ABSTRACT
The loss of Spain’s mines and taxes, the seaborne raids during the war, and the ravaging of parts of Libya by Scipio all left Carthage in a poor state. An instalment of the indemnity, 200 talents in silver coin, paid to Rome in 199 was found to be one-fourth base metal, while a late Roman writer tells of Hannibal putting his ‘legions’ to work in Africa planting olive trees. All the same, a year after the peace, Carthage thought it best to send as a gift 200,000 bushels of grain to Rome and the same amount to the Roman troops operating in Greece once more against Philip V – gifts, incidentally, matched by Masinissa of Numidia. Politically the Barcids’ dominance was over. Carthage was governed by an anti-Barcid faction which Livy calls ‘the order of judges’, apparently a resurgent court of One Hundred and Four. For even if many of these judges were Barcid allies or at least appointees, most surely switched sides after 201, some even earlier as the Barcids’ prospects soured. Hanno the Great, their longest-lasting opponent and still active in 202, may soon have died as he is not heard of again, but his supporters – one of them is known, Hasdrubal ‘the Kid’ – probably belonged to, or were, the dominant element among the ‘judges’.
