Noah
and the "baptismal flood" of the Old Testament (top panel) is
"typologically linked" with (it prefigures) the baptism of Jesus in the
New Testament (bottom panel).
Allegory in the Middle Ages was a vital element in the synthesis of biblical and classical traditions into what would become recognizable as medieval culture. People of the Middle Ages consciously drew from the cultural legacies of the ancient world in shaping their institutions and ideas, and so allegory in medieval literature and medieval art was a prime mover for the synthesis and transformational continuity between the ancient world and the "new" Christian world.
People of the Middle Ages did not see the same break between
themselves and their classical predecessors that modern observers see;
rather, they saw continuity with themselves and the ancient world, using
allegory as a synthesizing agent that brings together a whole image.
Four types of interpretation or allēgoria
For
most medieval thinkers there were four categories of interpretation (or
meaning) used in the Middle Ages, which had originated with the Bible
commentators of the early Christian era.
The first is simply the literal interpretation of the events of the story for historical purposes with no underlying meaning.
The second is called typological: it connects the events of the Old Testament with the New Testament; in particular drawing allegorical connections between the events of Christ's life with the stories of the Old Testament.
The third is moral (or tropological), which is how one should act in the present, the "moral of the story".
The fourth type of interpretation is anagogical, dealing with the future events of Christian history, heaven, hell, the last judgment; it deals with prophecies.
Thus the four types of interpretation (or meaning) deal with past
events (literal), the connection of past events with the present
(typology), present events (moral), and the future (anagogical).
Dante describes interpreting through a "four-fold method" (or "allegory of the theologians") in his epistle to Can Grande della Scala. He says the "senses" of his work are not simple, but:
Rather, it may be called "polysemous",
that is, of many senses. A first sense derives from the letters
themselves, and a second from the things signified by the letters. We
call the first sense "literal" sense, the second the "allegorical", or
"moral" or "anagogical". To clarify this method of treatment, consider
this verse: When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people: Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion
(Psalm 113). Now if we examine the letters alone, the exodus of the
children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses is signified; in the
allegory, our redemption accomplished through Christ; in the moral
sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to
the state of grace; in the anagogical sense, the exodus of the holy soul
from slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory.. they
can all be called allegorical.
Old and New Testaments
Medieval
allegory began as a Christian method for synthesizing the discrepancies
between the Old Testament and the New Testament. While both testaments were studied and seen as equally divinely inspired by God, the Old Testament contained discontinuities for Christians—for example the Jewish kosher laws.
The Old Testament was therefore seen in relation to how it would
predict the events of the New Testament, in particular how the events of
the Old Testament related to the events of Christ's life. The events of
the Old Testament were seen as part of the story, with the events of
Christ's life bringing these stories to a full conclusion. The technical
name for seeing the New Testament in the Old is called typology.
Christ rises from the tomb, alongside Jonah spit onto the beach, a typological allegory.
One example of typology is the story of Jonah and the whale from the Old Testament.
Medieval allegorical interpretation of this story is that it prefigures
Christ's burial, with the stomach of the whale as Christ's tomb. Jonah
was eventually freed from the whale after three days, so did Christ rise
from his tomb after three days. Thus, whenever one finds an allusion to
Jonah in Medieval art or literature, it is usually an allegory for the
burial and resurrection of Christ.
Another common typological allegory is with the four major Old testament prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. These four prophets prefigure the four Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There was no end to the number of analogies that commentators could find between stories of the Old Testament and the New.
There also existed a tradition in the Middle Ages of mythography—the allegorical interpretation of pagan myths. Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses were standard textbooks throughout the Middle Ages, and each had a long tradition of allegorical interpretation.
"An illustrative example can be found in Siena in a painting of Christ on the cross (Sano di Pietro's Crucifix,
15th c). At the top of the cross can be seen a bird pecking its own
breast, blood pouring forth from the wound and feeding its waiting
chicks below. This is the pelican whose "story" was told by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder. Thus by analogy to a "pagan" source, Christ feeds his own children with his own blood."
Mediaeval philosophers also saw allegory in the natural world,
interpreting animals, plants, and even non-living things in books called
bestiaries as symbols of Biblical figures and morals. For example, one bestiary compares stags
with people devoted to the Church, because (according to medieval
zoology) they leave their pastures for other (heavenly) pastures, and
when they come to broad rivers (sin) they form in line and each rests
its head on the haunches of the next (supporting each other by example
and good works), speeding across the waters together.
History of allegory
Late Antiquity
The early allegorizing trait in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible figures prominently in the massive oeuvre of a prominent Hellenized Jew of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus (c. 20 BCE – c. 50 CE), whose allegorical reading of the Septuagint synthesized the traditional Jewish narratives with Platonism.
Philo's allegorizing, in which he continued an earlier tradition, had
little effect in later Jewish thought, in part because the Jewish
culture of Alexandria dispersed by the fourth century.
Christian writers such as Origen
(184/185 – 253/254) took up the allegorized interpretations and began
to read the Old Testament as a series of prefigurations of the New
Testament,
in a time when rhetorical training was common, when the classics of
mythology were still standard teaching texts, when the Greek and Roman
pantheon of gods were still visible forms (if not always fully
recognized by the more learned populace), and when the new religions
such as Christianity adopted or rejected pagan elements by way of allegoresis (the study and interpretation of allegory).
Prudentius wrote the first surviving Christian purely allegorical freestanding work, Psychomachia ("Soul-War"), about AD 400.
The plot consists of the personified "good" virtues of Hope, Sobriety,
Chastity, Humility, etc. fighting the personified "evil" vices of Pride,
Wrath, Paganism, Avarice, etc. The personifications
are women, because in Latin words for abstract concepts have feminine
grammatical gender; an uninformed reader of the work might take the
story literally as a tale of many angry women fighting one another,
because Prudentius provides no context or explanation of the allegory.
In this same period of the early 5th century three other authors of importance to the history of allegory emerged: Claudian, Macrobius and Martianus Capella.
Little is known of these authors, even if they were "truly" Christian
or not, but we do know they handed down the inclination to express
learned material in allegorical form, mainly through personification,
which later became a standard part of medieval schooling methods.
Claudian's first work In Rufinum attacked the ruthless Rufinus and would become a model for the 12th century Anticlaudianus, a well known allegory for how to be an upstanding man. As well his Rape of Prosperpine served up a litany of mythological allegories, personifications, and cosmological allegories.
Neoplatonist commentators used allegory as a rhetorical, philosophical and religious devise in reading Ancient mythology, Homer, and Plato.
Macrobius wrote Commentary of the Dream of Scipio, providing the Middle Ages with the tradition of a favorite topic, the allegorical treatment of dreams.
Lastly Martianus Capella wrote De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii
("Marriage of Philology and Mercury"), the title referring to the
allegorical union of intelligent learning with the love of letters. It
contained short treatises on the "seven liberal arts"
(grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music)
and thus became a standard textbook, greatly influencing educators and
students throughout the Middle Ages.
Boethius, perhaps the most influential author of Late Antiquity, first introduced readers of his work Consolation of Philosophy to the personified Lady Philosophy, the source of innumerable later personified figures (such as Lady Luck, Lady Fortune, etc.)
Early Middle Ages
After
Boethius there exists no known work of allegorical literature until the
12th century. Although allegorical thinking, elements and artwork
abound during this period, it was not until the rise of the medieval
university in the High Middle Ages that sustained allegorical literature
appears again.
The High and Late Middle Ages saw many allegorical works and techniques. There were four great works from this period.
The Four Great Medieval Allegories
Le Roman de la Rose.
A major allegorical work, it had many lasting influences on western
literature, creating entire new genres and development of vernacular
languages.
The Divine Comedy. Ranked amongst the greatest medieval works, both allegorically and as a work of literature; was (and remains) hugely popular.
Piers Plowman.
An encyclopedic array of allegorical devices. Dream-vision; pilgrimage;
personification; satire; typological story structure (the dreamer's
progress mirrors the progress of biblical history from the Fall of Adam
to Apocalypse).
Pearl. A plot based on an anagogical allegory; a dreamer is introduced to heavenly Jerusalem. Focus on the meaning of death. A religious response to Consolation of Philosophy.
Dante shown holding a copy of the Divine Comedy,
next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and
the city of Florence, with the spheres of Heaven above, in Michelino's fresco
The narrative takes as its literal subject the state of souls
after death and presents an image of divine justice meted out as due
punishment or reward, and describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or Heaven, while allegorically the poem represents the soul's journey towards God, beginning with the recognition and rejection of sin (Inferno), followed by the penitent Christian life (Purgatorio), which is then followed by the soul's ascent to God (Paradiso). Dante draws on medieval Roman Catholic theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy derived from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse". In Dante's work, the pilgrim Dante is accompanied by three guides: Virgil (who represents human reason), Beatrice (who represents divine revelation, theology, faith, and grace), and SaintBernard of Clairvaux (who represents contemplative mysticism and devotion to Mary).
The work was originally simply titled Comedìa (pronounced [komeˈdiːa]; so also in the first printed edition, published in 1472), Tuscan for "Comedy", later adjusted to the modern Italian Commedia. The adjective Divina was added by Giovanni Boccaccio, and the first edition to name the poem Divina Comedia in the title was that of the Venetian humanistLodovico Dolce, published in 1555 by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari.
Structure and story
The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three cantiche (singular cantica) – Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise) – each consisting of 33 cantos (Italian plural canti). An initial canto, serving as an introduction to the poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica,
brings the total number of cantos to 100. It is generally accepted,
however, that the first two cantos serve as a unitary prologue to the
entire epic, and that the opening two cantos of each cantica serve as prologues to each of the three cantiche.
The number three is prominent in the work (alluding to the Trinity), represented in part by the number of cantiche and their lengths. Additionally, the verse scheme used, terza rima, is hendecasyllabic (lines of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme schemeaba, bcb, cdc, ded, .... The total number of syllables in each tercet is thus 33, the same as the number of cantos in each cantica.
Written in the first person, the poem tells of Dante's journey through the three realms of the dead, lasting from the night beforeGood Friday to the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory; Beatrice,
Dante's ideal woman, guides him through Heaven. Beatrice was a
Florentine woman he had met in childhood and admired from afar in the
mode of the then-fashionable courtly love tradition, which is highlighted in Dante's earlier work La Vita Nuova.
The structure of the three realms follows a common numerical pattern
of 9 plus 1, for a total of 10: 9 circles of the Inferno, followed by
Lucifer contained at its bottom; 9 rings of Mount Purgatory, followed by
the Garden of Eden crowning its summit; and the 9 celestial bodies of Paradiso, followed by the Empyrean
containing the very essence of God. Within each group of 9, 7 elements
correspond to a specific moral scheme, subdivided into three
subcategories, while 2 others of greater particularity are added to
total nine. For example, the seven deadly sins of the Catholic Church that are cleansed in Purgatory are joined by special realms for the late repentant and the excommunicated
by the church. The core seven sins within Purgatory correspond to a
moral scheme of love perverted, subdivided into three groups
corresponding to excessive love (Lust, Gluttony, Greed), deficient love (Sloth), and malicious love (Wrath, Envy, Pride).
In central Italy's political struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante was part of the Guelphs, who in general favored the Papacy over the Holy Roman Emperor.
Florence's Guelphs split into factions around 1300 – the White Guelphs
and the Black Guelphs. Dante was among the White Guelphs who were exiled
in 1302 by the Lord-Mayor Cante de' Gabrielli di Gubbio, after troops under Charles of Valois entered the city, at the request of Pope Boniface VIII, who supported the Black Guelphs. This exile, which lasted the rest of Dante's life, shows its influence in many parts of the Comedy, from prophecies of Dante's exile to Dante's views of politics, to the eternal damnation of some of his opponents.
The last word in each of the three cantiche is stelle ("stars").
Inferno
Gustave Doré's engravings illustrated the Divine Comedy (1861–1868); here Charon comes to ferry souls across the river Acheron to Hell.
The poem begins on the night before Good Friday in 1300, "halfway along our life's path" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). Dante is thirty-five years old, half of the biblical lifespan of 70 (Psalms 89:10, Vulgate), lost in a dark wood (understood as sin), assailed by beasts (a lion, a leopard, and a she-wolf) he cannot evade and unable to find the "straight way" (diritta via) –
also translatable as "right way" – to salvation (symbolized by the sun
behind the mountain). Conscious that he is ruining himself and that he
is falling into a "low place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent ('l sol tace), Dante is at last rescued by Virgil, and the two of them begin their journey to the underworld. Each sin's punishment in Inferno is a contrapasso, a symbolic instance of poetic justice; for example, in Canto XX, fortune-tellers and soothsayers must walk with their heads on backwards, unable to see what is ahead, because that was what they had tried to do in life:
they had their faces twisted toward their haunches
and found it necessary to walk backward,
because they could not see ahead of them.
... and since he wanted so to see ahead,
he looks behind and walks a backward path.
Allegorically, the Inferno represents the Christian soul
seeing sin for what it really is, and the three beasts represent three
types of sin: the self-indulgent, the violent, and the malicious.
These three types of sin also provide the three main divisions of
Dante's Hell: Upper Hell, outside the city of Dis, for the four sins of
indulgence (lust, gluttony, avarice, anger);
Circle 7 for the sins of violence; and Circles 8 and 9 for the sins of
fraud and treachery. Added to these are two unlike categories that are
specifically spiritual: Limbo, in Circle 1, contains the virtuous pagans
who were not sinful but were ignorant of Christ, and Circle 6 contains
the heretics who contradicted the doctrine and confused the spirit of
Christ.
Purgatorio
Dante gazes at Mount Purgatory in an allegorical portrait by Agnolo Bronzino, painted c. 1530
Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world. The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere, created by the displacement of rock which resulted when Satan's fall created Hell (which Dante portrays as existing underneath Jerusalem). The mountain has seven terraces, corresponding to the seven deadly sins or "seven roots of sinfulness." The classification of sin here is more psychological than that of the Inferno,
being based on motives, rather than actions. It is also drawn primarily
from Christian theology, rather than from classical sources.
However, Dante's illustrative examples of sin and virtue draw on
classical sources as well as on the Bible and on contemporary events.
Love, a theme throughout the Divine Comedy, is
particularly important for the framing of sin on the Mountain of
Purgatory. While the love that flows from God is pure, it can become
sinful as it flows through humanity. Humans can sin by using love
towards improper or malicious ends (Wrath, Envy, Pride), or using it to proper ends but with love that is either not strong enough (Sloth) or love that is too strong (Lust, Gluttony, Greed).
Below the seven purges of the soul is the Ante-Purgatory, containing
the Excommunicated from the church and the Late repentant who died,
often violently, before receiving rites. Thus the total comes to nine,
with the addition of the Garden of Eden at the summit, equaling ten.
Allegorically, the Purgatorio represents the Christian life. Christian souls arrive escorted by an angel, singing In exitu Israel de Aegypto. In his Letter to Cangrande, Dante explains that this reference to Israel leaving Egypt refers both to the redemption of Christ and to "the conversion of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to the state of grace." Appropriately, therefore, it is Easter Sunday when Dante and Virgil arrive.
The Purgatorio is notable for demonstrating the medieval knowledge of a spherical Earth. During the poem, Dante discusses the different stars visible in the southern hemisphere, the altered position of the sun, and the various time zones of the Earth. At this stage it is, Dante says, sunset at Jerusalem, midnight on the River Ganges, and sunrise in Purgatory.
After an initial ascension, Beatrice guides Dante through the nine celestial spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, as in Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. While the structures of the Inferno and Purgatorio were based on different classifications of sin, the structure of the Paradiso is based on the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues.
The seven lowest spheres of Heaven deal solely with the cardinal virtues of Prudence, Fortitude, Justice and Temperance. The first three spheres involve a deficiency of one of the cardinal virtues – the Moon, containing the inconstant, whose vows to God waned as the moon and thus lack fortitude; Mercury,
containing the ambitious, who were virtuous for glory and thus lacked
justice; and Venus, containing the lovers, whose love was directed
towards another than God and thus lacked Temperance. The final four
incidentally are positive examples of the cardinal virtues, all led on
by the Sun,
containing the prudent, whose wisdom lighted the way for the other
virtues, to which the others are bound (constituting a category on its
own). Mars contains the men of fortitude who died in the cause of Christianity; Jupiter contains the kings of Justice; and Saturn
contains the temperate, the monks who abided by the contemplative
lifestyle. The seven subdivided into three are raised further by two
more categories: the eighth sphere of the fixed stars that contain those
who achieved the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, and represent the Church Triumphant – the total perfection of humanity, cleansed of all the sins and carrying all the virtues of heaven; and the ninth circle, or Primum Mobile
(corresponding to the Geocentricism of Medieval astronomy), which
contains the angels, creatures never poisoned by original sin. Topping
them all is the Empyrean, which contains the essence of God, completing the 9-fold division to 10.
Dante meets and converses with several great saints of the Church, including Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Saint Peter, and St. John. The Paradiso is consequently more theological in nature than the Inferno and the Purgatorio.
However, Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is merely
the one his human eyes permit him to see, and thus the vision of heaven
found in the Cantos is Dante's personal vision.
The Divine Comedy finishes with Dante seeing the Triune God. In a flash of understanding that he cannot express, Dante finally understands the mystery of Christ's divinity and humanity, and his soul becomes aligned with God's love:
But already my desire and my will
were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,
by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars.
History
Manuscripts
According to the Italian Dante Society, no original manuscript
written by Dante has survived, although there are many manuscript
copies from the 14th and 15th centuries – some 800 are listed on their
site.
First edition to name the poem Divina Comedia, 1555
Illustration of Lucifer in the first fully illustrated print edition. Woodcut for Inferno, canto 33. Pietro di Piasi, Venice, 1491.
The first printed edition was published in Foligno, Italy, by Johann Numeister and Evangelista Angelini da Trevi on 11 April 1472. Of the 300 copies printed, fourteen still survive. The original printing press is on display in the Oratorio della Nunziatella in Foligno.
Early printed editions
Date
Title
Place
Publisher
Notes
1472
La Comedia di Dante Alleghieri
Foligno
Johann Numeister and Evangelista Angelini da Trevi
Commedia di Dante insieme con uno diagolo circa el sito forma et misure dello inferno
Florence
Philippo di Giunta
1555
La Divina Comedia di Dante
Venice
Gabriel Giolito
First use of "Divine" in title
Thematic concerns
The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory:
each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternative
meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining
how to read the poem – see the Letter to Cangrande – he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory: the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical.
The structure of the poem is also quite complex, with
mathematical and numerological patterns distributed throughout the work,
particularly threes and nines, which are related to the Holy Trinity.
The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's
skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory,
and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of the Inferno,
allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in
description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the
discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus
widening its range and increasing its variety."
Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" was added
later, in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were
classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy").
Low poems had happy endings and were written in everyday language,
whereas High poems treated more serious matters and were written in an
elevated style. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write
of a serious subject, the Redemption of humanity, in the low and
"vulgar" Italian language and not the Latin one might expect for such a
serious topic. Boccaccio's account that an early version of the poem was begun by Dante in Latin is still controversial.
Scientific themes
Although the Divine Comedy is primarily a religious poem, discussing sin, virtue, and theology, Dante also discusses several elements of the science of his day (this mixture of science with poetry has received both praise and blame over the centuries). The Purgatorio repeatedly refers to the implications of a spherical Earth, such as the different stars visible in the southern hemisphere, the altered position of the sun, and the various time zones of the Earth. For example, at sunset in Purgatory it is midnight at the Ebro, dawn in Jerusalem, and noon on the River Ganges:
Just as, there where its Maker shed His blood,
the sun shed its first rays, and Ebro lay
beneath high Libra, and the ninth hour's rays
were scorching Ganges' waves; so here, the sun
stood at the point of day's departure when
God's angel – happy – showed himself to us.
Dante travels through the centre of the Earth in the Inferno, and comments on the resulting change in the direction of gravity
in Canto XXXIV (lines 76–120). A little earlier (XXXIII, 102–105), he
queries the existence of wind in the frozen inner circle of hell, since
it has no temperature differentials.
Inevitably, given its setting, the Paradiso discusses astronomy extensively, but in the Ptolemaic sense. The Paradiso also discusses the importance of the experimental method in science, with a detailed example in lines 94–105 of Canto II:
Yet an experiment, were you to try it,
could free you from your cavil and the source
of your arts' course springs from experiment.
Taking three mirrors, place a pair of them
at equal distance from you; set the third
midway between those two, but farther back.
Then, turning toward them, at your back have placed
a light that kindles those three mirrors and
returns to you, reflected by them all.
Although the image in the farthest glass
will be of lesser size, there you will see
that it must match the brightness of the rest.
A briefer example occurs in Canto XV of the Purgatorio (lines 16–21), where Dante points out that both theory and experiment confirm that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. Other references to science in the Paradiso include descriptions of clockwork in Canto XXIV (lines 13–18), and Thales' theorem about triangles in Canto XIII (lines 101–102).
Galileo Galilei is known to have lectured on the Inferno, and it has been suggested that the poem may have influenced some of Galileo's own ideas regarding mechanics.
Theories of influence from Islamic philosophy
In 1919, Miguel Asín Palacios, a Spanish scholar and a Catholic priest, published La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia (Islamic Eschatology in the Divine Comedy), an account of parallels between early Islamic philosophy and the Divine Comedy. Palacios argued that Dante derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter from the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi and from the Isra and Mi'raj or night journey of Muhammad to heaven. The latter is described in the ahadith and the Kitab al Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber Scalae Machometi, "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder"), and has significant similarities to the Paradiso, such as a sevenfold division of Paradise, although this is not unique to the Kitab al Miraj or Islamic cosmology.
Some "superficial similarities" of the Divine Comedy to the Resalat Al-Ghufran or Epistle of Forgiveness of Al-Ma'arri have also been mentioned in this debate. The Resalat Al-Ghufran
describes the journey of the poet in the realms of the afterlife and
includes dialogue with people in Heaven and Hell, although, unlike the Kitab al Miraj, there is little description of these locations, and it is unlikely that Dante borrowed from this work.
Dante did, however, live in a Europe of substantial literary and
philosophical contact with the Muslim world, encouraged by such factors
as Averroism
("Averrois, che'l gran comento feo" Commedia, Inferno, IV, 144, meaning
"Averrois, who wrote the great comment") and the patronage of Alfonso X of Castile. Of the twelve wise men Dante meets in Canto X of the Paradiso, Thomas Aquinas and, even more so, Siger of Brabant were strongly influenced by Arabic commentators on Aristotle. Medieval Christian mysticism also shared the Neoplatonic influence of Sufis such as Ibn Arabi. Philosopher Frederick Copleston argued in 1950 that Dante's respectful treatment of Averroes, Avicenna, and Siger of Brabant indicates his acknowledgement of a "considerable debt" to Islamic philosophy.
Although this philosophical influence is generally acknowledged,
many scholars have not been satisfied that Dante was influenced by the Kitab al Miraj. The 20th century Orientalist Francesco Gabrieli
expressed skepticism regarding the claimed similarities, and the lack
of evidence of a vehicle through which it could have been transmitted to
Dante. Even so, while dismissing the probability of some influences
posited in Palacios' work, Gabrieli conceded that it was "at least possible, if not probable, that Dante may have known the Liber Scalae and have taken from it certain images and concepts of Muslim eschatology". Shortly before her death, the Italian philologist Maria Corti pointed out that, during his stay at the court of Alfonso X, Dante's mentor Brunetto Latini met Bonaventura de Siena, a Tuscan who had translated the Kitab al Miraj from Arabic into Latin. Corti speculates that Brunetto may have provided a copy of that work to Dante. René Guénon, a Sufi convert and scholar of Ibn Arabi, rejected in The Esoterism of Dante the theory of his influence (direct or indirect) on Dante. Palacios' theory that Dante was influenced by Ibn Arabi was satirized by the Turkish academic Orhan Pamuk in his novel The Black Book.
Literary influence in the English-speaking world and beyond
A detail from one of Sandro Botticelli's illustrations for Inferno, Canto XVIII, 1480s. Silverpoint on parchment, completed in pen and ink.
The Divine Comedy was not always as well-regarded as it is today. Although recognized as a masterpiece in the centuries immediately following its publication, the work was largely ignored during the Enlightenment, with some notable exceptions such as Vittorio Alfieri; Antoine de Rivarol, who translated the Inferno into French; and Giambattista Vico, who in the Scienza nuova and in the Giudizio su Dante inaugurated what would later become the romantic reappraisal of Dante, juxtaposing him to Homer. The Comedy was "rediscovered" in the English-speaking world by William Blake – who illustrated several passages of the epic – and the Romantic writers of the 19th century. Later authors such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, C. S. Lewis and James Joyce have drawn on it for inspiration. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was its first American translator, and modern poets, including Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, John Ciardi, W. S. Merwin, and Stanley Lombardo, have also produced translations of all or parts of the book. In Russia, beyond Pushkin's translation of a few tercets, Osip Mandelstam's late poetry has been said to bear the mark of a "tormented meditation" on the Comedy. In 1934, Mandelstam gave a modern reading of the poem in his labyrinthine "Conversation on Dante". In T. S. Eliot's estimation, "Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third." For Jorge Luis Borges the Divine Comedy was "the best book literature has achieved".
English translations
New English translations of the Divine Comedy continue to be published regularly. Notable English translations of the complete poem include the following.
The Divine Comedy has been a source of inspiration for
countless artists for almost seven centuries. There are many references
to Dante's work in literature. In music, Franz Liszt was one of many composers to write works based on the Divine Comedy. In sculpture, the work of Auguste Rodin includes themes from Dante, and many visual artists have illustrated Dante's work, as shown by the examples above. There have also been many references to the Divine Comedy in cinema, television, digital arts, comics and video games.
Carthage was the center or capital city of the ancient Carthaginian civilization, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now the Tunis Governorate in Tunisia.
Carthage was widely considered the most important trading hub of the
Ancient Mediterranean and was arguably one of the most affluent cities
of the classical world.
The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Alyssa or Dido is regarded as the founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. According to accounts by Timaeus of Tauromenium,
she purchased from a local tribe the amount of land that could be
covered by an oxhide. Cutting the skin into strips, she laid out her
claim and founded an empire that would become, through the Punic Wars, the only existential threat to Rome until the coming of the Vandals several centuries later.
The ancient city was destroyed by the Roman Republic in the Third Punic War in 146 BC and then re-developed as Roman Carthage, which became the major city of the Roman Empire in the province of Africa. The city was sacked and destroyed by Umayyad forces after the Battle of Carthage in 698 to prevent it from being reconquered by the Byzantine Empire. It remained occupied during the Muslim period and was used as a fort by the Muslims until the Hafsid period when it was taken by the Crusaders with its inhabitants massacred during the Eighth Crusade. The Hafsids decided to destroy its defenses so it could not be used as a base by a hostile power again. It also continued to function as an episcopal see.
The regional power had shifted to Kairouan and the Medina of Tunis in the medieval period, until the early 20th century, when it began to develop into a coastal suburb of Tunis, incorporated as Carthage municipality in 1919. The archaeological site was first surveyed in 1830, by Danish consul Christian Tuxen Falbe. Excavations were performed in the second half of the 19th century by Charles Ernest Beulé and by Alfred Louis Delattre. The Carthage National Museum was founded in 1875 by CardinalCharles Lavigerie.
Excavations performed by French archaeologists in the 1920s first
attracted an extraordinary amount of attention because of the evidence
they produced for child sacrifice. There has been considerable disagreement among scholars concerning whether child sacrifice was practiced by ancient Carthage. The open-air Carthage Paleo-Christian Museum has exhibits excavated under the auspices of UNESCO from 1975 to 1984.
The Modern Standard Arabic form قرطاج (Qarṭāj) is an adoption of French Carthage, replacing an older local toponym reported as Cartagenna that directly continued the Latin name.
Topography
Archaeological map
Archaeological Site of Carthage
Archaeological Site of Carthage
View of two columns at Carthage
Carthage was built on a promontory
with sea inlets to the north and the south. The city's location made it
master of the Mediterranean's maritime trade. All ships crossing the
sea had to pass between Sicily
and the coast of Tunisia, where Carthage was built, affording it great
power and influence. Two large, artificial harbors were built within the
city, one for harboring the city's massive navy of 220 warships and the
other for mercantile trade. A walled tower overlooked both harbors. The
city had massive walls, 37 km (23 mi) in length, longer than the walls
of comparable cities. Most of the walls were located on the shore, thus
could be less impressive, as Carthaginian control of the sea made attack
from that direction difficult. The 4.0 to 4.8 km (2.5 to 3 mi) of wall
on the isthmus to the west were truly massive and were never penetrated. The city had a huge necropolis
or burial ground, religious area, market places, council house, towers,
and a theater, and was divided into four equally sized residential
areas with the same layout. Roughly in the middle of the city stood a
high citadel called the Byrsa.
Carthage was one of the largest cities of the Hellenistic period and was among the largest cities in preindustrial history. Whereas by AD 14, Rome had at least 750,000 inhabitants and in the following century may have reached 1 million, the cities of Alexandria and Antioch numbered only a few hundred thousand or less. According to the not-always-reliable history of Herodian, Carthage rivaled Alexandria for second place in the Roman empire.
Punic ruins in Byrsa
On top of Byrsa hill, the location of the Roman Forum,
a residential area from the last century of existence (early second
century BC) of the Punic city was excavated by the French archaeologist
Serge Lancel. The neighborhood, with its houses, shops, and private
spaces, is significant for what it reveals about daily life there over
2,100 years ago.
The remains have been preserved under embankments, the
substructures of the later Roman forum, whose foundation piles dot the
district. The housing blocks are separated by a grid of straight streets
about 6 m (20 ft) wide, with a roadway consisting of clay; in situ
stairs compensate for the slope of the hill. Construction of this type
presupposes organization and political will, and has inspired the name
of the neighborhood, "Hannibal district", referring to the legendary Punic general or sufet (consul) at the beginning of the second century BC.
The habitat is typical, even stereotypical. The street was often
used as a storefront/shopfront; cisterns were installed in basements to
collect water for domestic use, and a long corridor on the right side of
each residence led to a courtyard containing a sump,
around which various other elements may be found. In some places, the
ground is covered with mosaics called punica pavement, sometimes using a
characteristic red mortar.
The merchant harbor at Carthage was developed, after settlement of the nearby Punic town of Utica.
Eventually the surrounding countryside was brought into the orbit of
the Punic urban centers, first commercially, then politically. Direct
management over cultivation of neighbouring lands by Punic owners
followed. A 28-volume work on agriculture written in Punic by Mago,
a retired army general (c. 300), was translated into Latin and later
into Greek. The original and both translations have been lost; however,
some of Mago's text has survived in other Latin works. Olive trees (e.g., grafting), fruit trees (pomegranate, almond, fig, date palm), viniculture, bees, cattle, sheep, poultry, implements, and farm management were among the ancient topics which Mago discussed. As well, Mago addresses the wine-maker's art (here a type of sherry).
In Punic farming society, according to Mago, the small estate
owners were the chief producers. They were, two modern historians write,
not absent landlords. Rather, the likely reader of Mago was "the master
of a relatively modest estate, from which, by great personal exertion,
he extracted the maximum yield." Mago counselled the rural landowner,
for the sake of their own 'utilitarian' interests, to treat carefully
and well their managers and farm workers, or their overseers and slaves.
Yet elsewhere these writers suggest that rural land ownership provided
also a new power base among the city's nobility, for those resident in
their country villas.
By many, farming was viewed as an alternative endeavour to an urban
business. Another modern historian opines that more often it was the
urban merchant of Carthage who owned rural farming land to some profit,
and also to retire there during the heat of summer.
It may seem that Mago anticipated such an opinion, and instead issued
this contrary advice (as quoted by the Roman writer Columella):
"The man who acquires an estate must sell his house, lest
he prefer to live in the town rather than in the country. Anyone who
prefers to live in a town has no need of an estate in the country."
"One who has bought land should sell his town house, so that he will
have no desire to worship the household gods of the city rather than
those of the country; the man who takes greater delight in his city
residence will have no need of a country estate."
The issues involved in rural land management also reveal underlying features of Punic society, its structure and stratification.
The hired workers might be considered 'rural proletariat', drawn from
the local Berbers. Whether there remained Berber landowners next to
Punic-run farms is unclear. Some Berbers became sharecroppers. Slaves
acquired for farm work were often prisoners of war. In lands outside
Punic political control, independent Berbers cultivated grain and raised
horses on their lands. Yet within the Punic domain that surrounded the
city-state of Carthage, there were ethnic divisions in addition to the
usual quasi feudal
distinctions between lord and peasant, or master and serf. This
inherent instability in the countryside drew the unwanted attention of
potential invaders. Yet for long periods Carthage was able to manage these social difficulties.
The many amphorae
with Punic markings subsequently found about ancient Mediterranean
coastal settlements testify to Carthaginian trade in locally made olive oil and wine.
Carthage's agricultural production was held in high regard by the
ancients, and rivaled that of Rome—they were once competitors, e.g.,
over their olive harvests. Under Roman rule, however, grain production ([wheat] and barley) for export increased dramatically in 'Africa'; yet these later fell with the rise in Roman Egypt's
grain exports. Thereafter olive groves and vineyards were
re-established around Carthage. Visitors to the several growing regions
that surrounded the city wrote admiringly of the lush green gardens,
orchards, fields, irrigation channels, hedgerows (as boundaries), as well as the many prosperous farming towns located across the rural landscape.
Accordingly, the Greek author and compiler Diodorus Siculus
(fl. 1st century BC), who enjoyed access to ancient writings later
lost, and on which he based most of his writings, described agricultural
land near the city of Carthage circa 310 BC:
"It was divided into market gardens and orchards of all
sorts of fruit trees, with many streams of water flowing in channels
irrigating every part. There were country homes everywhere, lavishly
built and covered with stucco. ... Part of the land was planted with
vines, part with olives and other productive trees. Beyond these, cattle
and sheep were pastured on the plains, and there were meadows with
grazing horses."
The Chora (farm lands of Carthage) encompassed a limited area: the north coastal tell, the lower Bagradas river valley (inland from Utica), Cape Bon, and the adjacent sahel
on the east coast. Punic culture here achieved the introduction of
agricultural sciences first developed for lands of the eastern
Mediterranean, and their adaptation to local African conditions.
The urban landscape of Carthage is known in part from ancient authors,
augmented by modern digs and surveys conducted by archeologists. The
"first urban nucleus" dating to the seventh century, in area about 10
hectares (25 acres), was apparently located on low-lying lands along the
coast (north of the later harbors). As confirmed by archaeological
excavations, Carthage was a "creation ex nihilo", built on
'virgin' land, and situated at what was then the end of a peninsula.
Here among "mud brick walls and beaten clay floors" (recently uncovered)
were also found extensive cemeteries, which yielded evocative grave
goods like clay masks. "Thanks to this burial archaeology we know more
about archaic Carthage than about any other contemporary city in the
western Mediterranean." Already in the eighth century, fabric dyeing operations had been established, evident from crushed shells of murex
(from which the 'Phoenician purple' was derived). Nonetheless, only a
"meager picture" of the cultural life of the earliest pioneers in the
city can be conjectured, and not much about housing, monuments or
defenses. The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) imagined early Carthage, when his legendary character Aeneas had arrived there:
Walled city-state of Carthage, before its fiery fall in 146 B.C.
"Aeneas found, where lately huts had been,
marvelous buildings, gateways, cobbled ways,
and din of wagons. There the Tyrians
were hard at work: laying courses for walls,
rolling up stones to build the citadel,
while others picked out building sites and plowed
a boundary furrow. Laws were being enacted,
magistrates and a sacred senate chosen.
Here men were dredging harbors, there they laid
the deep foundations of a theatre, and quarried massive pillars... ."
The two inner harbours [called in Punic cothon] were located
in the southeast; one being commercial, and the other for war. Their
definite functions are not entirely known, probably for the
construction, outfitting, or repair of ships, perhaps also loading and
unloading cargo. Larger anchorages existed to the north and south of the city. North and west of the cothon were located several industrial areas, e.g., metalworking and pottery (e.g., for amphora), which could serve both inner harbours, and ships anchored to the south of the city.
About the Byrsa, the citadel area to the north,
considering its importance our knowledge of it is patchy. Its prominent
heights were the scene of fierce combat during the fiery destruction of
the city in 146 BC. The Byrsa was the reported site of the Temple of Eshmun (the healing god), at the top of a stairway of sixty steps. A temple of Tanit
(the city's queen goddess) was likely situated on the slope of the
'lesser Byrsa' immediately to the east, which runs down toward the sea. Also situated on the Byrsa were luxury homes.
South of the citadel, near the cothon (the inner harbours) was the tophet, a special and very old cemetery, which when begun lay outside the city's boundaries. Here the Salammbô was located, the Sanctuary of Tanit, not a temple but an enclosure for placing stone stelae.
These were mostly short and upright, carved for funeral purposes. The
presence of infant skeletons from here may indicate the occurrence of
child sacrifice, as claimed in the Bible, although there has been
considerable doubt among archeologists as to this interpretation and
many consider it simply a cemetery devoted to infants. Probably the tophet burial fields were "dedicated at an early date, perhaps by the first settlers." Recent studies, on the other hand, indicate that child sacrifice was practiced by the Carthaginians.
Between the sea-filled cothon for shipping and the Byrsa heights lay the agora [Greek: "market"], the city-state's central marketplace for business and commerce. The agora
was also an area of public squares and plazas, where the people might
formally assemble, or gather for festivals. It was the site of religious
shrines, and the location of whatever were the major municipal
buildings of Carthage. Here beat the heart of civic life. In this
district of the Carthage, more probably, the ruling suffets presided, the council of elders convened, the tribunal of the 104 met, and justice was dispensed at trials in the open air.
Early residential districts wrapped around the Byrsa from the south to the north east. Houses usually were whitewashed and blank to the street, but within were courtyards open to the sky.
In these neighborhoods multistory construction later became common,
some up to six stories tall according to an ancient Greek author. Several architecturalfloorplans of homes have been revealed by recent excavations, as well as the general layout of several city blocks. Stone stairs were set in the streets, and drainage was planned, e.g., in the form of soakways leaching into the sandy soil.
Along the Byrsa's southern slope were located not only fine old homes,
but also many of the earliest grave-sites, juxtaposed in small areas,
interspersed with daily life.
Artisan workshops were located in the city at sites north and west of the harbours. The location of three metal workshops
(implied from iron slag and other vestiges of such activity) were found
adjacent to the naval and commercial harbours, and another two were
further up the hill toward the Byrsa citadel. Sites of potterykilns have been identified, between the agora and the harbours, and further north. Earthenware often used Greek models. A fuller's
shop for preparing woolen cloth (shrink and thicken) was evidently
situated further to the west and south, then by the edge of the city. Carthage also produced objects of rare refinement. During the 4th and 3rd centuries, the sculptures of the sarcophagi became works of art. "Bronze engraving and stone-carving reached their zenith."
The elevation of the land at the promontory on the seashore to the north-east (now called Sidi Bou Saïd),
was twice as high above sea level as that at the Byrsa (100 m and 50
m). In between runs a ridge, several times reaching 50 m; it continues
northwestward along the seashore, and forms the edge of a plateau-like
area between the Byrsa and the sea. Newer urban developments lay here in these northern districts.
Surrounding Carthage were walls
"of great strength" said in places to rise above 13 m, being nearly 10 m
thick, according to ancient authors. To the west, three parallel walls
were built. The walls altogether ran for about 33 kilometres (21 miles)
to encircle the city. The heights of the Byrsa were additionally fortified; this area being the last to succumb to the Romans in 146 BC. Originally the Romans had landed their army on the strip of land extending southward from the city.
Greek cities contested with Carthage for the Western Mediterranean culminating in the Sicilian Wars and the Pyrrhic War over Sicily, while the Romans fought three wars against Carthage, known as the Punic Wars, "Punic" meaning "Phoenician" in Latin, as Carthage was a Phoenician colony grown into a kingdom.
Punic Republic
Downfall of the Carthaginian Empire
Lost to Rome in the First Punic War (264 –241 BC)
Won after the First Punic War, lost in the Second Punic War
Lost in the Second Punic War (218 –201 BC)
Conquered by Rome in the Third Punic War (149 –146 BC)
Carthaginian-held territory in the early 3rd century BC
The Carthaginian republic was one of the longest-lived and largest
states in the ancient Mediterranean. Reports relay several wars with
Syracuse and finally, Rome, which eventually resulted in the defeat and
destruction of Carthage in the Third Punic War. The Carthaginians were Phoenician settlers originating in the Mediterranean coast of the Near East. They spoke Canaanite, a Semitic language, and followed a local variety of the ancient Canaanite religion.
Ruins of Carthage
The fall of Carthage came at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC at the Battle of Carthage.
Despite initial devastating Roman naval losses and Rome's recovery from
the brink of defeat after the terror of a 15-year occupation of much of
Italy by Hannibal, the end of the series of wars resulted in the end of Carthaginian power and the complete destruction of the city by Scipio Aemilianus.
The Romans pulled the Phoenician warships out into the harbor and
burned them before the city, and went from house to house, capturing and
enslaving the people. About 50,000 Carthaginians were sold into slavery.
The city was set ablaze and razed to the ground, leaving only ruins and
rubble. After the fall of Carthage, Rome annexed the majority of the
Carthaginian colonies, including other North African locations such as Volubilis, Lixus, Chellah.
The legend that the city was sown with salt remains widely accepted despite a lack of evidence among ancient historical accounts; According to R.T. Ridley, the earliest such claim is attributable to B.L. Hallward's chapter in Cambridge Ancient History,
published in 1930. Ridley contended that Hallward's claim may have
gained traction due to historical evidence of other salted-earth
instances such as Abimelech's salting of Shechem in Judges 9:45.
B.H. Warmington admitted he had repeated Hallward's error, but posited
that the legend precedes 1930 and inspired repetitions of the practice.
He also suggested that it is useful to understand how subsequent
historical narratives have been framed and that the symbolic value of
the legend is so great and enduring that it mitigates a deficiency of
concrete evidence.
For many years but especially beginning in the 19th century, various texts claim that after defeating the city of Carthage in the Third Punic War (146 BC), the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus ordered the city be sacked, forced its surviving inhabitants into slavery,
plowed it over and sowed it with salt. However, no ancient sources
exist documenting the salting itself. The element of salting is
therefore probably a later invention modeled on the Biblical story of Shechem. The ritual of symbolically drawing a plow over the site of a city is mentioned in ancient sources, but not in reference to Carthage specifically. When Pope Boniface VIII destroyed Palestrina in 1299, he issued a papal bull that it be plowed "following the old example of Carthage in Africa" and also salted. "I have run the plough over it, like the ancient Carthage of Africa, and I have had salt sown upon it...."
Roman Carthage
Roman Carthage
When Carthage fell, its nearby rival Utica,
a Roman ally, was made capital of the region and replaced Carthage as
the leading center of Punic trade and leadership. It had the
advantageous position of being situated on the outlet of the Medjerda River, Tunisia's only river that flowed all year long. However, grain cultivation in the Tunisian mountains caused large amounts of silt to erode into the river. This silt accumulated in the harbor until it became useless, and Rome was forced to rebuild Carthage.
By 122 BC, Gaius Gracchus founded a short-lived colony, called Colonia Iunonia, after the Latin name for the Punic goddess Tanit, Iuno Caelestis. The purpose was to obtain arable lands for impoverished farmers. The Senate abolished the colony some time later, to undermine Gracchus' power.
After this ill-fated attempt, a new city of Carthage was built on the same land by Julius Caesar
in the period from 49 to 44 BC, and by the first century, it had grown
to be the second-largest city in the western half of the Roman Empire, with a peak population of 500,000. It was the center of the province of Africa, which was a major breadbasket of the Empire. Among its major monuments was an amphitheater.
The political fallout from the deep disaffection of African Christians is supposedly a crucial factor in the ease with which Carthage and the other centers were captured in the fifth century by Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, who defeated the Roman general Bonifacius and made the city the capital of the Vandal Kingdom. Gaiseric was considered a heretic, too, an Arian, and though Arians commonly despised Catholic Christians, a mere promise of toleration might have caused the city's population to accept him.
The Vandals during their conquest are said to have destroyed parts of Carthage by Victor Vitensis in Historia Persecutionis Africanae Provincia including various buildings and churches.
After a failed attempt to recapture the city in the fifth century, the Eastern Roman Empire finally subdued the Vandals in the Vandalic War in 533–534. Thereafter, the city became the seat of the praetorian prefecture of Africa, which was made into an exarchate during the emperor Maurice's reign, as was Ravenna
on the Italian Peninsula. These two exarchates were the western
bulwarks of the Byzantine Empire, all that remained of its power in the
West. In the early seventh century Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Carthage, overthrew the Byzantine emperor Phocas, whereupon his son Heraclius succeeded to the imperial throne.
The destruction of the Exarchate of Africa marked a permanent end to the Byzantine Empire's influence in the region.
It is visible from archaeological evidence, that the town of
Carthage continued to be occupied. The neighborhood of Bjordi Djedid
continued to be occupied. The Baths of Antoninus continued to function in the Arab period and the historian Al-Bakri
stated that they were still in good condition. They also had production
centers nearby. It is difficult to determine whether the continued
habitation of some other buildings belonged to Late Byzantine or Early
Arab period. The Bir Ftouha church might have continued to remain in use
though it is not clear when it became uninhabited. Constantine the African was born in Carthage.
The Medina of Tunis, originally a Berber settlement, was established as the new regional center under the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century. Under the Aghlabids,
the people of Tunis revolted numerous times, but the city profited from
economic improvements and quickly became the second most important in
the kingdom. It was briefly the national capital, from the end of the
reign of Ibrahim II in 902, until 909, when the Shi'iteBerbers took over Ifriqiya and founded the Fatimid Caliphate.
Carthage remained a residential see until the high medieval period, mentioned in
two letters of Pope Leo IX dated 1053, written in reply to consultations regarding a conflict between the bishops of Carthage and Gummi.
In each of the two letters, Pope Leo declares that, after the Bishop of
Rome, the first archbishop and chief metropolitan of the whole of Africa is the bishop of Carthage.
Later, an archbishop of Carthage named Cyriacus was imprisoned by the Arab rulers because of an accusation by some Christians. Pope Gregory VII
wrote him a letter of consolation, repeating the hopeful assurances of
the primacy of the Church of Carthage, "whether the Church of Carthage
should still lie desolate or rise again in glory".
By 1076, Cyriacus was set free, but there was only one other bishop in
the province. These are the last of whom there is mention in that period
of the history of the see.
The fortress of Carthage was used by the Muslims until Hafsid era and was captured by the Crusaders during the Eighth Crusade.
The inhabitants of Carthage were slaughtered by the Crusaders after
they took it, and it was used as a base of operations against the
Hafsids. After repelling them, Muhammad I al-Mustansir decided to destroy Cathage's defenses completely to prevent a repeat.
Carthage is some 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) east-northeast of Tunis; the settlements nearest to Carthage were the town of Sidi Bou Said to the north and the village of Le Kram to the south.
Sidi Bou Said was a village which had grown around the tomb of the eponymous sufi saint (d. 1231), which had been developed into a town under Ottoman rule in the 18th century. Le Kram was developed in the late 19th century under French administration as a settlement close to the port of La Goulette.
In 1881, Tunisia became a French protectorate, and in the same year Charles Lavigerie, who was archbishop of Algiers, became apostolic administrator of the vicariate of Tunis. In the following year, Lavigerie became a cardinal. He "saw himself as the reviver of the ancient Christian Church of Africa, the Church of Cyprian of Carthage", and, on 10 November 1884, was successful in his great ambition of having the metropolitan see of Carthage restored, with himself as its first archbishop. In line with the declaration of Pope Leo IX in 1053, Pope Leo XIII acknowledged the revived Archdiocese of Carthage as the primatial see of Africa and Lavigerie as primate.
The Danish consul Christian Tuxen Falbe conducted a first survey of the topography of the archaeological site (published in 1833).
Antiquarian interest was intensified following the publication of Flaubert's Salammbô in 1858. Charles Ernest Beulé performed some preliminary excavations of Roman remains on Byrsa hill in 1860. A more systematic survey of both Punic and Roman-era remains is due to Alfred Louis Delattre, who was sent to Tunis by cardinal Charles Lavigerie in 1875 on both an apostolic and an archaeological mission.
Audollent (1901, p. 203)
cites Delattre and Lavigerie to the effect that in the 1880s, locals
still knew the area of the ancient city under the name of Cartagenna (i.e. reflecting the Latin n-stem Carthāgine).
Auguste Audollent divides the area of Roman Carthage into four quarters, Cartagenna, Dermèche, Byrsa and La Malga.
Cartagenna and Dermèche correspond with the lower city, including the
site of Punic Carthage; Byrsa is associated with the upper city, which
in Punic times was a walled citadel above the harbour; and La Malga is linked with the more remote parts of the upper city in Roman times.
French-led excavations at Carthage began in 1921, and from 1923
reported finds of a large quantity of urns containing a mixture of
animal and children's bones. René Dussaud identified a 4th-century BC stela found in Carthage as depicting a child sacrifice.
A temple at Amman (1400–1250 BC) excavated and reported upon by J.B. Hennessy
in 1966, shows the possibility of bestial and human sacrifice by fire.
While evidence of child sacrifice in Canaan was the object of academic
disagreement, with some scholars arguing that merely children's
cemeteries had been unearthed in Carthage, the mixture of children's
with animal bones as well as associated epigraphic evidence involving
mention of mlk led some to believe that, at least in Carthage, child sacrifice was indeed common practice.
However, though the animals were surely sacrificed, this does not
entirely indicate that the infants were, and in fact the bones indicate
the opposite. Rather, the animal sacrifice was likely done to, in some
way, honour the deceased.
In 2016, an ancient Carthaginian individual, who was excavated from a Punic tomb in Byrsa Hill, was found to belong to the rare U5b2c1
maternal haplogroup. The Young Man of Byrsa specimen dates from the
late 6th century BCE, and his lineage is believed to represent early
gene flow from Iberia to the Maghreb.
Commune
In 1920, the first seaplane base was built on the Lake of Tunis for the seaplanes of Compagnie Aéronavale. The Tunis Airfield opened in 1938, serving around 5,800 passengers annually on the Paris-Tunis route.
During World War II, the airport was used by the United States Army Air ForceTwelfth Air Force as a headquarters and command control base for the Italian Campaign of 1943.
Construction on the Tunis-Carthage Airport, which was fully funded by France, began in 1944, and in 1948 the airport become the main hub for Tunisair.
In the 1950s the Lycée Français de Carthage was established to serve French families in Carthage. In 1961 it was given to the Tunisian government as part of the Independence of Tunisia, so the nearby Collège Maurice Cailloux in La Marsa, previously an annex of the Lycée Français de Carthage, was renamed to the Lycée Français de La Marsa and began serving the lycée level. It is currently the Lycée Gustave Flaubert.
After Tunisian independence in 1956, the Tunis conurbation gradually extended around the airport, and Carthage (قرطاج Qarṭāj) is now a suburb of Tunis, covering the area between Sidi Bou Said and Le Kram.
Its population as of January 2013 was estimated at 21,276,
mostly attracting the more wealthy residents. If Carthage is not the capital, it tends to be the political pole, a « place of emblematic power » according to Sophie Bessis, leaving to Tunis the economic and administrative roles. The Carthage Palace (the Tunisian presidential palace) is located in the coast.
The suburb has six train stations of the TGM line between Le Kram and Sidi Bou Said:
Carthage Salammbo (named for Salambo, the fictional daughter of Hamilcar), Carthage Byrsa (named for Byrsa hill), Carthage Dermech (Dermèche), Carthage Hannibal (named for Hannibal), Carthage Présidence (named for the Presidential Palace) and Carthage Amilcar (named for Hamilcar).
In literature
The scant remains of what was once a great city are reflected upon in Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poem, Carthage, published in 1836 with quotes from Sir Grenville Temple's Journal.
Trade and business
Map of the Mediterranean in 218 BC
The merchants of Carthage were in part heirs of the Mediterranean
trade developed by Phoenicia, and so also heirs of the rivalry with
Greek merchants. Business activity was accordingly both stimulated and
challenged. Cyprus
had been an early site of such commercial contests. The Phoenicians
then had ventured into the western Mediterranean, founding trading
posts, including Utica and Carthage. The Greeks followed, entering the western seas where the commercial rivalry continued. Eventually it would lead, especially in Sicily, to several centuries of intermittent war.
Although Greek-made merchandise was generally considered superior in
design, Carthage also produced trade goods in abundance. That Carthage
came to function as a manufacturing colossus was shown during the Third Punic War
with Rome. Carthage, which had previously disarmed, then was made to
face the fatal Roman siege. The city "suddenly organised the manufacture
of arms" with great skill and effectiveness. According to Strabo (63 BC – AD 21) in his Geographica:
"[Carthage] each day produced one hundred and forty
finished shields, three hundred swords, five hundred spears, and one
thousand missiles for the catapults... . Furthermore, [Carthage although
surrounded by the Romans] built one hundred and twenty decked ships in
two months... for old timber had been stored away in readiness, and a
large number of skilled workmen, maintained at public expense."
The textiles industry in Carthage probably started in private homes,
but the existence of professional weavers indicates that a sort of
factory system later developed. Products included embroidery, carpets,
and use of the purple murex dye (for which the Carthaginian isle of Djerba was famous). Metalworkers
developed specialized skills, i.e., making various weapons for the
armed forces, as well as domestic articles, such as knives, forks,
scissors, mirrors, and razors (all articles found in tombs). Artwork in
metals included vases and lamps in bronze, also bowls, and plates. Other
products came from such crafts as the potters, the glassmakers, and the goldsmiths. Inscriptions on votive stele indicate that many were not slaves but 'free citizens'.
Trade routes of Phoenicia (Byblos, Sidon, Tyre) & Carthage
Phoenician and Punic merchant ventures were often run as a family
enterprise, putting to work its members and its subordinate clients.
Such family-run businesses might perform a variety of tasks: own and
maintain the ships, providing the captain and crew; do the negotiations overseas, either by barter
or buying and selling, of their own manufactured commodities and trade
goods, and native products (metals, foodstuffs, etc.) to carry and
trade elsewhere; and send their agents
to stay at distant outposts in order to make lasting local contacts,
and later to establish a warehouse of shipped goods for exchange, and
eventually perhaps a settlement. Over generations, such activity might
result in the creation of a wide-ranging network of trading operations.
Ancillary would be the growth of reciprocity between different family firms, foreign and domestic.
State protection was extended to its sea traders by the Phoenician city of Tyre and later likewise by the daughter city-state of Carthage. Stéphane Gsell,
the well-regarded French historian of ancient North Africa, summarized
the major principles guiding the civic rulers of Carthage with regard to
its policies for trade and commerce:
to open and maintain markets for its merchants, whether by
entering into direct contact with foreign peoples using either treaty
negotiations or naval power, or by providing security for isolated
trading stations
the reservation of markets
exclusively for the merchants of Carthage, or where competition could
not be eliminated, to regulate trade by state-sponsored agreements with
its commercial rivals
suppression of piracy, and promotion of Carthage's ability to freely navigate the seas
Both the Phoenicians and the Cathaginians were well known in antiquity for their secrecy in general, and especially pertaining to commercial contacts and trade routes. Both cultures excelled in commercial dealings. Strabo (63BC-AD21) the Greek geographer wrote that before its fall (in 146 BC) Carthage enjoyed a population of 700,000, and directed an alliance of 300 cities. The Greek historian Polybius (c.203–120) referred to Carthage as "the wealthiest city in the world".
A "suffet" (possibly two) was elected by the citizens, and held
office with no military power for a one-year term. Carthaginian generals
marshalled mercenary armies and were separately elected. From about 550
to 450 the Magonid family monopolized the top military position; later
the Barcid family acted similarly. Eventually it came to be that, after a
war, the commanding general had to testify justifying his actions
before a court of 104 judges.
Aristotle (384–322) discusses Carthage in his work, Politica;
he begins: "The Carthaginians are also considered to have an excellent
form of government." He briefly describes the city as a "mixed
constitution", a political arrangement with cohabiting elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, i.e., a king (Gk: basileus), a council of elders (Gk: gerusia), and the people (Gk: demos). Later Polybius of Megalopolis (c.204–122, Greek) in his Histories would describe the Roman Republic in more detail as a mixed constitution in which the Consuls were the monarchy, the Senate the aristocracy, and the Assemblies the democracy.
Evidently Carthage also had an institution of elders who advised the Suffets, similar to a Greek gerusia or the Roman Senate.
We do not have a Punic name for this body. At times its members would
travel with an army general on campaign. Members also formed permanent committees.
The institution had several hundred members drawn from the wealthiest
class who held office for life. Vacancies were probably filled by
recruitment from among the elite, i.e., by co-option. From among its members were selected the 104 Judges
mentioned above. Later the 104 would come to evaluate not only army
generals but other office holders as well. Aristotle regarded the 104 as
most important; he compared it to the ephorate of Sparta
with regard to control over security. In Hannibal's time, such a Judge
held office for life. At some stage there also came to be independent
self-perpetuating boards of five who filled vacancies and supervised
(non-military) government administration.
Popular assemblies
also existed at Carthage. When deadlocked the Suffets and the
quasi-senatorial institution of elders might request the assembly to
vote; also, assembly votes were requested in very crucial matters in
order to achieve political consensus and popular coherence. The assembly
members had no legal wealth or birth qualification. How its
members were selected is unknown, e.g., whether by festival group or
urban ward or another method.
The Greeks were favourably impressed by the constitution of Carthage; Aristotle had a separate study of it made which unfortunately is lost. In his Politica
he states: "The government of Carthage is oligarchical, but they
successfully escape the evils of oligarchy by enriching one portion of
the people after another by sending them to their colonies." "[T]heir
policy is to send some [poorer citizens] to their dependent towns, where
they grow rich." Yet Aristotle continues, "[I]f any misfortune occurred, and the bulk of
the subjects revolted, there would be no way of restoring peace by
legal means." Aristotle remarked also:
"Many of the Carthaginian institutions are excellent. The
superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common
people remain loyal to the constitution; the Carthaginians have never
had any rebellion worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule
of a tyrant."
Here one may remember that the city-state of Carthage, who citizens were mainly Libyphoenicians
(of Phoenician ancestry born in Africa), dominated and exploited an
agricultural countryside composed mainly of native Berber sharecroppers
and farmworkers, whose affiliations to Carthage were open to divergent
possibilities. Beyond these more settled Berbers and the Punic farming
towns and rural manors, lived the independent Berber tribes, who were
mostly pastoralists.
In the brief, uneven review of government at Carthage found in his Politica Aristotle mentions several faults. Thus, "that the same person should hold many offices,
which is a favorite practice among the Carthaginians." Aristotle
disapproves, mentioning the flute-player and the shoemaker. Also, that
"magistrates should be chosen not only for their merit but for their
wealth." Aristotle's opinion is that focus on pursuit of wealth will
lead to oligarchy and its evils.
"[S]urely it is a bad thing that the greatest offices...
should be bought. The law which allows this abuse makes wealth of more
account than virtue, and the whole state becomes avaricious. For,
whenever the chiefs of the state deem anything honorable, the other
citizens are sure to follow their example; and, where virtue has not the
first place, their aristocracy cannot be firmly established."
In Carthage the people seemed politically satisfied and submissive,
according to the historian Warmington. They in their assemblies only
rarely exercised the few opportunities given them to assent to state
decisions. Popular influence over government appears not to have been an
issue at Carthage. Being a commercial republic fielding a mercenary
army, the people were not conscripted for military service, an
experience which can foster the feel for popular political action. But
perhaps this misunderstands the society; perhaps the people, whose
values were based on small-group loyalty, felt themselves sufficiently
connected to their city's leadership by the very integrity of the
person-to-person linkage within their social fabric. Carthage was very
stable; there were few openings for tyrants.
Only after defeat by Rome devastated Punic imperial ambitions did the
people of Carthage seem to question their governance and to show
interest in political reform.
In 196, following the Second Punic War (218–201), Hannibal Barca, still greatly admired as a Barcid military leader, was elected suffet.
When his reforms were blocked by a financial official about to become a
judge for life, Hannibal rallied the populace against the 104 judges.
He proposed a one-year term for the 104, as part of a major civic
overhaul. Additionally, the reform included a restructuring of the
city's revenues, and the fostering of trade and agriculture. The changes
rather quickly resulted in a noticeable increase in prosperity. Yet his
incorrigible political opponents cravenly went to Rome, to charge
Hannibal with conspiracy, namely, plotting war against Rome in league
with Antiochus the Hellenic ruler of Syria. Although the Roman Scipio Africanus
resisted such manoeuvre, eventually intervention by Rome forced
Hannibal to leave Carthage. Thus, corrupt city officials efficiently
blocked Hannibal Barca in his efforts to reform the government of
Carthage.
Mago (6th century) was King of Carthage; the head of state,
war leader, and religious figurehead. His family was considered to
possess a sacred quality. Mago's office was somewhat similar to that of
a pharaoh,
but although kept in a family it was not hereditary, it was limited by
legal consent. Picard, accordingly, believes that the council of elders
and the popular assembly are late institutions. Carthage was founded by
the king of Tyre who had a royal monopoly on this trading venture. Thus
it was the royal authority stemming from this traditional source of
power that the King of Carthage possessed. Later, as other Phoenician
ship companies entered the trading region, and so associated with the
city-state, the King of Carthage had to keep order among a rich variety
of powerful merchants in their negotiations among themselves and over
risky commerce across the Mediterranean. Under these circumstance, the
office of king began to be transformed. Yet it was not until the
aristocrats of Carthage became wealthy owners of agricultural lands in
Africa that a council of elders was institutionalized at Carthage.
Contemporary sources
Most
ancient literature concerning Carthage comes from Greek and Roman
sources as Carthage's own documents were destroyed by the Romans. Apart from inscriptions, hardly any Punic literature has survived, and none in its own language and script. A brief catalogue would include:
three short treaties with Rome (Latin translations);
several pages of Hanno the Navigator's log-book concerning his fifth century maritime exploration of the Atlantic coast of west Africa (Greek translation);
fragments quoted from Mago's fourth/third century 28-volume treatise on agriculture (Latin translations);
the Roman playwright Plautus (c. 250 – 184) in his Poenulus incorporates a few fictional speeches delivered in Punic, whose written lines are transcribed into Latin letters phonetically;
the thousands of inscriptions made in Punic script, thousands, but many extremely short, e.g., a dedication to a deity with the personal name(s) of the devotee(s).
"[F]rom the Greek author Plutarch
[(c. 46 – c. 120)] we learn of the 'sacred books' in Punic safeguarded
by the city's temples. Few Punic texts survive, however." Once "the City Archives, the Annals, and the scribal lists of suffets" existed, but evidently these were destroyed in the horrific fires during the Roman capture of the city in 146 BC.
Yet some Punic books (Latin: libri punici) from the libraries of Carthage reportedly did survive the fires. These works were apparently given by Roman authorities to the newly augmented Berber rulers. Over a century after the fall of Carthage, the Roman politician-turned-author Gaius Sallustius Crispus or Sallust (86–34) reported his having seen volumes written in Punic, which books were said to be once possessed by the Berber king, Hiempsal II (r. 88–81).
By way of Berber informants and Punic translators, Sallust had used
these surviving books to write his brief sketch of Berber affairs.
Probably some of Hiempsal II's libri punici, that had escaped the fires that consumed Carthage in 146 BC, wound up later in the large royal library of his grandson Juba II (r.25 BC-AD 24). Juba II not only was a Berber king, and husband of Cleopatra's daughter, but also a scholar and author in Greek of no less than nine works. He wrote for the Mediterranean-wide audience then enjoying classical literature. The libri punici inherited from his grandfather surely became useful to him when composing his Libyka, a work on North Africa written in Greek. Unfortunately, only fragments of Libyka survive, mostly from quotations made by other ancient authors. It may have been Juba II who 'discovered' the five-centuries-old 'log book' of Hanno the Navigator, called the Periplus, among library documents saved from fallen Carthage.
In the end, however, most Punic writings that survived the
destruction of Carthage "did not escape the immense wreckage in which so
many of Antiquity's literary works perished."
Accordingly, the long and continuous interactions between Punic
citizens of Carthage and the Berber communities that surrounded the city
have no local historian. Their political arrangements and periodic
crises, their economic and work life, the cultural ties and social
relations established and nourished (infrequently as kin), are not known
to us directly from ancient Punic authors in written accounts. Neither
side has left us their stories about life in Punic-era Carthage.
Regarding Phoenician writings, few remain and these seldom
refer to Carthage. The more ancient and most informative are cuneiform
tablets, ca. 1600–1185, from ancient Ugarit, located to the north of Phoenicia
on the Syrian coast; it was a Canaanite city politically affiliated
with the Hittites. The clay tablets tell of myths, epics, rituals,
medical and administrative matters, and also correspondence. The highly valued works of Sanchuniathon,
an ancient priest of Beirut, who reportedly wrote on Phoenician
religion and the origins of civilization, are themselves completely
lost, but some little content endures twice removed. Sanchuniathon was said to have lived in the 11th century, which is considered doubtful. Much later a Phoenician History by Philo of Byblos (64–141) reportedly existed, written in Greek, but only fragments of this work survive.
An explanation proffered for why so few Phoenician works endured: early
on (11th century) archives and records began to be kept on papyrus, which does not long survive in a moist coastal climate. Also, both Phoenicians and Carthaginians were well known for their secrecy.
Thus, of their ancient writings we have little of major interest left to us by Carthage, or by Phoenicia
the country of origin of the city founders. "Of the various Phoenician
and Punic compositions alluded to by the ancient classical authors, not a
single work or even fragment has survived in its original idiom."
"Indeed, not a single Phoenician manuscript has survived in the original [language] or in translation."
We cannot therefore access directly the line of thought or the contour
of their worldview as expressed in their own words, in their own voice. Ironically, it was the Phoenicians who "invented or at least perfected and transmitted a form of writing [the alphabet] that has influenced dozens of cultures including our own."
As noted, the celebrated ancient books on agriculture written by Mago of Carthage survives only via quotations in Latin from several later Roman works.
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