Hobbled Recovery and Numidian Pressure

Postwar Carthage did not crumble. It traded. It paid. It prospered—in ledgers. Wharfside at the cothon, bales moved and coin clinked, talent after talent shipped toward Rome. The city’s markets thrummed from Byrsa down to the quays. But the navy stayed small, and elephant yards lay empty, as the 201 BCE treaty prescribed [6], [19]. Masinissa of Numidia, Rome’s ally at Zama and now king over restless tribes east and south of Carthage, understood the treaty’s mechanics. He probed with raids, grazed herds across disputed fields, and occupied slices of land near Oroscopa and along the Bagradas. Each provocation forced Carthage either to endure loss or to ask Rome for permission to act [20]. Requests for arbitration sailed north to the Tiber. The oarlocks creaked; the answers crept. Roman envoys heard both sides in Utica, at Cirta, and in Carthage itself, often delaying or splitting decisions. As parcels shifted hands, Masinissa’s cavalry—light, fast, and confident—made faits accomplis in the tawny scrub beyond the city’s walls [19], [20]. At home, Carthaginian politics recalibrated. Merchants thrived; soldiers idled. Tax receipts covered the indemnity and civic projects, but a city barred from war grew brittle in its frontier. The blue of the Gulf of Tunis tempted with trade ships; the green of nearby fields reminded everyone that wealth without secure land was vulnerable. In the Roman Senate, voices like Cato’s grew sharper. Each Carthaginian petition, each Numidian encroachment, became evidence for a claim that a rich Carthage was a dangerous Carthage—even one caged by treaty. The quiet prosperity of the 180s and 170s BCE thus carried a faint drumbeat from afar.