Free Destroy Carthage by Alan Lloyd Page B

found themselves followed. Neverthe­less, a brief description of northern conditions survives in the name of one Himilco, said by Pliny to have adventured 'at the same time' as Hanno.
    It occurs in the writing of a much later Roman scholar and poet, Avienus, who referred to the Oestrymnians as inveterate traders, brave and energetic, with skin-covered ships in which they sailed 'the stormy channel.'
    From their country to the sacred island, as it was known of old, takes two days sailing. The island covers a vast area and is inhabited by the Hibernian people. Nearby lies the island of Albion. Carthaginians, together with people living round the Pillars of Hercules and Tartessians, all visited these regions.
    The Carthaginian Himilco, who describes how he tried this voyage, says that it takes at least four months. There is no wind to hasten the ship, and the lazy waters of the ocean seem asleep. From them rise shoals of seaweed which often restrain the ship like a thicket. Nevertheless, he says, the sea is not very deep. Aquatic creatures swim here and there, and sea-monsters pass between the becalmed ships.
     
    Sluggish waters and lack of wind is not the impression ex­pected from a sea voyage to the north of Spain, yet the chance of encountering a dead calm beyond the 45th parallel was not remote, and Himilco was generalizing from a single trip. As for sea-monsters and seaweed, whales were common at one time in the Bay of Biscay; ancient mariners spoke of algae far from the Sargasso (the large quantities washed up on the Channel Islands and the Breton coast were once used on the fields as fertilizer). If the sea appeared shallow to Himilco it was because the galleys hugged the gently-shelving bays and offshore sand-banks.
    The extent of Carthaginian exploration in the north is prob­lematical. There is no evidence that Himilco visited England or Ireland, but it would not be improbable. On the other hand, lack of Phoenician relics in the British isles, and of Punic settle­ment on the shores of Portugal and Galicia, suggests that the feasibility of importing tin directly from the north by sea was soon discounted. Despite intermediaries, the land routes were quicker and safer.
    Regardless of trade results, Hanno and Himilco stand among the great explorers, the dilators of the known world. Other Carthaginians, now anonymous, doubtless deserved equal fame. Familiar with tides that bemused the Romans centuries after­wards, Punic seamen braved an ocean few of their contem­poraries contemplated - none without shuddering.
     
11:War Lessons
     
    For most of the 5th century, Carthage, preoccupied in Africa, remained aloof from the incessant feuds and revolutions which upset life in Sicily. Against Syracuse, the dominant tyranny in the east, a well-fortified Motya guarded Carthaginian interests in the west. Through the rest of the island, states of varying complexion struggled stubbornly, aristocracies and democ­racies, Ionians and Dorians, Siceliots and Sicels (the native Sicilians).
    Mindful of the costly fiasco at Himera, Carthaginian society, intrinsically unwarlike, was content with a passive role so long as its buffer on the near end of Sicily was undisturbed. Few of the mercantile families which governed Carthage prized a mil­itary tradition. Accumulation of wealth was their business, not its dissipation on expensive wars.
    Punic intervention when Sicilian affairs took a turn for the worse, placing Motya and the west in jeopardy, was reluctant, protracted diplomacy delaying armed initiative. The corollary, a marked impatience to recall and disband armies once they had been deployed successfully, precluded the strategic ex­ploitation of victories.
    Despite such militarily inhibiting tendencies, it had to be admitted that the affluence created by the system was itself a substantial asset when the sword was drawn. It bought the foreign troops whose services enabled Carthaginian life and business to proceed largely undisturbed