Originally posted by strategy
HB - With all due respect to the author of that web site, I rather prefer the opinions of Serge Lancel (an expert on Carthage in charge of major excavations on site) whose expert opinion is that there is no evidence: for or against that can allow us to determine whether those children were dead or alive at the time of their cremation.
Phrases like this on the web site:
On a moonlit night, after the child was mercifully killed, the body was placed on the arms of the god, where it rolled into the fire pit. The sound of flutes, lyres, and tambourines helped to drown out the cries of the anguished parents.
...is the worst kind of populistic history and pure speculation taken directly out of Fevrier or Flaubert (the latter a very anti-semitic novelist). It can not be stressed enough that there is no evidence AT ALL to support such a description of the child sacrifices.
As mentioned, all the evidence that they were sacrificed alive (or murdered and sacrificed) rests on Diodorus and Cleitarchos, describing human sacrifices that Diodorus at least stresses as an extraordinary event. We know that the human sacrifices in Rome after Cannae were considered unusual, old-fashioned and rather barbaric; to assume that similar happening, on a regular scale, in Carthage would not have been remarked upon by contemporary or latter Greek and Roman historians is extremely unlikely. In addition, archealogical evidence has shown that Punic cemetaries extremely rarely contained child bodies (more supporting evidence that the tophet urns come from nothing more sinister than a ritualized burial ritual for children dying in too early an age).
Note that the Book of Jeremiah (at least in the translation I have), nowhere claims that these were live child sacrifices - simply that these were sacrifices to a pagan god of the sons and daughters. On the contrary, it states that when the Lord takes his revenge, the Tophet will no longer be called the valley of Tophet, but the valley of Murders, when all the pagans (supposedly struck down by the Lord) shall be interred there - a strange choice of words, if those children already interred there were supposed to have been murdered. On top of that, the book describes events happening centuries before the founding of Carthage.
Now due to the emotive issues this line of archeology evoked, these examinations have been most exhaustive in their verification, before being made available to a wider audience.
Since when have historical TV programs ever been concerned with anything else than ratings? Writers of historical TV programs are interested in selling a good story - rarely in being historically accurate. "Burning living child to a savage God" certainly sells better than "Cremating still-born children to free their souls".
Regarding Carthaginian bad press:
The Greeks hated the Phoenicians, who were their most ferocious and skilled rivals in control of Mediteranean trade, as seamen, and as colonists. ALL of our basic literary knowledge of the Phoenicians (except for the Bible - but then the Jews were also generally enemies of Phoenicia) has come to us through Hellenistic literature. Given these simple facts, it is quite surprising to find anything good being said about Carthage.
But consider:
- That the Greek alphabet (the base of our own) was basically a copy of the Phoenician alphabet (The first two letters in Phoenician are "Aleph" and "Beth").
- That Aristotles considered the Carthaginian political constitution to be one of the best in the world, and that Polybius's criticism of the system was its development toward a democracy.
- That Rome granted the libraries of Carthage (apparently saved in 146 BC), to the sons of Massinissa.
- That the works of the Carthaginian agronomist Mago were considered so important that it was translated into Latin and later into Greek (and all this after the sack of Carthage).
- That Punic language and culture survived in Africa far into the time of the Empire (inscriptions in Punic have been attested in archeological finds from 300 AD), and is reported as still being spoken in 500 AD by the Bishop of Hippo (and very probably existed for several more centuries until the coming of Islam).
Again, consider that in all of the Punic wars, Rome was basically the aggressor: Breaking their treaties with Carthage in 264 by interfering in Sicily, seizing Sardinia-Corsica during the Mercenary war, meddling in internal Carthaginian affairs in Spain in 218 (another breaking of the treaty as Polybius basically admits), and finally their callous and extremely treacherous treatment of Carthage in 151. It should be noted that many Roman senators (esp. the Scipios) were strongly against the barbaric Roman treatment of Carthage, but as so often in history, ignorance and idiocy were allowed to rule the day. Even so, it was Carthage the city, not Carthage the culture that was wiped out. Incidentally, Rome used much the same tactics against the rest of the Mediteranean world - though none resisted as persistently and stoutly as the Carthaginians.
In short - perhaps we should talk rather of Roman perfidy and Roman honour, and remember that Romans like Verres, Brutus, Caesar, etc. plundered with abandon throughout the known world - so rapaciously in fact that it took decades for the east (Asia Minor and Greece) to recover under the Empire - and that those same Romans very definitely bribed their way to power.
As a final note, it should be noted that Western society would not have been significantly influenced by Punic religion or culture even if Carthage had won - Carthage was never an empire-builder per se, and their wars were primarily waged to secure favorable trading advantages and strategic production regions (incidentally, very simmilar to the Republic of Venice in EU).
Thus, the defeat of Rome would rather have entailed far stronger Celtic (and Germanic) elements in European culture. What this could have resulted to in the long run is hard to predict, since Rome effectively wiped out the Celtic culture.
It is to be noted that by 400 BC, as Vandelay wrote, Carthaginian society was in any case already heavily influenced by Hellenism, with which it had after all been in contact with for many. many centuries.
Would it have been a different world - certainly. Would it have been worse; very unlikely. To cite Scott Adams: "People are idiots". It is an unchanging constant of Human society.
