It is all too common to view our ancient history through the perspective of modern eyes. It is the norm to rip historical fact out from the context of the experience of the everyday that lived in their ancient world. The average modern reader does not internalize their religion, their languages, their customs, their cultures and so on, and instead tends to subconsciously fill in the gaps of historical context with what they presume would be normal behavior in the modern context, whether they acknowledge it or not.
Rome has long since destroyed Carthage, her people scattered or killed, her language slowly strangled out of existence, her ancient texts burned for better or for worse, but in many regards Carthage was a mirror to Rome, from their beginnings to their government. So why did Rome so viciously scatter Carthage? Some context is required.
Carthage was founded sometime in 814 BC. Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BC, separating the two powers by only 61 years. Both Carthage and Rome had once been monarchies, and had since transitioned into becoming republics. In Rome the republic was controlled by the senate, which was headed by two consuls whose control alternated month by month. In Carthage the republic was controlled by the supreme council, which was headed by two sufetes. However, despite these similarilities, or perhaps owing a root cause to these similarities, the two republics were eventually brought to war. The punic wars had begun.
The first two wars resulted from encroachment into the control of the other power’s hold on the Mediterranean. These blood baths between the two powers resulted in over a million combined deaths and great losses on both sides. Hannibal Barca had embarrassed Rome and their resentment was a long lasting sting upon the glory of Rome, and that may have been the spark that lit the match for the third and final punic war, but it was not the only reason why Rome had so visciously destroyed the tiny remnant of the once vast Carthaginian state, by killing the men, scattering the women as slaves to different sections of the republic, destroying all their texts, razing the city and salting the surrounding earth so no future inhabitant could ever grow crops on the fertile Mediterranean costal city shores. No, there was something that deeply disgusted the Romans about the Carthaginians.
For half a century the Romans had essentially controlled the tributary state of Carthage after the second Punic war, and in that time they had learned a great deal about Carthaginian society. They learned from each other and of each other, passing along information between the two powers. In that time, Romans had grown to learn some deeply unforgivable practices.
Previously I have written about something quite divisive, that of course being the history of eugenics as practiced in the ancient Greco-Roman world. In short summary, the leader of a family would be responsible for all children born under his household, and would leave the unfit children that were either small, weak, and mostly deformed at birth, abandoning them and allowing the Gods to either save them by a stranger or killing them by exposure to the elements if their life was fated as such. The Romans knew this was a deeply painful experience and heavy burden to bare, as did the Greeks, and their myths about their chief dieties, Zeus and Jupiter relating to their fathers Kronos and Saturn respectively. In each myth the father devours his children, and in each myth the father is cut into pieces and banished to Tartarus, the deepest abyss imaginable. So it is clear to see that the Greco-Romans despised the direct killing of their own blood, and saw it as extremely dishonorable.
The Carthaginians held no such beliefs, and infact sacrificed many people, including infants. Why you may ask yourself, to have their God Baal Hammon answer their greedy prayers. You may even ask how we know this is true, and not just infact some Roman propaganda used to anger and entice the final destruction of Carthage by the Roman legionnaires, and the answer is the graves and their inscriptions left in the ruins of the Carthaginian Empire.
Within the ruins of the Carthaginian empire were several mass burials, which in of themselves are not out of place. However, these burials are different. These burials contain the remnants of children, which isn’t uncommon in the ancient world considering the high rate of infant mortality. However, these remains are found next to graves containing various remains from several domesticated beasts, and what is more insidious are the inscriptions that follow them.
“To Lady Tanit, face of Baal, and to Lord Baal Hammon: which Arisham son of Bodashtart, son of Bodeshmun vowed; because he heard his voice, he blessed him.” - Inscription from the Tophet of Salammbó
Bodashtart had sacrificed his son in the name of Lord Baal Hammon, and his prayers were answered. Unless his desire was for his infant son to die, this was clearly a sacrifice.
Most of these inscriptions are started by invoking Lady Tanit, consort of Baal Hammon and a Goddess the Carthaginians, however some of these are started by invoking Moloch, yes that Moloch, the same demon mentioned in the Old Testament in which the Jews talk about other Levantines tribes, the original source of the colonies of Carthage, that sacrificed their children to Moloch.
These children as well as these beasts had been sacrificed in mass auto-da-fé, or death by burning. These demented men and women had directly killed their own children as sacrifices to their God Baal Hammon, chief God of the Carthaginians, and diety over storms, fertility, and vegetation, so that he would grant them a bountiful harvest. This was not uncommon either, infact it seems as though through these mass graves and the words of the Romans that these sacrifices were quite common place amongst the Carthaginians.
While Rome may have fought two wars against the Carthaginians, they attempted to erase them from world history by killing their men and scattering their women to the furthest corners of the empire for a reason. It may have been several reasons, but I guarantee that their disgust for child sacrifice was among one of their chief concerns.
A Greek historian known as Cleitarchus wrote
“Phoenicians, and above all Carthaginians, worship Kronos; if they wish to achieve something big, they devote a child of theirs, and in the case of success, sacrifice it to the god. There is a bronze statue of Kronos among them, which stands upright with open arms and palms of its hands facing upwards above a bronze brazier on which the child is burnt. When the flames reach the body, the victim’s limbs stiffen and the tense mouth almost seems like it is laughing until, with a final spasm, the child falls in the brazier.” -
Cleitarchus, Fragments of the Greek Historians
After sieging the city of Carthage for three long brutal years, the city of Carthage was felled, and the city was razed by large fires after mass looting. The men had been killed, the women sold into slavery and scattered, and their texts tossed into the blazes. The land had been scattered with salt so that no one would ever be able to live on such cursed grounds ever again, and I believe it was not just because Hannibal Barca had levied such crushing defeats in Italy half a century prior, but because the Romans could not bear to see anyone walk the same earth as those despicable child sacrificing savages.
We may think children aren’t sacrificed today, or turn a blind eye to the societies we live in that are putting our children through unnecessary anguish for a future controlled by elites who wish to use them for a world that only benefits them, but we can learn lessons from the Romans, even nearly 2200 years after their great service to the Mediterranean during the destruction of Carthage. As always brothers, I’m here with you in the Abyss.
This is a complicated, internecine, and political issue.
The fact that the Carthaginians were related, by blood, to the up and coming Romanic dynasty, creates much more implicit relationships, exacerbated by Trade.
I am not clear on your positions, regarding eugenics, but you example of killing the weak is, to my mind, not negative; in the modern world, killing ANY life in the womb, would be the greater sin against a people, and your contrast of 'child sacrifice' by the Carthaginians, is not solid historical fact, although there are certain extant examples, and I have seen some compelling evidence that these practices were, in fact practiced, at least on local, or regional territories, to qualify as a talking point.
I submit, that it is the relationship between the two empires, was one of genetic similarity, which had evolved, over time, away from each other, promoted a trade dispute, which Carthage had manifestly dominated, and promoted a similar jealousy, such as we saw in the internecine wars between the European peoples of Europa and America. This similarity cannot be discounted.
Your analysis is good, and in its synoptic fashion, will provide a very good discussion.