Our surviving samples of Carthaginian literature—namely, the Greek translation of the Periplus of Hanno (Ἄννωνος περίπλους) and a few fragments from the agricultural treatise of Mago—have unfortunately reinforced the view, expounded by the likes of B. H. Warmington, that the art of writing in the Punic world was unappreciated, unsophisticated, and the product of a “primitive age.” Both examples obviously deserve more attention. The first of these, the Periplus, describes a naval expedition beyond the Pillars of Heracles (Gibraltar) led by a certain Hanno. Sections seem to be missing from the already-brief Greek text that has been handed down to us, but it nevertheless shows clear signs of having been translated from Phoenician. More significantly, its introduction establishes that its contents derive from an inscription put up in the temple of Kronos (corresponding to the chief Carthaginian deity Baal Hammon). Displaying documents in temples was a common practice, as several inscriptions indicate:
“The men who are in charge of the temple… shall inscribe this resolution on a gold stele and erect it in the portico of the temple in public eye.” (Piraeus in Athens, c. 300)

“This bronze plaque, which I inscribed and affixed to the wall [of the temple of Melqart], records my gift.” (Lapethos in Cyprus, c. 275)

“In honor of his great deeds, [this] noble family has preserved his memory month by month in the temple of Isis and stored [there] his account written on a tablet.” (Carthage, date uncertain) Note: at the time, this was based on my own reading of RÉS 13/236.7-8: bkbd t‘ṣmty ’dr šph sk[r yrḥ md] yrḥ bt ’s w’bt spry ktb bps. Février and Krahmalkov respectively rendered the second bt as “engraved” and “written,” which defies its standard usage (“place,” “dwelling”) and was redundant given the following ktb (“written”). “Housed” or “stored” appeared more appropriate, although I have since changed my opinion after further study.
The tablet (pr) mentioned at the end of the third inscription apparently refers to another record beyond a single engraving and may be related to the registers or chronicles (ktbt dbr hbt, “record of the affairs of the house”) which Phoenician families meticulously kept from generation to generation. This lends some explanation as to the brevity and truncated-appearance of the Periplus; the text in our possession is, in fact, an abridgement of Hanno’s initial report. The official copy must have been deposited in another part of the temple or, more probably given the circumstances, in the state library. Conversely, the version presented to the public could celebrate Carthaginian accomplishments without dispensing any sensitive state secrets—a propaganda piece, so it seems. One might consider the case of Hannibal Barca, who employed first-rate Greek historians throughout his campaigns yet still felt it necessary to inscribe a res gestae (later to be read by Polybius) before retreating from Italy in 205.

The Romans spared the Carthaginian state library when they leveled the city in 146, distributing all the works within to the local African kings. Sometime in the late first century, the original Periplus apparently reached the eyes of Juba II of Mauretania, who promptly published a work entitled The Wanderings of Hanno (αἱ Ἄννωνος πλάναι)… Less than a century later, Pliny the Elder perused the commentarii (presumably translated) written by Hanno himself. Often lost in the discussion is also the accompanying account of Himilco, the brother of Hanno, who explored the areas surrounding the British Isles around the same time as the events of the Periplus. If the fourth-century A.D. poet Avienus is to be trusted, Himilco’s report was later incorporated into the Annals of Carthage (Punicorum annales), the only direct testimony we have to Punic historiography.

The other known specimen of Carthaginian literature, the twenty-eight volume agricultural encyclopedia of the ex-general Mago, bears a unique status as the only work to have been translated from Punic into Latin by decree of the Roman Senate immediately following the fall of Carthage in 146 B.C. Mago’s wisdom remained highly-rated throughout antiquity, and his reputation led a certain Cassius Dionysius of Utica to furnish a twenty-volume Greek translation sometime during the first century, although Varro says this amounted to only eight books of Mago; Diophanes of Bithynia reduced that number to six after he, in turn, abridged Cassius Dionysius. All the same, the fragments contain such mundane suggestions as to the ideal time for planting almond trees or the types of slaves a landowner should purchase. Warmington has thus asserted with a tinge of prejudice that only “works of this practical nature… will have appealed to the money-conscious Carthaginians.”
…Several scholars have already noted that the decision by the Senate to preserve Mago’s manual seems like a calculated political attack against the cantankerous Cato the Elder, the chief advocate for the destruction of Carthage who had, shortly prior, authored his own De agricultura. As Véronique Krings observes, “such a maneuver makes sense only in a cultural and political context in which De agricultura itself carried a political meaning and perhaps represented something akin to a party manifesto.” We must therefore keep in mind that Mago, too, did not operate in a vacuum. Not unlike the fourth-century demagogue and war hero Hanno “the Great”, Mago amassed his fortunes from farming after retirement from military service. His work catered to a specific segment of the Carthaginian aristocracy, those oligarchs and senators who increasingly invested their city’s future in Africa, and provided them the knowhow for retaining their influence in the face of changing economic realities. These individuals, content as they were upon their plantations and keen to avoid any foreign entanglements, might have saved Carthage from its untimely demise had the vengeful Barcid generals not entered the scene in the third century.

Besides Avienus’ vague allusion to the Annals of Carthage, the issue remains whether the Carthaginians ever produced true works of historiography. We should answer this question by posing another: to what extent were the classical writers willing or able to utilize material from “barbarian” sources? We have just seen that many Greeks and Romans eagerly sought the advice of Mago, while the existence of a Greek translation of the Periplus, known as early as the fourth century to the historian Ephorus of Cyme, implies interest in that as well. All of this presupposes, of course, that at least a handful of educated Greeks and Romans understood the Phoenician-Punic language. On the other hand, a larger proportion of Carthaginians were bilingual, and we cannot discount the possibility that they themselves commissioned the majority of the translations—whether Greek, Latin, or Punic—that circulated in antiquity. Charles R. Krahmalkov has even proposed that the Roman playwright Plautus, who inserts genuine Punic dialogue (“as foreign gobbledygook”) into his comedy The Little Carthaginian (Poenulus), extracted these lines from an earlier Carthaginian translation.
Yet the historian Timaeus of Tauromenium (c. 350-c.260) boasted about the effort and expense he incurred in acquiring Phoenician documents for his research, vividly illustrating an instance where a Greek took the initiative to make sense of “barbarian” literature. Timaeus could very well have enlisted the assistance of the Phoenician community at the Piraeus during his fifty-year Athenian exile. We can confirm from fragments that he used this data to paint a remarkably accurate account of the foundation of Carthage, which he placed in “the thirty-eighth year before the first Olympiad”—that is, 814/3 B.C.—during the reign of King Pygmalion of Tyre. This is independently corroborated by Menander of Epheus, who in the second century translated the Annals of Tyre (Τυρίων ἀρχεῖα) into Greek. A Carthaginian tomb has also yielded a pedant bearing a dedication in archaic Phoenician script to Ashtart, the patron goddess of the Tyrian royal family, and King Pygmalion himself: “For Ashtart! For Pygmalion! Yadamilk, son of Pidiya, a soldier who was equipped by Pygmalion.” Most recently, radiocarbon dating has tentatively assigned the earliest settlement of Carthage to the late ninth century.
While little else of Timaeus’ work has survived, Diodorus of Sicily does draw extensively from it in his first-century universal history (Βιβλιοθήκη ἱστορική). New research has shown, however, that Diodorus was a competent historian in his own right—not, as was previously held, a clueless compiler who quoted his sources verbatim. It will suffice to say that we cannot dismiss the possibility that Diodorus could have integrated unreferenced material or personal research throughout his work. This matter has been considered and rejected by Lionel Sanders, who attributed Diodorus’ detailed knowledge of Carthaginian affairs to the pen of Philistus of Syracuse, citing the latter’s role as an official diplomat and secretary; but Sanders forgets that Philistus must have had informants and sources of his own. In analyzing “fragments,” we must not limit ourselves to known authors and should focus, instead, on where our information ultimately derives, be it hearsay or the testimony of some anonymous barbarian.

A single sentence, in fact, raises the likelihood that either Diodorus or one of his sources (Timaeus?) utilized the Annals of Carthage. The passage in question comes from the concluding part of Diodorus’ narrative of the Sicilian campaign of 406 involving the Carthaginian generals Himilco (Ἰμίλκας) son of Gescon and Hannibal (Ἀννίβας) son of Hanno: “Himilco, leading his army at dawn within the walls [of Akragas], put to death practically all who had been left behind—yes, even those who had fled for safety to the temples the Carthaginians hauled out and slew.” Diodorus proceeds to describe the pillaging that ensued. A parallel report, however, appears in a Punic inscription: “The generals Adnibaal son of Gersakun the rb [=general] and Himilkot son of Hanno the rb marched at dawn and seized Agrigentum [=Akragas], and they [the Agrigentines] made peace, including those that fled.” Krahmalkov, who deciphered the inscription and believes it reflects the original source for the Greek account, notes that a simple misreading changes its meaning entirely, thereby explaining Diodorus’ statement on pillaging: “…[the Carthaginians] seized Agrigentum, and they set loose looters and murderers.” In relation to the rest of the inscription, these lines of text look to have been extracted from some longer work, leading Philip C. Schmitz to characterize this specimen as “a fragment from the archives of Carthaginian historiography, and a witness to other sources now lost.”
This carries obvious implications for how we approach Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus’ now-lost Philippic History (Historicae Philippicae), which, among all our extant sources, provides the only semblance of a continuous narrative for Carthaginian history. Justin, by his own admission, only excerpted stories which he found entertaining or practical, and the surviving table of contents for Trogus’ work (the Prologues or Prologi) correspondingly reveal that enormous portions of the Philippic History, especially those dealing with Carthaginian affairs, have been left out altogether. This prompted Gilbert Picard to state rather bluntly: “No fact attested by Justin alone can be considered trustworthy.” Yet such skepticism seems excessive if we assume that Trogus, at least, faithfully followed his sources. Furthermore, even if Justin did exclude much of the Philippic History in his epitome, we usually have little reason to suspect that he flagrantly falsified information or deliberately misrepresented the words of Trogus. For all his shortcomings, Justin gives the Carthaginians a voice where they would otherwise have none. This is all the more significant if traces of Punic historiography filtered into his account.