Around Black Athena (1990), Seminar Two (Tim Cornell)

This is an extract from my notes made at the second seminar in the series ('Representations of Carthage'), held on the 25th January 1990 in the Institute of Archaeology at UCL. There is a full set of notes for the entire seminar series, except for the first, which I missed because I didn't catch sight of the poster in time (no web in those days). The volume (Around Black Athena: the Origins of Graeco-Roman Culture) is under pressure from other work in progress, but it will eventually arrive. TY.

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[Introductory preamble: Last week set up the central themes of this conference and on Martin Bernal’s book. Bernal has set the agenda. Now we explore different directions, and try to explain the pressures on our understanding, and on historiography].

Tim Cornell began by saying that he was not speaking as an expert on Carthage. After reading Bernal’s book he wondered if there was a hidden truth in it. Perhaps there was an unconscious and systematic attempt to overlook Carthaginian culture. It is definitely a neglected area. Within the format of the study of the ancient world, there are few general books on Carthage.

Cornell mentioned the names of a few authors (Warmington, Picard), who use a standard sort of treatment of their subject. Like books on the Etruscans, there is a standard menu – an outline of the format: date, colonizations and contacts, wars in Sicily with the Greeks. And then the Punic Wars, and the final destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE. This format indicates that Carthage is of interest insofar as the Carthaginians had dealings with the Graeco-Roman world. I.e., Carthaginian culture is somebody else’s problem. Carthage is an earlier foundation than the Greek colonies. Timaeus argued that Carthage and Rome were founded in the same year (i.e., the Dido story). Punic war seen as war against the Carthaginians.  Modern scholars identify with the Romans. A product of the sources being from outside, and hostile. Is there a hidden programme here? Archaeology, especially since the end of WW2, has done little to redress the balance. Especially concerning the Punic Wars. Stresses an impoverished culture. Often the evidence is interpreted in the light of literary sources.

The Carthage we have is a stereotype. Aristotle is an ancient exception – in his Politics he admired their constitution, but the account of this is lost. Polybius also regarded it well, though he was critical of it. We know that there were pro-Carthaginian accounts also written in antiquity. Now lost. Plautus wrote on the subject of Carthage, shortly after the Hannibalic War, but it presents the Carthaginians in a most unsympathetic way. In general they got a hostile press, and this is also true of modern works. Stereotypes in modern works include (1) racism and antisemitism, and (2) orientalism (as discussed by Said).

For (1) the ancient prejudices involve the stereotype of the Carthaginians as intelligent, but in a mean and self-serving way. Expressed in terms of cunning and trickery. They were notorious to the Romans for treachery. For ( 2), they were dependent on trade, and are shown as greedy and corrupt by Polybius, who contrasted the Romans and the Carthaginians, and attributes a leaning to bribery and corruption to the latter.

They were also depicted as capable of great courage in certain circumstances, but essentially unwarlike, which was seen as a weakness. They failed to press their advantage. (Diodorus). They were interested in commerce rather than war. Cicero said that this destroyed their will to fight. This was illustrated by their use of mercenaries. Note the contrast between Hannibal and the opposition and lack of support from the government at home. The Romans thought of him as a worthy enemy (this view is presented more by modern writers than in antiquity).

Some writers suggest that the Carthaginians were not actually Phoenician. This racism was not in the ancients for they treated subject peoples harshly (Spaniards). [Bk10.36]. Polybius says harsh on subject people in North Africa – they doubled city taxes, and took half the crop [Whitaker – Carthaginians land imperialism late 4^th century]. No tribute from Sicily until quite late. 

Carthage was not interested in imperialism abroad in the 6^th and 5^th centuries, but they were interested in alliances (Etruria, and Rome). Protection for trade. Warfare in Sicily was perhaps originated by the Phoenicians and was prosecuted together (hence mercenaries). They did not use coinage till late. Not specifically Carthaginian. Hence perhaps a failure to follow up this advantage. Only in the third century did they carve out provinces, coinage, tax and mercenaries – the harshness of the Carthaginians noted in Polybius is to this period and circumstances, and is not seen as a racial characteristic.

They were servile to those who were stronger (college porter obsequiousness and arrogance). Plutarch said they were ”a hard and gloomy people”, etc. Cruelty was a frequent charge -  punishments included crucifixion (the torture of Regulus, etc). Their cruelty was demonstrated by their regular holocausts of children and the killing of prisoners in a sacrificial manner. There is a brutal account in Diodorus of indiscriminate killing – severed heads on javelins, etc.

The vices are seized on by modern detractors, who add others which are modern. There is some basis in the sources, but the tone of the passages is misleading – antisemitism and vulgar orientalism. The sources show no disgust at the physical appearance of the Carthaginians among the ancients.  Other modern notions arise from modern passages with no source warrants. It is a feature of orientalism that orientals are specifically given to religious fanaticism – Hindus, Etruscans, etc. It is taken as a sign of the eastern character {See Warmington). However there is no evidence in the sources for an especial religiosity among the Carthaginians (quantification of religiosity is meaningless anyway). There is a christianizing evaluation of oriental religiosity in some of the sources. Observers (Philo of Byblos, Tertullian) had their own axe to grind. Cult practice is prominent in surviving sources, but there may be a bias in the survivals.

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Orientalism and the Post-Enlightenment Agenda (Writing to Katherine Blouin)

[In 2018 I had some brief conversation with Dr. Katherine Blouin via Twitter. Which prompted the following email]. 

 I thought I should tell you about my work, since I am part of the largely disorganised cohort working for a radical change in our understanding of the role of ancient Greece in the development of western civilization.

My initial background is in classics and philosophy. At UCL I also studied Mesopotamia (languages and culture). This study was across three departments - UCL ancient history (text corpus, with Amelie Kuhrt), UCL department of Hebrew (Sumerian, with Mark Geller), and SOAS for Akkadian language (mainly with Andrew George). As a result I left college with a view of the relationship between Greece and Mesopotamia which was quite different from what I was led to believe while I was there.

 I graduated in 1992. I've been writing on the relationship between Mesopotamia and Greece since then. I arrived late to Said's work, since I was initially in thrall to Martin Bernal's thesis in Black Athena (though I did attend Said's series of lectures at UCL in the fall of 1993).

My main interest is in the history of philosophy. The conventional history of philosophy is pretty much a fabrication, The evidence doesn't support what is said about it, and it isn't actually that difficult to detect the fraud. Which led me to consider why the fraud was easily accepted. The answer turned out to be, as Bernal suggested, the post-Enlightenment agenda. The Enlightenment sought to understand everything in terms of common sense explanations, and not much in ancient philosophy conformed to common sense ideas.

So I've been researching and writing, off and on since 1993, about the origins of philosophy, Greek philosophical writing, and the cultural history of the west.

I was also interested in the role of anthropology in our understanding of past modes of thought. In 1993 I wrote a study of Frazer's essay on Plato, in which he argued that the idea of 'Being' was a barren notion, and nothing useful could be said of it. That is not what they thought in antiquity. So his later work was essentially a reframing of the past with one of its most important concepts entirely written out (formally published in 2016).

Hence I wrote The Sacred History of Being, which was finally published in November 2015. The point of this book was to show two things (amongst others): that the concept of Being was of immense importance before Plato, and that modern arguments about the nature of the Divine did not at all resemble ancient arguments, and so we could not easily understand what the ancients were talking about.

So we have a real problem. I've published a couple of volumes since The Sacred History of Being, which largely serve to illuminate how the ancients understood both physical reality and the Divine. Without a grasp of their radically different way of understanding, much of the ancient world is just unintelligible (oracles, omens, sacrifice, extispicy, etc).

These extra volumes serve as the basis for understanding that most ancient divine cult was transcendentalist in nature. Meaning that religious thought already embraced ideas and abstractions which surface in the writings of Plato and others. In Mesopotamia, in Israel, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, etc.

Which brings me to where I am now. I showed in The Sacred History of Being that the Assyrians and Babylonians were capable of abstract thought, and conceived of the Divine as a pure abstraction. They understood the basis of dialectical thought (collection and division) which the Greeks are credited with. They embraced the idea of excellence as the Greeks did, and the concept informed the education of their kings. They understood morality to emerge from the logic of excellence, as the Greeks did. They also conducted public debates on the relative merits of this or that good thing, as the Greeks also did.

 I intend next year to publish a concluding volume in the series which provides the evidence for these Assyrian and Babylonian parallels.

 After that, the jig will be up for the classicists. But I have no expectation that they will take notice of what has happened.

 One of the [key] things they have taken on board from their subject is the pursuit of excellence. They pursue this through what they understand as the rigourousness of the study of their source materials. The context of these materials, and the rest of the world, have relatively no importance for them. So why should they change their views?

Thomas Yaeger, October 18, 2018. [Reply received]