Reginald Walter Macan, Herodotus, The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books with Introduction and Commentary

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ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν Καρχηδονίων: it is but seldom that Hdt. cites ‘Carthaginian’ sources, and only (I believe) after his migration to Thurii. He could not read nor speak ‘Phoenician’; nor need the phrase here carry with it the implication of personal contact with Carthaginians, much less of a visit to Carthage, nor of aecess to Carthaginian documents, even in a Greek translation: cp. IV.-VI. Introduction, § xcvii. f. He has heard (or read) this version related as a ‘Carthaginian’ story; but though there may be gennine report going back to the time and place, the passage bears intrinsic marks, both positive and negative, of its dominant Greek interest and elements. As a matter of fact there must have been many Greeks (from Himera, Zankle, Rhegion at least) in the Carthaginian camp.

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οἰκότι χρεωμένων: cp. λόγῳ οἰκότι χρεώμενοι 3. 111, ἀληθείῃ χρη<*>σασθαι c. 101 supra.

οἱ μὲν βάρβαροι: notwithstanding the composition of the army of Hamilkar, Carthaginians can hardly have spoken of it as ‘the barbarians.’ The term as here used is characteristically Greek. Cp. Aischyl. Pers. 187, 255, 337, where Persians speak of the army of Xerxes as βάρβαροι.

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ἀρξάμενοι: middle (contra, c. 162). The ‘barbarians’ delivered the attack. With ἐξ ἠοῦς μέχρι δείλης ὀψίης cp. 8. 9 and 8. 6 (πρωΐην).

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λέγεται: not surely by the Carthaginians in especial; the Greek version reported a battle of long duration. Cp. App. Crit.

ἑλκύσαι, <*>pparently intransitive, as we use ‘t<*>rag’; 6. 86 προφασίας εἷλκον, “paul<*>liter” (Baehr).

σύστασι <*> cp. 6. 117, and for the verb c. 142. 5. <*>ra.

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ἐν τούτῳ <*>ῷ χρόνῳ. i.e. ἐξ ἠοῦς μέχρι δείλης ὀψίης: this sacrifice would be consummated in the dark, or at least the dusk.

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σώματα ὅλα καταγίζων: this bloody sacrifice and holocaust was doubtless offered to the Baal Moloch, the chief deity of Carthage, whose title (melech, the king) appeais in the name of his worshipper. In the Greek rite, as a rule, only a small part of the animal was consumed by fire, and the greater part was eaten by the worshippers. On this occasion there was nothing of the Feast in the Sacrifice, which was all offered to the God, evidently in the hope of procuring a favourable answer, divine assistance or intervention, on behalf of the Carthaginian arms. Even if this story be substantially true, we need not picture Hamilkar neglecting his duties as commander-in-chief in order to devote his whole mind to these continuous burnt-offerings.

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ὦσε ἑωυτὸν ἐς τὸ πῦρ. Human sacrifice was especially in vogue at Caithage; cp. Justin 18. 6. 11 “ciuenta sacrorum religione et scelere pro remedio usi sunt; qu<*>ppe homines ut viciimas immolabant,” etc. (Flaubert employs this motif with terrible effect in his romance Salambô.) Hdt.'s narrative may record not an act of despair but an act of devotion: the rout was not complete (γινομε<*>νην) when Hamilkar, in the act of pouring libation over the last victims, thrust himself into the blazing pyre, in hopes and faith that this supreme sacrifice would wring a favourable intervention from his god. (Cp. c. 107 supra.) Baehr and Blakesley both approve this idea. Hamilkar's fortunes were probably staked on the success of this expedition: he could remember, perhaps, the reception of the defeated army on its return from Sardinia under ‘Maze<*>s’ (Justin 18. 7) and had no mind to risk a worse reception. But this ‘Carthaginian’ legend (ὡς Φοίνικες λέγουσι) of his selfsacrifice may not pass unchallenged into history: the alternative version of his death, though less romantic, is more probable in itself, and creditable to him as a soldier. Cp. infra.

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εἴτε ἑτέρῳ: probably as in the story ap. Diodor. 11. 20, according to which Hamilkar was cut down early on the day of battle as he was engaged, in the naval camp, on a sacrifice to Poseidon, by Syracusan cavalry, who, under a ruse of Gelon's devising, had made their way into the lower Carthaginian laager. In some respects, while the account of the campaign as a whole, and of the battle, given by Diodoros, no doubt ultimately from Sikeliote sonrces, is very much fuller and more articulate than the curt and rather incoherent account here given by Hdt, the story of Hamilkar's death, as given by Hdt. (‘so striking in itself, so thoroughly Semitic, and so effectively told’), is hard to part with, and might be combined, as Freeman suggests, with the main story as told in Diodoros; and indeed more effectively than Freeman realised, for there is no need to abandon Gelon's ‘stratagem,’ or to move the burning of the ships from morning until evening, if we may preserve the sacrifice as one not to ‘Poseidon’ but to ‘Baal Moloch,’ and move Hamilkar from the naval to the upper camp.

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οἱ θύουσι. Hdt. adduces the heroic cult of ‘Hamilkar’ as evidence for the truth of the story of his devotion and death. Such it might be, if the cult itself were a fact; but such a cult, in Semitic and Carthaginian settlements, Meltzer (i. 215), followed by Freeman (ii. 521), regards, no doubt rightly, as an impossibility. Hdt. has apparently confused ‘Hamilkar,’ ‘the servant of Melqart’ (Ebed-Melqart), with the god, to whom no doubt temples existed in all Carthaginian settlements, and the greatest in Carthage itself.