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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2025
Carthage should be a name to conjure with.
Yet ‘delenda est Carthago’ has received more than literal fulfilment. Even the Punic wars of which we heard so much as schoolboys have faded from men’s memories, and perhaps few of us would care to have to date them from memory.
Some few weeks ago there appeared in the papers a notice to the effect that a F ranco-American archaeological expedition was being fitted out for the fuller, excavation of the great city of Hannibal and Scipio, of Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine, ‘celsa Carthago,’ ‘civitas ampla et illustris.’ One newspaper report before us speaks of the ‘ruins of Carthage which have for so long been at the mercy of casual souvenir-hunters, speculative builders and Arab tribesmen.’ It might be gathered from this that little or no systematic excavation of the site had been carried out of late. Archaeologists, of course, know better. They are well aware of the wonderful work done by Père Delattre who for many years has toiled among the ruins, and who, despite scanty funds and little support, has enriched our knowledge as well as the museums of Carthage. It would be idle to summarise his work here. Suffice it to say that he has laid bare various Punic cemeteries, which have afforded us a glimpse of early Phoenician civilization such as would never else have been suspected. He has also done much to extend our knowledge of Christian Carthage. Now, it is of Christian Carthage that we want to learn more. An archaeologist, perhaps inevitably, wants to get back as far as he can; it is a human instinct. But we should like to urge the present expedition to concentrate its efforts on Christian rather than Punic Carthage.
1 So important—and, alas, so scattered—are Père Delattre's archæological publications that even so far back as 1895 M. le Marquis d'Anselme de Puisaye published an Etude sur les diverses publications du R. P. Delattre, Paris, Leroux. See, too, the Chronique archéologique africaine in, the Revue africaine, 1893 and the following years.
2 The best summary, with admirable illustrations, of these Punic discoveries will be found in Miss Mabel Moore's Carthage of the Phoenicians, 1905. The various cemeteries unearthed are apparently portions of one and the same vast place of interment which stretched from Dermech (the Arabic equivalent of the Roman ‘Thermae’) up to the hill of St. Louis. But they fall into three sections: the necropolis of Douimes which is the oldest and markedly Egyptian in many respects, that of St. Louis on the hill-side and marking the transition between Egyptian and Greek art, and that of the Bord-el-Djedid which is the richest of the Punic cemeteries and seems to have been the aristocratic quarter. See, too, P. Gauckler, Necropoles Puniques, 2 vols., Picard, 1915.
3 Carthage, Paris, 1896, p. 107.
4 Ep. ad Petrum et Joannem, P.L. OXLIII. 729.
5 The bodies of SS. Felicitas and Perpetua were here interred, hence in the Acta of the second Synod of Carthage it is called the Basilica Perpetua Restituta. Its name Restituta may be derived from a Neapolitan martyr named Restitutus or from Restitutus, bishop of Carthage, at whose funeral St. Augustine preached according to Possidius in his life of the saint. It is possible, however, that the name has an. even more interesting derivation and that like the basilica at Uzala it was called ‘restituta’ because after being long held by the Donatists it was at length restored to the Catholics, see Baronius, Annals, A.D., 397. St. Augustine preached at least five sermons here, viz. Sermons 19, 29, 90, 112 and 277.
6 Cf. Tissot, La Voie Romaine de Carthage à Hippone, 1881.
7 ‘In Africae capite et notissima civitate Carthagine,’ so Augustine, De Baptismo, II. 16. For the peculiar rights for electing its bishop, similar to those at Rome, see Augustine, Breviculum Collationis, 29.
8 Ep. CII, 31.
9 Cf. Babelon, Carthage, p. 108; Berger, Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1893, p. 104; Delattre, Notes Archéologiques, 1892–3, p. 3.
10 The withdrawal of the sea, or rather the encroachment of the river deposit, is very remarkable on this coast, see Carton, Questions de topographie de Carthage, 1919.
11 See Musées et Collections Archéologiques de l'Algerie et de la Tunisie..
12 Post-Collationem, 52.