CARTHAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

CARTHAGE.

ANCIENT AND MODERN. V- • •• \}' r > ■- * f.' : - ) EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS MEETS V-- : . (By UNIOREDO.) What crowding- memories' are revived by the name of Carthage! They , are now. recalled by the holding, on the site of that ancient metropolis, of this year's International Eucharisiic Congress from May 7 to 11. The fabled and historic city is a far cry across the centuries from modern Sydney, where the last of these great religious gatherings took place in September, 1928. In the dim . dawn of misty legend, the rising towers of Carthage welcomed the visiting Ptince of Troy, and looked down, on the meeting of Aeneas with Venus, his mother "more than passing fair." There, in the near neighbourhood of pre-sent-day Tunis, Virgil set the narrative of the fall of Troy of the eon of Priam, who became the mythical founder of Rome. Carthage in History. Historical Cartfcage was built by the Phoenicians, from Tyre, in the ninth century before the Christian era. They acquired it from the former occupants of the desert, the Maxyaus. First, a citadel named Byrsa (now Byskra) was erected, and a populous town called Karthada ("the new city") grew up around it. In the course of time the Phoenician, territory expanded; by the fifth century B.C. Carthage occupied an area 23 miles in circumference, and contained about . 750,000 inhabitants. Carthaginian fleets roved the Mediterranean; and Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily were added to dominions that stretched from the Straits of Gibraltar to Cyprus. The prosperity and civilisation of Carthage aroused the jealousy of Rome. For 118 years (from 264 B.C. oqwards) the Punic wars record the fluctuating fortunes of the two contenders for mastery of . the then-known world. The first and second Punic wars, waged upon and around the Mediterranean, weakened Carthage; but Rome was not as yet undisputed mistress of the Mediterranean and of the countries touching its shores. Soon, the industry and enterprise of the Carthaginians restored the material prosperity of their State. Untiring maritime enterprise was the chief factor of its greatness. In agriculture and commerce, Carthage was the teacher of the ancient world. And its leather currency implied a banking system for which we ■must seek a parallel in the modern world. .... .. . _ • , "Delenda Est Carthago." The Romans had not forgotten that Hannibal had led his troops through Spain and over the Alps to within sight of the city some 70 years previously. In the year 157 B.C. they were forciblyreminded that undefeated Carthage was a. perpetual challenge, to Rome's desire

for undisputed world supremacy. For Cato, in his place in the Senate House, produced a fresh bunch of early, ripe figs, and throwing them on the floor, told his fellow Senators, "These figs were gathered three days ago at Carthage, so close Is the enemy to our walls." From that day forward, whatever the subject of the Senate's debate, though it bore no relation to Carthage, Cato's contribution always was, "Delenda est Carthago." Carthage must be destroyed! So, in 146 8.C., Scipio Africanus the younger, after a stiff campaign, eventually attacked Carthage with the Roman armies. The defenders, with the .courage of despair, fought from street to street. Every building was destroyed and salt thrown on the site in token of its utter destruction. So the term 'a Carthaginian peace" came to mean a ruthless one; it was applied by some to the terms imposed on The fate of the once magnificent city is said by Polybius to have moved Scipio to tears. "The day will come," he said, in the words of Homer, "when sacred Troy shall perish, and Priam and his people shall ue no more." The city of cruel Moloch and impure Tanith was completely wipec}. out. Babies were sacrificed to Moloch, and excavators m our day have found the tiny skeletons of these victims. Roman and Christian Carthage. A century later, Julius Caesar formed a project to rebuild a Roman city where Carthage had stood; his plan was carried into effect by the Emperor Augustus. By the end of the first century of the Christian era it had regained much of its former prestige as the centre o Imperial Rome's African dominions. It had a well-appointed harbour, classic buildings, and an amphitheatre and a forum as large as those beside the Tiber. In 430, the Vandals, under Genseric, overcame the city, but they did not hold it for long. The Byzantine Belisanus, commander of the Emperor Justinian's forces, captured .Carthage in 533, and it was renamed Colonia Justiniana Carthago. In 098, Carthage was taken by the Arabs. They destroyed it utterly, and it was not rebuilt. To-day, on the borders of the great Libyan desert, beside the shores of the Gulf of Tunis, miles upon miles of ruins mark the site of the proud metropolis of Northern Africa. But Carthage has a, greater fame, a, renown that has outlasted the ruins of its pagan civilisation. To-day it is unknown in the world's politics, it is far from the busy marts of commence, the desert lias almost claimed all that survives of the splendour that rivalled Antioch and Constantinople and contended with Rome for the' domination of the world. But in early Christian times, Carthage was, after Rome, the greatest glory of the infant Church. Though its streets no longer re-echo the tread of mighty armies, and silence broods over the ancient forum, the ruins of Carthage are a witness to the glories of the Faith, and the tides along the Libyan shore hymn the long-dead martyrs who suffered death in Numidia; The Christian- faith reached Africa when St. Mark the Evangelist went to Alexandria, where, later, lived the great apologists, Origen, Athanasius, and Cyril. Roman soldiers and merchants took the Gospel to Carthage. We have evidence of a flourishing communitv of Christians there in the year j 180. Tertullian, the great Christian law-1

yer of Carthage, writing about that time, said that'the progress of the Faith had been so remarkable that the time was approaching when Paganism would have no reminders but its empty temples. It had become the centre of African Christianity. In the last decade of the second century the Church was ruled by an j African in the person of Pope Victor. Cyprian and Augustine. In 239 the heroic Cyprian became Bishop of Carthage, and in the following year the edict of the Emperor Decius brought persecution and death to many of his flock. The great zeal of the bishop and his loyalty to the Roman See saved the Church in Africa from disruption. Under the persecution of Valerian, Cyprian along with others obtained the crown of martyrdom by being beheaded. A century later, Carthage welcomed the return of the great Augustine, the intellectual genius of Christianity. He had been born at Tagaste, a town in Numidia, the son of a Pagan father, Patricius, afterwards converted, and a Christian mother, the beloved Monica. Most of his life was spent in Carthage; he taught in the university during the days of his youthful dissipation, and, after passing through many struggles with the teachings of Paganism, went to Rome in his thirtieth year. He became a teacher of rhetoric in the great school of oratory at Milan, where he came "under the influence of its Bishop, Ambrose,. then the most distinguished ecclesiastic in Italy. The discourses of this great man attracted Augustine to the Christian faith, and he was baptised on the eve of Easter in 387. Incidentally, it may be recalled that the " Te Deum " is said to date from this event, its composer being St. Ambrose himself. Augustine returned to Carthage, and the remaining forty-three years of his life were spent there in the service of the Church. He died as Bishop of Hippo on August 28, 430, duriug the siege of the city by the Vandals. No bishop exercised a greater influence over his own and subsequent ages. He was the very soul and master of every movement in the Church during his years in the Episcopacy. He bore the burden of the controversies against the Donatists, the Manichaeans, and Pelagians. In Modern Times. The Christian history of Carthage is obscure from the twelfth century until the close of the nineteenth, when Pope Leo XIH. revived the episcopate in the former primatial see of the African continent. Now the memory of the great achievements in the early centuries is perpetuated in the noble Cathedral of St. Louis, which looks down from the hill of Byskra upon the ruins of the Punic city. The resurrection of Carthage is due to Cardinal Lavigerie and his White Fathers, whose vocation is to minister to the spiritual and temporal welfare of the natives of Northern Africa—the peoples of the desert, the Garden of Allah. Cardinal Lavigerie became Primate of Carthage in 1884. Besides his great missionary work, he is renowned for his suppression of the Berber slave trade. Under the direction of this great man, and largely at his expense, excavations on the site of the ancient Carthage were commenced some fifty years ago, These have extended our knowledge of the Christian life of the early centuries. The holding at Carthage of a great international gathering like the coming Eucharistic Congress has thus a very deep significance, , _