Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/547

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 CARTENNA.
mentioned by Livy as the chief city of the Olcades. (Liv. xxi. 5.) It is true that Greek writers call the place Althaea; but if, as so often happens, the latter word has lost a guttoral at the beginning, the forms are etymological equivalents, — Calthaea = Carthaea, one form, as we have seen, of Carteïa. (On the whole discussion, see Cellarius, Geogr. Ant. vol. i. p. 90; Wesseling, ad Itin. Ant. p. 406; Becker, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyklopädie, s. v.: the last writer suggests that Calpe was the ancient Iberian name, Tartessus (i. e. Tarshish) the Phoenician, and Carteïa the Punic; the lost form being naturally adopted by the Romans from the Carthaginians, while Calpe remained in use through having been the form employed by the Greek writers.) [ P. S. ]


CARTENNA (Καρτένναι ή Κάρτιννα, Ptol. iv. 2. § 4; Cartinna, Mela, i. 6. § 1: Tenez), a considerable city on the coast of Numidia, or, according to the later division, of Mauretania Caesariensis; under Augustus, a colony and the station of the second legion. (Plin. v. 2. s. 1: VR. Carcenna.,) The Antonine Itinerary (p. 14) places it 18 M. P., by sea, east of Arsenaria (Arzeu), and 70 M. P. west of Caesarea (Zershell). These numbers led Shaw to identify it with Mostaghanem; but an inscription found by the French places it without doubt at Tenez, much further to the E., and furnishes a striking proof of the danger of trusting implicitly to the numbers of the ancient geographers. In fact, the distances of the Itinerary and the longitudes of Ptolemy would have made the positions on this coast one mass of confusion, but for the remarkable clue furnished by the resemblance between the ancient and the modern names; the results deduced from which have been, for the most part, confirmed by the discoveries made since the French occupation. Of this we have a striking proof in the position of Caesarea Iol [Iol], which Shaw identified with Zershell on the evidence of the name only; the whole "weight of evidence" being against the site ; and inscriptions have proved that he was right and all the ancient authorities wrong. Just so is it with Tenez and Cartenna; but in this case Shaw also is wrong. (Pellissier, in the Exploration Scientifique de l'Agérie, vol. vi. p. 330.) Ptolumy (l. c.) mentions a river Cartennus a little W. of Cartenna. He makes the longest day at Cartenna 14⅓ hours, and its distance above 3½ hours W. of Alexandreia. (Ptol. viii. 13. § 7.) [ P. S. ]


CARTHAEA. [Ceos.]


CARTHA'GO (ή Καρχηδών), in Africa, the renowned rival of Rome.

I. Names. — As there can be no doubt that the Greek and Roman names of the city are but forms of its native name, we must look to the Phoenician, or cognate languages, for the original form; and this is at once found in the Hebrew, where Kereth or Carth (הדק) is the poetical word which signifies a city, and which enters into the names of other cities of Phoenician (or Carthaginian) and Syrian origin, such as Cirta, in Numidia, and Tigranocerta in Armenia. On the coins of Panormus in Sicily, which was subject to Carthage, we find on the reverse the legend, in Phoenician, Kereth-hadeshoth, i. e. New City, which is in all probability the name of Carthage. Some read it as Carth-hadtha, which is merely a dialectic variety. This etymology is confirmed by a tradition preserved by Solinus, who says (c. 40): — "Istam urbem Carthadam Elissa dixit, quod Phoenicum ore exprimit Civitatem Novam." The reason of the name can be conjectured with a near approach to certainty, far the name of the more ancient
CARTHAGO.529
Phoenician city in the immediate neighbourhood, Utica, signifies, in Phoenician, the Old City, in contradistinction to which Carthage was called New; one among many examples of the permanence of an appellation the most temporary in its first meaning. In later times, this New City was called Carthago Vetus, to distinguish it from the celebrated Carthago Nova in Spain. (Bochart, Phaleg, p. 468; Gesen. Gesch. d. Hebr. Sprache, pp. 228, 229, and Hebrew Lexicon, s. v. הדק; Bayer, ad Sallust. p. 347; Mionnet, Descript des Médailles, pl. 20.) Another explanation is given by Niebuhr, namely, that the New City (Carthada) was so called in contradistinction to Byrsa (Bozrah), the original city, "just as Neapolis arose by the side of Parthenope." (Lectures, vol. i. p. 104, 1st ed.) It is remarkable that, in transferring the name to their own languages, the Greeks changed one, and the Romans the other, of the dental consonants in the word into a guttural. The ancient Roman form, as seen on the Columna Rostrata, is Cartaco

The ethnic and adjective forms are partly derived from the name of the city itself, and partly from that of the mother country. In Greek we have Καρχηδόνιος (Eth. and Adj., but the commoner Adj. is Καρχηδονιακός or Καρχηδονικός, and in Latin Carthaginiensis (Eth. and Adj.); but the more usual ethnic is Poenus, with the adjective form Punicus (equivalent to, and sometimes actually written, Poenicus: the poets used Poenus for the adjective); while in Greek also, the Carthaginians, as well as the original Phoenicians, are called Φοίνικες (Herod. V. 46; Eurip. Troad. 222; Böckh, Expl. Pind. Pyth. i. 72. s. 138).

The territory of Carthage is called Carchedonia (Καρχηδονία, Strab. ii. p. 131, vi, p. 267, xvii. pp. 831, 832), a term sometimes applied also to the city. (Strab. vL pp. 272, 287).

II. Authorities. — This great city furnishes the most striking example in the annals of the world of a mighty power which, having long ruled over subject peoples, taught them the arts of commerce and civilization, and created for itself an imperishable name, has left little more than that name behind it, and even that in the keeping of the very enemies to whom she at last succumbed. Vast as is the space which her fame fills in ancient history, the details of her origin, her rise, her constitution, commerce, arts, and religion, are all but unknown.

Of her native literature, we have barely the scantiest fragments left. The treasures of her libraries were disdained by the blind hatred of the Roman aristocracy, who made them a present to the princes of Numidia, reserving only the 32 books of Mago on Agriculture for translation, as all that could be useful to the republic (Plin. xviii. 4. s. 5: it is worthy of notice, as showing the value of the traditions preserved by Sallust respecting the early population of N. Africa, that he derived them from these Punic records, though through the medium of interpreters; Jug. 17.) Of the records respecting her, preserved at Tyre, we have only a single notice in Josephus. (See below, No. III.)

The Greeks and Romans relate only that part of her story with which they themselves were closely connected; a port only of her external fortunes, which does not commence tiU she has passed the acme of her prosperity, and the relation of which is distorted by political animosity. At the very