In the centre of Carthage stood a temple, sacred to the spirit of Elissa, the foundress, and regarded with hereditary awe by the people. Round it stood yew-trees and pines with their melancholy shade, which hid it and kept away the light of heaven. Here, as it was reported, the queen had cast off long ago the ills that flesh is heir to. Statues of mournful marble stood there—Belus, the founder of the race, and all the line descended from Belus; Agenor also, the nation’s boast, and Phoenix who gave a lasting name to his country. There Dido herself was seated, at last united for ever to Sychaeus; and at her feet lay the Trojan sword. A hundred altars stood here in order, sacred to the gods of heaven and the lord of Erebus. Here the priestess with streaming hair and Stygian garb calls up Acheron and the divinity of Henna’s goddess. The earth rumbles in the gloom and breaks forth into awesome hissings; and fire blazes unkindled upon the altars. The dead also are called up by magic spells and flit through empty space; and the marble face of Elissa sweats. To this shrine Hannibal was brought by his father’s command; and, when he had entered, Hamilcar examined the boy’s face and bearing. No terrors for him had the Massylian priestess, raving in her frenzy, or the horrid rites of the temple, the blood-bespattered doors, and the flames that mounted at the sound of incantation. His father stroked the boy’s head and kissed him; then he raised his courage by exhortation and thus inspired him:

“The restored race of Phrygians is oppressing with unjust treaties the people of Cadmean stock. If fate does not permit my right hand to avert this dishonour from our land, you, my son, must choose this as your field of fame. Be quick to swear a war that shall bring destruction to the Laurentines; let the Tuscan people already dread your birth; and when you, my son, arise, let Latian mothers refuse to rear their offspring.”

With these incentives he spurred on the boy and then dictated a vow not easy to utter: “When I come to age, I shall pursue the Romans with fire and sword and enact again the doom of Troy. The gods shall not stop my career, nor the treaty that bars the sword, neither the lofty Alps nor the Tarpeian rock. I swear to this purpose by the divinity of our native god of war, and by the shade of Elissa.” Then a black victim was sacrificed to the goddess of triple shape; and the priestess, seeking an oracle, quickly opened the still breathing body and questioned the spirit, as it fled from the inward parts that she had laid bare in haste.

The Carthaginians lost the First and Second Punic Wars. Years later they were defeated in a third and final war with Rome.

ATTIS AND THE MOTHER GODDESS

‘Poem 63’

Catullus