‘Carthage Must Be Destroyed’, 400 BC–146 BC

While the war between Athens and Sparta for control of the Aegean was at its peak, other conflicts, further to the west, embroiled Greek cities in struggles for their life. Carthage was as significant a naval power in its sector of the Mediterranean as Athens was further to the east. In 415, the Carthaginians were content to look on while the Athenians attacked Syracuse. They could see that the Greeks were divided among themselves and too busy squabbling to turn their attention against the Phoenician trading stations on Sicily. From their point of view, anything that weakened Greek power in Sicily was welcome. On the other hand, the destruction of the Athenian forces posed a new problem, to which they found themselves responding rapidly. Not for the first time the Syracusans threatened to dominate the island. However, the real troublemakers proved once again to be the Elymian inhabitants of Segesta, who, not content with the havoc they had wreaked by calling in the Athenians, now appealed to Carthage for help against their old rivals, the Greeks of Selinous. The Carthaginians had good reason to support Segesta. It lay in an area dotted with Punic, that is Phoenician, colonies, notably Panormos (Palermo) and Motya. When in 410 the Segestans offered to become dependants of Carthage in return for protection, the Carthaginian assembly realized that the time had come to consolidate their city’s hold on western Sicily. The Segestan appeal marked a decisive moment in the transformation from a loose confederation of allies and trading stations presided over by Carthage to a Carthaginian empire that included among its subjects not just fellow-Phoenicians but subject peoples – ‘Libyans’, as the Berbers of North Africa were called by Greek writers, Elymians, Sikels and Sikans in Sicily, not to mention Sards and Iberians. There were other, personal factors at work among the Carthaginian elite, for the city was at this time controlled by a group of powerful dynasties that dominated its Senate. A prominent Carthaginian with the common name Hannibal is said to have conceived a passionate hatred for all Greeks after his grandfather Hamilcar was killed in battle against the Syracusan army at Himera in 480 BC.