Talk:Punic military forces

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The following users are actively contributing to this topic and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources: Wandalstouring (talk • contribs • email)

Saw this article flagged as a stub that needs working on. Have read quite widely in this area, and will be making several edits and revisions to the content today - PocklingtonDan 15:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Right, I've fleshed this out quite a bit. Am I good to remove the stub flag now?? - PocklingtonDan 16:46, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Added references too - PocklingtonDan 16:54, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Good start 2 Dispute 3 Clean up 4 Source for this name 5 Help 6 Sweeping statements for over 700 hundred years of History

[edit] Good start

Quite a good start, but some issues to solve. Will comment more later. Wandalstouring 21:13, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - I'm sure there's more than a few issues in there that need sorting out, go ahead and edit it - it was intended as an initial fleshing out rather than as anything authorative, I've got it on my watchlist and will be returning to add more content and cites over the next week, but I will respect any work done to the article in the meantime :-) - PocklingtonDan 21:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

get some French sources (most material on Carthage is in this language because the Tunisians use it for their publications). Also try not to focus too strong on authors about the Punic war, this would be like writing about the US military and only taking a look at the Marines. Polybius mentions the composition of Carthage citizen army somewhere in his scripts. Wandalstouring 21:52, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dispute

The content of this article is of dubious origin, essential claims are unsourced and questionable. Wandalstouring 22:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clean up

I started working on the article's clean up. Kyriakos 11:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I cleaned up a bunch of mechanics/usage errors and hanging sentences in the first quarter of the article. BigDix56 14:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Source for this name

Can anyone provide an English source mentioning the military of Carthage? As far as I'm concerned all serious literature refers to them as Punic because there were at least three cities with the name of Carthage. One in Sardinia, one in Spain and one in the Maghreb. The one in Spain and in the Maghreb did have their own military for some time. Wandalstouring 18:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help

If you guys need help righting the section about the army I have a book about the Punic Wars which gives a great desription of the soldiers of the Punic armed forces as well as the weapons. So if you needs help just contact me. Kyriakos 01:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sweeping statements for over 700 hundred years of History

In revamping this article you are making extremely large, sweeping statements as if the military in Carthage had stayed the same for its 700 year history. One of the most dubious is that Carthage had a professional military for that entire period. Gentlemen, we are talking here of a commerce-based pre-industrial trading society with no economic reason for having standing armies outside some precise periods of war, such as those with Greece, and later on with Rome. You need to qualify this article with years or general periods to give some credibility to what you are saying. In addition, you need to take the Carthaginian "Navy" into account. --AlainV 04:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Let's set the record straight. I did not appreciate the idea of this article, but neither did I the nonsense it contained. I use a postdoctoral lecture qualification (Ameling Walter, Karthago: Studien zu Militär Staat und Gesellschaft) for these statements, but you can also take Livy(empty houses of soldiers) and Aristotle (rings for campaigns). Both explicitly state the importance of professional military in Carthage and if you follow Livy's account it only disappeared after the Second Punic War.

Professional soldier and economy are not mutually exclusive if you keep in mind that according to Polybius members of punic aristocracy were privateers and it is generally believed from interpreting the treaties with Rome that the Punics of Carthage were pirates, what ment less capturing ships in open seas, but enslaving inhabitants of coastal settlements.

The commerce-based trading society(citing Whittaker?) is as much unsourced as the Gibraltar naval blockade. To say the least we have absolutely no account of the trading business of Carthaginian aristocrats besides one comedy (Poenulus) that refers to a simple merchant and it is surely not sufficient for any theories about Carthage's nobility.

I did not talk about changes of equipment and tactics, but Carthage is mentioned in one breath with Crete and Sparta. That is about society. The switch to increased reliance on hired troops in the 6th century BC for the oversea campaigns has not yet received attention, but once again read Polybius and you will find out that the largest group of them came from Punic controlled Lybia in Africa. Wandalstouring 05:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

What about the archeological record? --AlainV 15:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

What from the archeological record should I add? Metal smelting, naval build-up, structures? Remember that quite a lot of the record is not safe information and gets frequently reclassified. Wandalstouring 18:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

What I'm refering to is the archeological evidence of an extensive punic commercial "empire" centered mostly in Carthage. Decorative products, small vials containing perfumes and other goods from Carthage have been identified in Hellenic city-states of the period around the Mediterranean sea, in numbers and patterns which suggest that they have been acquired by trade between greek colonists and Carthaginians and not by acts of war or piracy. As to the relative safety of the archeological record, and its frequent reclassification I would like to point out tthat ancient texts are by no means absolutely safe and that they are far from exempt from reclassification. One proof of that is the book "Carthage et les Grecs c. 580-480 av, J.-C.: Textes et histoire" (1998) by Véronique Krings, where she casts a new look and in a sense reclassifies many of the greek texts that deal with the relation between the greek city-states and Carthage. The book is an outgrowth of the doctoral thesis she presented at the university of Liège/Leuwen. --AlainV 03:56, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Finding pottery and a commercial empire are two different things. for example in the 5th century BC Lacedaemonian pottery was distributed throughout the Mediterranean, but that doesn't make Sparta a commercial empire. Wandalstouring 18:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Sparta was the epitome of a militaristic city-state, are we talking of utilitarian pottery that would have been the output of the cities subjugated by Sparta or or the luxury goods (tiny glass figurine heads, perfume in delicate amounts) such as those that were produced within Carthage? --AlainV 23:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

See, the Spartan called themselves Lacedaemonians (with a uniform lambda on their shoelds) and the pottery is definetly from Lacedaemonia, although probably it was not made by the full citizens. However that pottery was produced and widely exported does not exclude a militaristic state.

The political constitution of Sparta, Crete (both very militaristic societies, the Cretans were also pirates and had an established slave trade) and Carthage are grouped together in our ancient sources (Aristotle, Politica). Livy mentions us that Carthage had till after the Second Punic War an extensive housing of professional military personnel within the city! We know of common meals in military age structered groups that are also indicators for militarized societies were such habits were widespread and that could not be found in any other Phoenician city.(Ameling, 169)

One problem with Carthaginian trade is that we have not a single source on Carthaginian nobility in the trading business(Ameling, 169) trader except Poenulus who is a small merchant(Ameling, 170). Our only knowledge of the profits of Carthage's nobility that equalled the richest part of its population is from their agricultural exploitation(Ameling, 169)

For more information on the rule of merchants of Carthage see here a recently found inscription from Carthage.[1] Translations from Punic are quite difficult, however, it seems that among the rich people there are no traders listed, but merchants are listed among the poor people. This doesn't mean Carthage had no trade fleet because it only had small merchants and rich producers. But we have definetly information about Punic pirates(Polybius) from the treatise between Rome and Carthage and explicitly from the First Punic War. However we do know that members of the nobility sacrificed abroad, but we do not know what they sold. However, we do know that the profit margin in slave trade exceeded all other business. problem was you needed enough money to pay some professionals for that business. But that is getting pretty much off topic now.

So could you please tell how you get the idea of a big non-military trade republic from some glass found here and there? Look, for example people will be able to find Microsoft windows and Mc Donalds all over the world what absolutely doesn't contradict that the US has the biggest professional army in the world and is most frequently involved in wars. As long as you provide no clue why sophisticated glass production contradicts a militarized ruling class this discussion is rather pointless. Wandalstouring 13:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Krings book has from page 303-316 an article on Punic and Phoenician armies and from 290-303 some information on the on the government structure. Could you use this to expand the article. One point that you should view critically is that this book is no research on primary sources, but an overview and so some points like the Punic presence on the Iberian peninsula are mentioned without any refernce to the disputes. In the economy section on Sardinia there is no mention that the coastal settlements that show the strongest Punic influence are relatively underdeveloped compared to the richer hinterland, so it is hotly disputed to what extend Carthage ruled the native or had culturally influenced them in a mutual alliance. However, I'm looking forward to your contributions. Wandalstouring 17:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

What is at stake here is not the exclusion of trade for war or vice versa but the fact that the "Myth" of the commercial nature of the Punic empire is the prevalent one in current historiography, even if the sources for that "myth" turn out to be less numerous than one would like. If you go against the many scholarly books and paper encyclopedia articles that repeat that myth then it's up to you to state extremely clearly within the article, and not just on this talk page the sources and the logic which support that attack to the "Myth" of the punic commercial empire and to sum up the logic of their attack and their concrete foundations. Taking out mentions of this commercial empire and the connected "myth" of a huge commercial fleet and a huge navy will look, to the uninitiated, like an act of vandalism, given the absence of justification. Further more, time limits have to be set. Do the coments by Livy and Ploybius and others apply to the whole of the 700 years of Carthage? I don't think so, which means that the period on which that there is something known through them. --AlainV 00:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Now this argumentation gets rather arbitrary. This is an article about the Punic military forces and not the merchants from Carthage. Somehow it absolutely doesn't matter whether Carthage had trade or not. I hope you can read the topic. I don't know what books you cite, but there are lots of books on Carthage and you have to track down what they say exactly and who copied from whom (scientific publications). Look, I did read the complete account on the Punic economy in Krispus book today. Please show me where it talks about any commerce based empire. It does say something about specialization of different regions(something also known from the Polynesians). A well-known pattern for the Punic symmachy is that metallurgy was concentrated on certain places, the most important Carthage. You could use this as an argument for a centralized structure, but that's it. Naturally you can quote Mommsen who writes about such empire stuff as you mentioned, but please quote his theories in detail. I do try to present the latest results of research.

I really don't understand what your problem is. Try to contribute and quote Krispus on the Punic military if there is anything contradicting the article or stay afk. Wandalstouring 00:39, 4 February 2007 (UTC)