Tunisian Coinage Part 2

The saying “All roads lead to Rome” has a subtext, which is that, among other technological innovations, the Romans built actual roads that wheeled vehicles could travel on. Everywhere else transport was pack animals on narrow trails. Like the caravans of Silk Road fame. The Romans could move far more stuff around on their roads than their neighbors could. It made them quicker on their feet than their roadless opponents. You could call their roads a technological edge.

Let’s recap a myth.

A lot of myths, it has been later discovered, have grown up around events that at some point scientists discover actually happened. Troy, for instance. Homer’s story was described as “mythic” before the ruins of the city were located in far western Anatolia (anciently called Ionia) and excavated in the 1870s.

Well, there was this guy, Aeneas. He was the child of Anchises and Aphrodite, the Goddess, and cousin of King Priam of Troy. Aeneas had a minor but honorable role in Homer’s Trojan War, and was a “good guy,” whom the Gods granted the right to survive the destruction of Troy. He proceeded to wander around for a while.

His story was taken up by the Roman writer, Virgil, in “the Aenead.”

Meanwhile, over in Tyre, the Phoenician city, now in Lebanon, King Belus II died, and the throne passed to his two children: daughter Dido and son Pygmalion. Pygmalion proceeded to shut Dido out of the power and murdered her husband. Dido gathered all her moveable wealth and an entourage and took off.

They sailed west and landed on a salient in North Africa, made a deal with the local authorities, and built a city (a tiny village, I guess we’d call it today) that became Carthage. Dido became queen.

Aeneas came wandering in with his people in a few boats. Dido proceeded to fall in love with him, and he at no time said to her “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

It turned out that Aeneas had been having divine visitations in his sleep in which he was instructed to go to a certain swamp in central Italy and found the city of Rome. He chose destiny over love and left Dido, who was so unhappy that she climbed on a funeral pyre and committed suicide after cursing the descendants of Aeneas with eternal strife.

Virgil wrote that story at the close of the B.C. era, over a century after the Romans had destroyed Carthage. He was, after all, Roman. There was an official history. He was coloring within the lines.

That’s the story, though. Carthage and Rome were interacting with each other, mostly negatively, right from the start.

Sicily was a focus of great power activity in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. It was a rich island with great agriculture and a strategic location. Several major Greek cities there fought with each other for dominance.

The resulting instability attracted outside actors, of which Carthage was a major contender. Though they never managed to hold on to all of Sicily for any significant length of time, they maintained a presence for several centuries.

The various Greek Sicilian rulers would go look abroad for allies, invite them in, then regret the deals they thought they’d made.

One of those outside actors was Pyrrhus of Epirus. Pyrrhus became king a bit after the death of Alexander the Great. He was drawn into the succession wars of Alexander’s generals, and came out on the right side of that, regaining his kingdom that had been briefly lost to one of the rivals.

He had a serious antipathy to Rome, but never mind them. He was interested in Sicily and drove out the Carthaginians for a while. Carthage made an alliance with Rome and drove Pyrrhus out in turn. Pyrrhus continued looking around for fighting to do, and eventually died in battle.

Rome felt pretty good about beating Pyrrhus in Sicily, and they proceeded to drive him out of southern Italy too. At that point, Romans could start to think that taking over Sicily for themselves might be a good idea.

A band of Italian mercenaries, the Mamertini, had seized the city now called Messina and embarked on a campaign of brigandage. Hiero II of Syracuse decided to clear them out. The mercenaries proceeded to divide into two factions. One asked the Carthaginians for help, the other asked Rome.

The result was the First Punic War. Carthage lost territory and income. There was a revolt of its mercenaries in Libya. Rome didn’t come out of it so well either. The treasury was depleted, and they had to devalue the currency, which was all bronze at that time.

Everyone sulked and bickered for a few decades, and then Rome and Carthage went at it again in the Second Punic War. That was the one in which Hannibal Barca was one of the stars, and Scipio Africanus was the other. The former invaded Italy from Spain and marauded for almost twenty years. The latter took Spain from Carthage.

What Spain had a lot of was silver and copper. The booty saved the Roman finances, which allowed them to introduce the denarius, which turned out to be very popular with everyone. The Roman Empire was basically built, financially speaking, on the denarius.

After the Second Punic War there was a half century during which Rome leaned on Carthage and Carthage was not in a position to do anything about it. From that position of dominance, a faction developed in Rome that wanted to take over Carthage, and North Africa in general. A convenient excuse appeared in 149 B.C. Rome invaded Carthage itself. There was a three-year siege, then the Romans razed the city, killed a bunch of people, and sold the rest into slavery. That was 146 B.C.

About a century of fitful minor activity ensued in the region. In 49 B.C. Julius Caesar started rebuilding on the old site and Roman Carthage began. It became the capital of the Province of Africa. A hundred years later it had grown to be the second largest city in the Roman West.

Punic ideas and people made contributions to Roman civilization. The Emperor Septimius Severus was Punic. North Africa supplied a lot of wheat. Carthaginian figured red pottery was a famously valuable export.

Part of the political succession at the end of the Western Empire was that the Vandals swept down from Central Europe, sacked Rome, swept on through Spain, and occupied swathes of North Africa. They took Carthage and held it for about a century. They didn’t keep good records.

The Vandals were in turn conquered by the Byzantine general Belisarius in 533 A.D. It was held by the Byzantines until the coming of the Muslim Arabs in the 7th century.

On to the coins.

David Sear, in Greek Coins and Their Values, wrote that most of the coinage attributed to Carthage was probably made in the later third century B.C., in which time the First and Second Punic Wars were conducted.

The economies of the time were built on stashes of gold, silver, and copper. If you had those things, you could do stuff. If you didn’t, you couldn’t. In war the winners of any engagement would steal all the gold and silver they came across.

It was not possible for governments to hoard all the gold and silver. It had to be out in the markets. Little tyrants could comprehensively oppress their subjects. Big governments, let by tyrants or otherwise, had to make accommodations with their multitudinous populaces.

We can imagine that when the Carthaginians were winning, they were bringing home silver and gold, making coins, and putting them out there. When they were losing, they debased the currency. Gold became electrum. Silver became billon

Except for a few odd letters of unknown meaning, the Carthaginian coins had no legends. Assignments to certain time ranges are inferential. I can look at a coin and maybe say “Carthage,” but after that I have to look it up. I can’t, just by looking, know that a coin is before, during, or after the First Punic War.

After the Third Punic War there was no Carthage anymore, until the Romans rebuilt it, so there were no coins. After the re-founding in 49 B.C., Carthage grew to be a major city of the Roman Empire.

An apex event in the cultural and political fortunes of Roman Carthage was the ascension of Septimius Severus, a native son, to the Imperial Throne, in 193 A.D. He favored his hometown in many ways, that attitude advertised on coins he struck showing Dea Caelestis, or Queen of Heaven, the Roman version of the Carthaginian diety Tanit, and the legend INDVLGENTIA AVGG IN CARTH, which means what you think it means.

Coins were the prime method of disseminating propaganda back then. The emperor was giving a shout out to his hometown.

Mint designations came into use in the Roman Empire during the First Tetrarchy. A mint was built in Carthage to strike the reformed follis currency. It was not a major producer of coins and was active only between 296-307 and then 308-311 A.D., when it closed. It remained closed through the fall of the Western Empire.

While it was open the Carthage mint struck coins in the names of Diocletian, Maximianus, Constantius I, Galerius, Severus II, Maximinus II, and Constantine the Great, all members of the various Tetrarchies. The rebellion of Maxentius was joined by the people of the Province of Africa, and Carthage struck coins in his name as well.

And there was a revolt against Maxentius in Carthage headed by one Alexander, a fellow with several other names associated, who was Vicar of Africa. Maxentius, being a usurper, and fearing the defection of Africa, had closed the mint at Carthage, mints being where the money was made. Alexander, in his revolt, reopened the mint at Carthage and a few coins were produced. When the revolt failed the Carthage mint was closed for about two hundred years.

Carthage sputtered on through the demise of the Western Empire. The mechanisms of dissolution were that the money was tending to stay in the east, where there was more commerce, and also more organized opposition, the powerful Persian Empire. At the same time, wave after wave of migrants were arriving from various places to the north.

There were many groups of migrants: Huns, Avars, Goths, and so forth. There had been movements of migrants out of more northerly regions of Eurasia for millennia. These days it is posited that environmental disasters displaced many of these people.

One group, the Vandals, had been living in southern Poland when they came under pressure from the Goths and were forced out. They asked humbly of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who graciously permitted them to settle in Pannonia around 330 A.D.

Seventy years later the Huns came out of Asia, pushing whomever they bumped into into westward flight. The Vandals were not directly confronted by the Huns, but nevertheless decided to flee along with everyone else. They trundled through Gaul, laying waste what was in their way, transited Spain, and crossed into Africa.

In Africa they continued rampaging and conquering. They overcame the Mauretanians of Morocco and the Numidians of Algeria. Finally, they took Carthage, in 439 A.D.

The Vandals made Carthage the capital of their empire and got themselves recognized as an independent kingdom by Rome. They proceeded, like the old Carthaginians, to occupy Mediterranean islands such as Sardinia. They made a play for Sicily, but that venture fell through.

There was the notable sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455 A.D. That came about because of internal Roman dynastic intrigues. One of the intriguers invited them in. Supposedly the Pope of the time prevailed upon the Vandal king to just take all the stuff and not kill all the people and tear down the buildings, and that is apparently what happened.

In Carthage, the Vandals struck some coins from time to time. There were gold tremisses and some solidi, silver siliquae, and bronze or copper coins, mostly small module, but some were quite large. The series started with imitations of Roman coins, and countermarks on real Roman coins. Some coins have names of Vandal kings. The coppers are sometimes named, though many are anonymous. A female personification of the city is a frequent reverse type on them.

The Vandal upper class had a different religion from most of their subjects. The Vandal elite were Arians, most of the locals were Catholics (this being well before the modern split between Catholics and Orthodox). Arian doctrine held that Jesus did not exist in Spirit before he was born, Catholics thought that he did. They fought wars about that and persecuted each other.

The rigor of Vandal persecutions of Catholics waxed and waned. A certain period of intensity led the Byzantines to decide that they should do something. They dispatched an army led by on Belisarius. The Byzantines had luck and prevailed, ending the Vandal kingdom in 534 A.D.

Carthage struck coins for the Byzantine Emperors Justin II, Tiberius Constantine, Maurice Tiberius, Phocas, Heraclius (including from when he was Exarch of Carthage and raised the revolt against his predecessor), Constans II, Constantine IV, and Justinian II.

The coins were various sizes of bronze, a bit of gold, an occasional silver coin. It is not a common Byzantine mint.

Carthage remained in Byzantine hands through the reign of Emperor Justinian II. He was kind of a jerk in many ways, fond of persecuting, punishing, making war, and so forth, but he wasn’t particularly good at anything, and his subjects rebelled and kicked him out. He returned, but the same kinds of things happened, and he was killed by his soldiers.

The Muslim Arabs, meanwhile, were expanding in all directions. They rampaged across North Africa, taking Carthage in 695 A.D. We’ll call that the end of ancient times in North Africa, and the start of the medieval period.