Head of bearded man
Museum of Louvre
IVe-IIIe front centuries J. - C.
After their victory of Himère, the Greeks continue their progression in the Mediterranean and gain victories during the medic wars against Phoenician Persians and their allies and against the Etruscans of Italy. Consequently, the African background takes importance in the policy of economic revival engaged by Carthage. AgricultureThe city becomes aware of the precariousness of an economy entirely subordinated to the Mediterranean trade and engages an agricultural policy. In the absence of direct information, the study of the iconography of the steles, epigraphs, and the reading of the Treaty of agriculture, in twenty-eight volumes, written in IVe century by Magon, can clarify this aspect of Carthaginian civilization.
Will chora, i.e. the city itself, ensures its food self-sufficiency, in particular in products of arboriculture (olives, grapes, figs, almonds) and out of meat. Megara, district peripheral north of Carthage, shelters an intensive agriculture with kitchen gardens and gardens separated by dry stone fences, quickset hedges of thorny, channels, many and deep shrubs.
Beyond will chora, the plains of the basin of Medjerda and of the Miliane wadi are devoted to corn. The date palm, often represented on the votive steles and the currencies, perhaps had a religious function, whereas the Carthaginian grenade is so famous that the Romans name it mixed punica.
Inter alia agricultural implements, one uses for the dépiquage the plostellum punicum, kind of sledge out of wooden provided with toothed casters, the swing-plows provided a length mancheron bent fixed on a handle, with, at the end, a handle with right angle and a plowshare in the lower part, as one still finds some in Africa.
Fodder is transported in tanks with disc wheels, equipped with open amounts. The cereal outputs are modest, the best grounds being devoted to the vine and the plum tomato. The agricultural territory is not limited any more to one narrow coastal strip, in addition threatened by the Libyans, who require a tribute, but covers the major part of Tunisia.
Maritime forwardings
This period is made profitable to explore the west coasts of Africa at the instigation of king Hannon, founder supposed of the dynasty of Magonides. The account of the tour of Hannon reported by Hérodote (430) is still object of controversies. Did forwarding take place really? Does it have reaches the gulf of Guinea or on the contrary it stopped in Essaouira, as seem to indicate it archaeological research? Did it make it possible Carthage to get gold? Even if this text is a forgery, it translates the will of the Carthaginians to establish their monopoly on the West African coasts while making accept their adversaries that they are already present there.
Always with the O C century, Himilcon, Carthaginian general, a forwarding directs on the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Brittany, and reached perhaps even the islands Cassitérides (current Scillies). Its goal is to drain towards Carthage, and by sea route, the tin produced in these areas and which up to that point passes by Beats.
Trans-Saharan contacts
The interest which Carthage carries to Western Africa, in second half of the O C century, is attested by the development of Sabratha and of Leptis Magna, emerged of Trans-Saharan tracks.
Garamantes and Nasamons installed in the south of the gulf of Syrte, at thirty days of walk of the coast, are the intermediaries between the “Country of the Blacks” and Carthage. They know with the O C and IV E centuries an increase in population and an agricultural rise which are not without relationship to the influence of the Carthaginian establishments of the littoral. Carthage receives carbuncles and probably of the ivory, skins, and slaves captured by Garamantes. The transport of gold is less probable, but not impossible.
The rectification of Carthage is such as, at the end of the century, it takes again the hostilities, benefitting from the Greek dissensions. It puts at bag Sélinonte, Himère, Gela, and occupies the territories west of Halycus river. Never the punic Empire was also wide. However, in 310, Agathocle, tyrant of Syracuse, succeed in unloading in the south of the course Bon, in the North-East of current Tunisia, with 14 ' 000 men, and, during three years, devastates a large number of punic cities, before regaining Syracuse. Carthage remains safe, but the proof from now on is made that its territory is far from being inaccessible.