm bringing all this upspecifically because the one
thing that I was always taughtin college, undergrad and even,
I think, grad school, but Ican't recall because it's been a
(50:56):
while I was always taught thatbarter was how transactions
would have been done prior toany kind of money that was
created, like coins when I saymoney, I mean coins or if there
was some kind of silver orwhatever it was.
But the thing is about barteris.
(51:19):
There's been no historicalevidence of it happening.
So therefore, that's why a lotof people have been shifting of
late to say, well, it wasn'tbarter, it was more of a credit
system that they had set up.
So it wasn't like people weregoing to go and exchange purple
(51:40):
dyed fabrics, for the persondidn't have silver or even gold
or sometimes copper on hand.
They just set up a system andsaid OK, we're going to make a
deal where I'll give you thisnow and then you'll pay me later
at a specific time.
The fact is is barter was alwaysassumed as a primary means of
(52:04):
exchange and I think it'sbecause even on a smaller scale,
people will barter even to thisday.
But on a large scale tradenetwork that the Phoenicians and
then the people of Carthage hadset up, barter was just
impossible.
It was too cumbersome and therewould have to be the double
coincidence of wants and just ingeneral it just wouldn't work
(52:28):
for most transactions.
And the biggest reason whythere's been a shift that barter
really wasn't what was going onis because there just have not
been historical written recordsto confirm that, written records
to confirm that, and in a wayHerodotus kind of backs that
claim up because what he saidwas Carthage only accepted gold.
(52:50):
But that probably isn'taccurate, especially in the
Iberian Peninsula, because theyhad large reserves of silver and
silver was an accepted means oftransfer and really the most
common medium of exchangethroughout the Near East.
When I say Near East, I'mbasically referring to Western
Asia, so we're talking theMesopotamia, the Levant,
(53:13):
anatolia, places like that, andeven Iran, for that matter and
the Near East, gold was used asa medium of exchange, but
generally speaking, it was onlyused when a luxury item was
being purchased.
In other words, gold as amedium of exchange was quite
rare.
So the idea of Herodotus sayingthat Carthage would only accept
(53:36):
gold kind of doesn't make anysense.
To be honest with you, in thisepisode my goal was to more or
less lay the groundwork as howCarthage came to be and then
eventually became one of themost successful and wealthiest
states in the ancient world.
(53:57):
This was all done, obviously,of trade, and they just picked
up where their Phoenicianforefathers had left off.
Now, at this point in the story, carthage is that the Greeks
(54:25):
were starting to expand theirsphere of influence and they
were becoming a great navalpower and therefore they wanted
to establish themselves inSicily.
But the problem for Carthagewas Sicily was one of their most
(54:46):
prized possessions at the time.
So obviously, if you haveCarthage on one side of the
island and Greeks on the otherside, it's almost certain that
there's going to be some kind ofconflicts.
And this is when Carthage kindof goes from just a merchant
power to a navy power, and thisright here is an extreme example
(55:10):
of a change in philosophy ofthe people of Carthage compared
to their Phoenician forefathers,because their Phoenician
forefathers really didn't wantany part of any kind of military
conflicts.
If they were involved in amilitary conflict, say with the
Greeks, they would have beenmore or less forced to because
(55:31):
they were under Persian rule.
In this particular case,carthage is the ones that are
kind of the aggressors in Sicily.
But that's for the next episode.
In the next episode I'll kindof get a little bit more into
the history of Carthage and howthey had many conflicts with the
(55:53):
Greeks and eventually this kindof bleeds over even to their
problems with Rome.
But that's for the next coupleepisodes.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
(56:15):
Also, you can help out the showa ton by leaving a five star
review ton by leaving afive-star review.
Also recently I started to makethe show into video format.
The shows are a bit more formaland if you could stop by the
(56:35):
show and like and subscribe atMoney Banking Trade in YouTube
format.
I've already created a coupleepisodes.
They are quite long becausewhat I did is I combined all my
Sumer episodes and then Babylonepisodes to make one episode.
So there's two videos One isSumer, one is Babylon.
However, going forward, I planon start jumping around in the
(56:58):
timeline, being around in thetimeline.
For example, in the nextepisode that I will post to
YouTube, it's going to be aboutthe rise of the goldsmiths in
1600 England and how it foreverchanged banking.
And once again, that's atYouTube, at Money Banking Trade.
Thank you very much.
I'll talk to you soon.
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