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CHAP. XI.: Of Carthage and Marseilles. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

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The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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CHAP. XI.

Of Carthage and Marseilles.

THE law of nations which obtained at Carthage, was very extraordinrry: all strangers, who traded to Sardinia and towards Hercules’s pillars, this haughty republic sentenced to be drowned. Her civil polity was equally surprizing; she forbid the Sardinians to cultivate their lands, upon pain of death. She increased her power by her riches, and afterwards her riches by her power. Being mistress of the coasts of Africa, which are washed by the Mediterranean, she extended herself along the ocean. Hanno, by order of the senate of Carthage, distributed thirty thousand Carthaginians from Hercules’s pillars as far as Cerne. This place, he says, is as distant from Hercules’s pillars, as the latter from Carthage. This situation is extremely remarkable. It lets us see, that Hanno limitted his settlements to the 25th degree of north latitude, that is, to two or three degrees south of the Canaries.

Hanno being at Cerne, undertook another voyage, with a view of making further discoveries towards the South. He took but little notice of the continent. He followed the coast for twenty-six days, when he was obliged to return for want of provisions. The Carthaginians, it seems, made no use of this second enterprise. Scylax* says, that the sea is not† navigable beyond Cerne, because it is shallow, full of mud and sea-weeds; and in fact, there are many of these in those latitudes.* The Carthaginian merchants, mentioned by Scylax, might find obstacles, which Hanno, who had sixty vessels of fifty oars each, had surmounted. Difficulties are at most but relative; besides, we ought not to confound an enterprize, in which bravery and resolution must be exerted, with things that require no extraordinary conduct.

The relation of Hanno’s voyage is a fine fragment of antiquity. It was written by the very man that performed it. His recital is not mingled with ostentation. Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.

The stile is agreeable to the subject: he deals not in the marvellous. All he says of the climate, of the soil, the behaviour, the manners of the inhabitants, correspond with what is every day seen on this coast of Africa; one would imagine it the journal of a modern sailor.

He observed from his fleet,† that in the day-time there was a prodigious silence on the continent, that in the night he heard the sound of various musical instruments, and that fires might then be every where seen, some larger than others. Our relations are conformable to this; it has been discovered, that in the day the savages retire into the forests to avoid the heat of the sun, that they light up great fires in the night to disperse the beasts of prey, and that they are passionately fond of music and dancing.

The same writer describes a volcano with all the phænomena of Vesuvius; and relates, that he took two hairy women, who chose to die rather than follow the Carthaginians, and whose skins he carried to Carthage. This has been found not void of probability.

This narration is so much the more valuable, as it is a monument of Punic antiquity: and from hence alone it has been regarded as fabulons. For the Romans retained their hatred to the Carthaginians, even after they had destroyed them. But it was victory alone that decided whether we ought to say, The Punic or the Roman faith.

Some moderns* have imbibed these prejudices. What is become, say they, of the cities described by Hanno, of which even in Pliny’s time there remained no vestiges? But it would have been a wonder indeed, if any such vestiges had remained. Was it a Corinth or Athens that Hanno built on those coasts? He left Carthaginian families in such places as were most commodious for trade, and secured them as well as his hurry would permit, against savages and wild beasts. The calamities of the Carthaginians put a period to the navigation of Africa; these families must necessarily then either perish or become savages. Besides, were the ruins of these cities even still in being, who is it that would venture into the woods and marshes to make the discovery? We find, however, in Scylax and Polybius, that the Carthaginians had considerable settlements on those coasts. These are the vestiges of the cities of Hanno; there are no other, from the same reason that there are no other of Carthage itself.

The Carthaginians were in the high road to wealth; and had they gone so far as four degrees of north latitude, and fifteen of longitude, they would have discovered the gold-coast. They would then have had a trade of much greater importance than that which is carried on at present on that coast, at a time when America seems to have degraded the riches of all other countries. They would there have found treasures, of which they could never have been deprived by the Romans.

Very suprising things have been said of the riches of Spain. If we may believe Aristotle,* the Phœnicians, who arrived at Tartessus, found so much silver there, that their ships could not hold it all: and they made of this metal their meanest utensils. The Carthaginians, according to Diodorus,† found so much gold and silver in the Pyrenean mountains, that they adorned the anchors of their ships with it. But no foundation can be built on such popular reports. Let us therefore examine into the facts themselves.

We find in a fragment of Polybius, cited by Strabo,‡ that the silver mines at the source of the river Bætis, in which forty thousand men were employed, produced to the Romans twenty-five thousand drachmas a day, that is, about five millions of livres a year, at fifty livres to the mark. The mountains that contained these mines were called the§Silver Mountains: which shews they were the Potosi of those times. At present, the mines of Hanover do not employ a fourth part of the workmen, and yet they yield more. But as the Romans had not many copper-mines, and but few of silver; and as the Greeks knew none but the Attic mines, which were of little value, they might well be astonished at their abundance.

In the war that broke out for the succession of Spain, a man called the marquis of Rhodes, of whom it was said that he was ruined in golden mines, and enriched in hospitals,* proposed to the court of France to open the Pyrenean mines. He alledged the example of the Tyrians, the Carthaginians, and the Romans. He was permitted to search, but sought in vain; he still alledged, and found nothing.

The Carthaginians being masters of the gold and silver trade, were willing to be so of the lead and pewter. These metals were carried by land from the ports of Gaul upon the ocean to those of the Mediterranean. The Carthaginians were desirous of receiving them at the first hand: they sent Himilco to make a† settlement in the isles called Cassiterides, which are imagined to be those of Scilly.

These voyages from Bætica into England have made some persons imagine that the Carthaginians knew the compass: but it is very certain that they followed the coasts. There needs no other proof than Himilco’s being four months in sailing from the mouth of the Bætis to England: besides the famous piece of history of the Carthaginian‡ pilot, who, being followed by a Roman vessel, ran a-ground, that he might not∥ shew her the way to England, plainly intimates, that those vessels were very near the shore, when they fell in with each other.

The ancients might have performed voyages, that would make one imagine they had the compass, though they had not. If a pilot was far from land, and during his voyage had such serene weather, that in the night he could always see a polar star, and in the day the rising and setting of the sun, it is certain he might regulate his course as well as we do now by the compass: but this must be a fortuirous case, and not a regular method of navigation.

We see in the treaty which put an end to the first Punic war, that Carthage was principally attentive to preserve the empire of the sea, and Rome that of the land. Hanno,* in his negociation with the Romans, declared, that they should not be suffered even to wash their hands in the sea of Sicily; they were not permitted to sail beyond the promontorium pulchrum they were forbid to trade in Sicily,† Sardinia, and Africa, except at Carthage: an exception that lets us see there was no design to favour them in their trade with that city.

In early times there had been very great wars between Carthage and Marseilles‡ on the subject of fishing. After the peace they entered jointly into the œconomical commerce. Marseilles at length grew jealous, especially as being equal to her rival in industry, she was become inferior to her in power. This is the motive of her great fidelity to the Romans. The war between the latter and the Carthaginians in Spain was a source of riches to Marseilles, which was now become their magazine. The ruin of Carthage and Corinth still increased the glory of Marseilles; and had it not been for the civil wars, in which this republic ought on no account to have engaged, she would have been happy under the protection of the Romans, who had not the least jealousy of her commerce.

[* ]See his Periplus under the article of Carthage.

[† ]See Herodotus in Melpomene on the obstacles which Sataspe encountered.

[* ]See the charts and relations in the first volume of voyages that contributed to the establishment of an East-India company, part i. p. 201. This weed covers the surface of the water in such a manner, as to be scarcely perceived, and ships can only pass through it with a stiff gale.

[† ]Pliny tells us the same thing, speaking of mount Atlas: Noctibus micare crebris ignibus, tibiarum cantu timpanorumque sonitu strepere, neminem interdiu cerni.

[* ]Mr. Dodwell. See his Dissertation on Hanno’s Periplus.

[* ]Of wonderful things.

[† ]Lib. iii.

[‡ ]Lib. vi.

[§ ]Mons Argentarius.

[* ]He had some share in their management.

[† ]See Festus Avienus

[‡ ]Strabo, lib. iii. towards the end.

[∥ ]He was rewarded by the senate of Carthage.

[* ]Frenshemius’s Supplement to Livy, Decad. ii.

[† ]In the parts subject to the Carthaginians.

[‡ ]Justin, lib. xliii. cap. 5.