The long-term confrontation between the two great powers of their time, the powerful Carthage and the gaining strength of Rome, went down in history as the Punic Wars, a total of three in 118 years of official conflict, from 264 to 146 BC. After the Third Punic, Carthage, as Cato the Elder persistently urged, was still destroyed, but the second war was the most intense with heroic events: this is Hannibal, this is the transition on elephants across the Alps, this is a daring attempt to beat Rome on its own territory and the terrible defeat of Carthage in the battle of Zame.
The events and outcome of the Punic Wars are well known from ancient Roman sources: each of the three wars ended with the victory of Rome, and the final defeat of the only major competitor allowed the Roman Republic to freely extend its influence over the entire Mediterranean and subsequently become the empire that would change the course of world history for centuries.
However, Rome owes its rapid ascent not only to military victories - any army first of all needs funding. More recently, the question "where did the money come from?" historians could only answer with quotations from ancient Roman authors - for example, about the huge contributions that Carthage was forced to pay to Rome, or about the territories conquered from Carthage with their natural resources. Now German and Danish chemists have presented not "paper", but quite material proof of the rise of Rome at the expense of the occupied lands.
The defeat in the Second Punic War deprived Carthage of all overseas territories, including the Iberian Peninsula. The Romans gained access to local sources of silver, which Carthage used to actively use, and even earlier - Tartess: Spanish silver regularly enriched those who owned the mines.
Modern scholars tracked the transfer of control over Spanish silver deposits from the Carthaginians to the Romans quite simply: they analyzed the composition of 70 Roman coins issued from 310 to 101 BC, that is, during all three Punic wars with the capture of the previous and subsequent decades.
The participants of the German-Danish geochemical project presented their findings at the Goldschmidt 2017 conference in Paris in August, according to the IB Times.
“Roman coins issued before the Second Punic War are made of the same silver as the coins of Greek cities in Italy and Sicily: the 'signature' of the lead isotopes in their composition indicates the origin of the metal from the Aegean region,” says Catherine Vestner (Katrin Westner, a geochemist at Goethe University of Frankfurt.
However, in coins minted after 209 BC, the isotope signature changes to that of the south of Spain, directly pointing to the mines "freshly conquered" by the Romans. In 209 BC, the Second Punic War was far from over, but a significant event took place: the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio captured New Carthage (the modern city of Cartagena in Spain). Three years later, the Romans controlled all the Carthaginian possessions on the Iberian Peninsula. A few years later, in 202, Scipio will defeat Hannibal himself at the Battle of Zama and will become famous for centuries under the name Scipio Africanus. His adopted grandson, Scipio Aemilian Africanus, will win the Third Punic War and wipe Carthage from the face of the earth.
Promotional video:
Silver coin with the profile of Hannibal or the god Melkart from New Carthage (Cartagena), the era of the Second Punic War, 221-206. BC. Photo from coinarchives.com
“After the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War, Rome received a huge contribution from the defeated, many rich booty and control over the Iberian silver deposits. Beginning in 209 BC most Roman coins bear the geochemical signature of Iberian silver,”states Vestner.
The acquired wealth gave a powerful impetus to the expansion of Rome and laid the foundations for the formation of the future empire.
“The abundant influx of Iberian silver significantly changed the economy of the Roman Republic, allowing it to become the superpower of its time. We knew this from the historical writings of Titus Livius, Polybius, and others, but our study provided modern scientific evidence for the rise of Rome. The defeat of Hannibal and the rise of Rome are literally recorded in the silver coins of the future empire,”Vestner summed up.
She is echoed by Kevin Butcher, professor at the University of Warwick (UK): “This study clearly shows what a significant contribution to historical research can make an instrumental scientific analysis of ancient coins. Before we had only reasonable assumptions about the importance of Spanish silver for the Roman treasury and coinage, but now they have a solid material basis.