Lugubelinus The marginalia of an easily distracted Classicist

in Mindworms, Roman Poetry

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Dunno much about
(https://llewelynmorgan.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/carthagonovanova.jpg)Behold! A map of
the city and harbour of Cartagena, in southern Spain, for your delectation. And it may make
things easier later on if you note carefully the position of the island of Escombrera or
Escombreras, right at the bottom.
To the Romans Cartagena was known as Carthago Nova, New Carthage, and it was celebrated
as one of the very finest natural harbours they knew. Its easy enough to see why: in the
sixteenth century the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria was in the habit of saying that the three
most secure anchorages in the Mediterranean were Cartagena and June and July. Under the
settled conditions of the Roman Empire Carthago Nova was best known for its production of
August 8, 2014
the highest quality garum
(http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/garum.html), fermented
fish sauce, an evil-smelling staple of Roman cuisine. That island Escombrera was in antiquity
Scombraria, named after the scombri or mackerel from which this garum was manufactured.
But Carthago Nova had had an intense and troubled history, the consequence of that splendid
harbour. In 228/7BC a Carthaginian general called Hasdrubal (there were quite a few
answering that description) established it as a base for Carthaginian operations in Spain: he
named it simply Carthage, since Qarthadasht in Punic means New City; the Romans called
it New Carthage to distinguish it from the Carthaginian mother city in North Africa.
New Carthage was the key to Spain, and in 209BC, during the Second Punic War between
Rome and Carthage, the 25-year old P. Cornelius Scipio (later and better known as Scipio
Africanus the Elder) captured it with a lightning manoeuvre. Henceforth the advantage in
Spain, and in the war as a whole, shifted decisively towards the Romans. In 202BC Scipio
would crush Hannibal at the battle of Zama: the capture of Carthago Nova was felt to have
been a critical step towards that ultimate Roman victory.
My own interest in New Carthage came from thinking about Virgil, not the most obvious route
in. But I and Ronnie Shi (remember that name, Classicists, for she will go far) have been
writing an article about the harbour in North Africa where Aeneas and his companions find
refuge in Aeneid Book 1, after the storm brought about by scheming Juno has blown them off
course. Heres the Latin, and a translation, of Virgils description of the place (Aen. 1.159-69):
est in secessu longo locus: insula portum
efficit obiectu laterum, quibus omnis ab alto
frangitur inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos.
Hinc atque hinc uastae rupes geminique minantur
in caelum scopuli, quorum sub uertice late
aequora tuta silent; tum siluis scaena coruscis
desuper horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra.
fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibus antrum,
intus aquae dulces uiuoque sedilia saxo,
nympharum domus: hic fessas non uincula nauis
ulla tenent, unco non alligat ancora morsu.
There is a place in a deep inlet: an island forms a harbour by the barrier of its flanks; all the waves
coming from the open sea are broken by it and divide as they flow into the distant recesses of the bay.
From this side and that huge cliffs loom skywards, twin headlands, and beneath their peaks the broad
waters are safe and still. Above rises a backdrop of shimmering woods, a dark forest with quivering
shadows. Under the cliff-face straight ahead there was a cave of hanging rock, and within it fresh
water and seats in the living rock, the home of nymphs: here no chains moor the weary ships nor
anchor fasten them with its hooked grip.
Ronnie and I were intrigued by a detail in Servius late-antique commentary on the Aeneid,
where he records that some readers wanted to see Carthago Nova, in Spain, behind this
description of a harbour near the original Carthage, in Africa. This struck us as quite an exciting
idea: a hint of New Carthage at this point of the poem would introduce lots of interesting
associations with Scipio and the Second Punic War, the life-and-death struggle between
Carthage and Rome that is very much in the air as the ancestral founders of the two cities, Dido
and Aeneas, meet and fall in love.
I wont inflict the details of our argument on you. That pleasure can be reserved until we
persuade a journal to accept it, crossed fingers. But I will share just one of the details that
persuaded us Servius might have a pointthat ancient readers could have picked up a hint of
Carthago Nova in Virgils African harbour.
At the heart of our argument are resemblances between Virgils poetic harbour and
descriptions of Carthago Nova in the historians Polybius and Livy. Their accounts are very
similar, Livy imitating Polybius, so Ill just quote Polybius (10.10.1-3). But one clear point of
similarity between Polybius Carthago Nova and Virgils Carthage should be the island that
sits in the mouth of the harbour and protects it from the effects of the open sea:
(New Carthage) lies halfway down the coast of Spain in an inlet facing the southwest wind. The inlet
is about twenty stades in depth and about ten in breadth at its entrance. The whole inlet serves as a
harbour for the following reason. At its mouth lies an island which leaves only a narrow channel on
either side into the inlet, and as this stands in the way of the waves from the sea, the whole inlet is
calm, except when south-westerlies blow on both channels and raise billows.
It seems clear to us that ancient readers of Virgil would have been reminded of the Spanish
port when reading about the African one, although theres a question where readers of the
Aeneid would have got their idea of the layout of Carthago Nova. In Virgils great predecessor
Q. Ennius, we think, rather than Polybius or Livy, but thats another story. However, theres a
fascinating wrinkle here that takes us back to the map at the top of this post. At the beginning I
called your attention to the island of Escombrera/Scombraria. Thats the island Polybius
describes as sitting in the mouth of the harbour at Carthago Nova, and of course its that
island-in-the-mouth thats a key point of contact between Virgil and the historical descriptions
of Carthago Nova.
But look at the map and its as clear as your nose that Escombrera doesnt sit in the mouth of
Carthago Nova harbour, or anywhere near it: in fact it lies a good three miles away.
Now, this isnt a problem for our argument, because all we need to establish is that Virgils
harbour looked like (what Virgils readers thought) Carthago Nova looked like, and Virgils
readers would have got their idea of the place not from maps, which in our sense the Romans
didnt really have, but from descriptions in authors like Ennius. But I still think its fascinating
that Polybius and Livy could have got it so wrong, that the ancient historical record of a
location as important as Carthago Nova was so spectacularly inaccurate.
Now the obvious thing this tells us is that the Romans had an extremely limited grasp of
geography. Its clear from elsewhere in Livys history, for instance, that readers werent
interested, and historians made little attempt to interest them, in geographical precision. This
isnt just another example of the practical Romans notorious suspicion of the intellect: yes, the
Greeks were more into the theory of geography (a Greek word, after all), but both Greeks and
Romans lacked some of the basic technical resources that allow the kind of accurate
mapmaking were familiar with.
Perhaps its safer to say, though, that the geographical knowledge on show here is more
Perhaps its safer to say, though, that the geographical knowledge on show here is more
sketchy than straightforwardly bad. We do, in fact, have an ancient account which places
Escombrera in its true position: the Greek writer Strabo, in the course of a survey of the
Spanish seaboard, mentions Carthago Nova, by far the most powerful of all the cities in this
country, and the Island of Heracles, which they call Scombraria, from the mackerel caught
there, from which the best fish-sauce is prepared. It is 24 stadia distant from New Carthage. A
stadion was equivalent to about an eighth of a Roman mile, so thats about right. In general the
ancients knew as much as they needed to know about their physical surroundings: there might
even be pockets of quite impressive accuracy, but the pieces were never joined up.
Proving that the Romans were rubbish at geography is quite satisfying, I have to admit. But
what I find most interesting, exciting even, about all this is something a bit different. I
mentioned earlier the question of which text it was in which Virgils readers found what they
knew about Carthago Nova. We suspect Ennius great national epic the Annales, which will
certainly have given space to Scipios glorious capture of the city. Reaching that conclusion
involves some pretty dry research comparing possible earlier accounts to decide who
influenced whom: theres an appropriately forbidding German word for the
exercise, Quellenforschung, sources-research. But in this case, it seems to me, Quellenforschung
achieves something remarkable, capturing an individual human experience at a remove of well
over two thousand years.
What on earth am I talking about?
Well, it seems clear how the error in the historical record about the position of Escombrera
crept in. Because, as a recent Spanish book
(http://www.marqalicante.com/Publicaciones/es/SCOMBRARIA-LA-HISTORIA-OCULTA-
BAJO-EL-MAR-P69.html) all about the island explains, [Viewed] from the innermost part of
the bay of Cartagena, the island of Escombreras seems to close off the mouth of the harbour
almost completely. In other words, seen from a vantage point at the southern edge of the city,
the island does look like it sits squarely in the mouth of the harbour, and it follows that that is
where the original source behind Polybius, Livy, and indirectly Virgil (who for various reasons
is most likely someone even earlier than Q. Ennius), must have been standing when they noted
down their entirely false eyewitness impression.
(https://llewelynmorgan.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/cnview.jpg)So we can tell that someone,
sometime sat on the dock of the Carthago Nova bay and shared an optical illusion with
posterity. But who was it?
It may at a stretch have been Polybius himself, who certainly visited Carthago Nova in the
second century BC. But theres reason to believe that Polybius was mainly dependent for his
account of the city on earlier sources. On whom precisely is a matter of speculation, but there
seem to be four contenders: Scipio Africanus himself, who wrote a letter about his campaigns
in Spain and at Carthago Nova to king Philip V of Macedon (Polybius 10.9.3); C. Laelius, a
close friend of Scipio and an important informant of Polybius (Polybius 10.3.2); or most likely
of all, one of two historians of whose work very little survives, but whom we know Polybius
used extensively in his own history, Q. Fabius Pictor and Silenus.
Q. Fabius Pictor is an important figure in Roman literature, the very first Roman historian,
although his history of Rome was, originally at least, written in Greek, the language of such
intellectual pursuits as history writing and geography. Fabius would be a strong candidate for
our eyewitness if his history extended down as far as 209BC, the date of the capture of
Carthago Nova, and that is far from certain. (To be honest, very little is certain about Q. Fabius
Pictor.) Fabius was exceptionally well-connected on the Roman political scene, a member of
one of the most prestigious families in a very prestige-obsessed city, and second cousin of one
of Hannibals most effective opponents, Q. Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, known for his tactics
as Cunctator, the Delayer. Fabius Pictor had a political career himself, it seems, before
turning to writing history with the advantage of his extensive insider knowledge; the section of
his history devoted to the Punic Wars adopted a predictably pro-Roman stance.
But my candidate for the man staring out to sea is the Greek historian Silenus. Probably a
But my candidate for the man staring out to sea is the Greek historian Silenus. Probably a
native of the city of Caleacte in Sicily, Silenus was part of Hannibals retinue during his famous
fifteen-year campaign in Italy, which started with Hannibals departure from Carthago Nova
in 218BC, recording the actions of Hannibal with great diligence, according to Cicero (Div.
1.49) as he inflicted such catastrophic defeats on the Romans as Trasimene and Cannae. Among
other things, the fragments of Fabius and Silenus suggest interesting ways in which the
Romans and Carthaginians competed for hearts and minds, both for example keen to associate
their side of the war with the hero-god Heracles/Hercules/Melqart, a figure worshipped across
the Mediterranean and especially popular among the non-Roman peoples of the Italian
peninsula, whose sympathies were of crucial importance in the conflict.
So was it Silenus standing there gazing out at Escombrera in the spring of 218BC? It is the very
purest speculation, but one thing that makes me want to believe it is that Strabo (3.5.7) refers to
Silenus as something of an idiotes on geographical matters, and while the Greek word idiotes
doesnt quite mean idiot, it comes pretty close to hopeless amateur.
That would be a fair assessment of the original source of the information about the location of
Escombrera.
(https://llewelynmorgan.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/escombreras.png)

Tags: Aeneas, Carthage, Carthago Nova, Fabius Pictor, harbor, harbour, Livy, New Carthage,
Polybius, Scipio Africanus, Silenus, Virgil
About Llewelyn Morgan
I'm a Classicist, lucky enough to work at Brasenose College, Oxford. I specialise in Roman
literature, but I've got a persistent side-interest in Afghanistan, particularly the scholars and
spies and scholar-spies who visited the country in the nineteenth century.
View all posts by Llewelyn Morgan
3 responses to Dunno much about
Christian Koefoed-Nielsen says : August 13, 2014 at 6:43 pm
Enjoyed this, having sailed into Cartagena en route to the Ionian in early summer 2012
it is a superb harbour, and a great city, well worth visiting. Good to get some literary
context, you are brill at questioning the sources!
REPLY
Llewelyn Morgan says : August 13, 2014 at 7:18 pm
That sounds so nice. The Spanish book I mention describes archaeological finds from the
sea around the island of Escombrera(s), mainly ships that sank near it, but also,
apparently, detritus from activity on the island itself, so the whole area must have been
incredibly busy in the day. Yes, Im determined to visit as soon as I can, all the more
after your comment! Many thanks!
REPLY
vallance22 says : September 10, 2014 at 6:23 am
Reblogged this on Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae and commented:
Here is a fascinating post I found on geography in the ancient world, and the city of
Carthage. Richard
REPLY
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