Carthage Blog 9 - Seventh Sicilian War
- Scot Stoddard
- Jul 3
- 10 min read
Updated: Jul 20
History of the Sicilian Wars
The Sicilian Wars, or Greco-Punic Wars, were a series of wars fought between ancient Carthage and Greek city states, led by Syracuse, over control of Sicily and the central Mediterranean between 580 and 265 BC. The economic success of Carthage and its dependence on seaborne trade had led to the creation of a powerful navy, giving control over much of the Mediterranean to Carthage. The other major power vying for the rights to control over this region was the Greek city states, who wanted what Carthage had! The Greeks, like the Phoenicians, were expert sailors and had built many colonies all over the region. Tensions over trade and economics, as well as territorial, continued to build between the two powers until war broke out. Sicily, being close to the location of Carthage and the home of many Phoenician colonies, was where the battles took place.
No Carthaginian records of these wars exists today. When the Romans invaded Carthage during the Third Punic War and eventually conquered Carthage in 146 BC, all the records and history books from the Carthage library were distributed by the Romans to local North African tribes and lost forever. Carthage was sacked and totally destroyed, so very few records remain. What we do know about these wars comes from Greek scholars and historians.
Carthage had established many colonies along the coast of Sicily after 900 BC, but had never gotten very far inland. Greek colonists began arriving on the island around 750 BC. The Phoenician colonies, however, remained as independent colonies until sometime after 540 BC when they united under Carthaginian hegemony. The goal of this unity was to resist Greek encroachment on Phoenician-held territories.
The two major powers mainly peacefully coexisted in this area, trading among the independent colonies, until the height of Carthage's power in the 6th century BC. The Phoenicians defeated the Greek colonists in the first major uprising in Sicily in around 580 BC. By about 540 BC, Carthage controlled all of Sicily. Wars subsided and broke out again continually for the next 270 years, and the final war began in 311 BC; we call that the Seventh Sicilian War.
The Seventh Sicilian War
In 315 BC, Agathocles, the Tyrant of Syracuse, seized the City of Messana, present-day Messina, Then in 311 BC he attacked the last remaining Carthaginian holdout on Sicily, breaking the terms of the most-recent peace treaty, and laid siege to Akragas. Hamilcar, father of Hannibal, led the Carthaginian counterattack, defeating Agathocles in the Battle of Himera River in 311 BC. Agathocles was forced to retreat to Syracuse while Hamilcar once again conquered the remainder of Sicily! Hamilcar then, later in that same year, laid siege to Syracuse, itself.
However, victory in this regard was short-lived. In an act of desperation, Agathocles led a force of 14,000 men to the northern coast of Africa, hoping to save his rule by invading Carthage with a sneak attack. He was at least partially successful in that Carthage had to recall Hamilcar and his troops to Carthage to ward off the new threat from the Greeks, thus relieving the pressure on the Greek Sicilian colonies and Syracuse. The two armies met in The Battle of White Tunis outside of Carthage, and the Carthaginians were defeated. However, ultimate victory by the Greeks was not to be had, as they could not breach the very strong walls of the City of Carthage itself. The Greeks went on to slowly occupy the whole of Northern Tunisia until they were eventually defeated two years later in 307 BC. Agathocles returned to Sicily and negotiated a peace treaty with Carthage in 306 BC in which he retained control over half the Island of Sicily.
After Agathocles sued for peace, Carthage maintained a relatively peaceful period of control over Sicily until the Pyrrhic War, which ultimately led to the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage.
I quote from Wikipedia:
Rome's later involvement in Sicily ended the indecisive warfare amongst great world powers on the island, but only after the nearly quarter-century long First Punic War (264 bc to 241 bc) between Rome and Carthage, arguably the largest known naval engagement in world history of Cape Ecnomus, the near-bankruptcy of both Carthage and Rome, and a loss of life estimated in excess one million.
To put it lightly, while Carthage was somewhat victorious in the Sicilian Wars, the start of the Punic Wars was the beginning of the end for our Carthaginian heroes.
And on to the music!
The story of this song begins in Carthage harbor, when the Carthaginians are getting their sailing vessels ready to go to Sicily into combat with Agathocles during his siege on Akragas. You hear sounds of chains being pulled across stone to drag cargo, weapons and supplies onto sailing vessels. Heavy objects are being dropped into place. We are in the key of E minor here, a rather slow 90 bpm. There's a synth bass playing a droning low E here in the intro; we're setting up the chord chain for what will be Section 1. There's a keyboard playing a short interlude here, just sort of introducing where Section 1 is going to be headed. There's a droning bass line, followed by a descending chord chain. There's nothing at all happy about this intro; it's rather quite serious. Wars with the Greek city states have been going on for almost 300 years, and Carthage is getting beat up, worn out and broken. The mood here I believe is fitting for what's to come.
Section 1
After the intro, we're still setting up Section 1, but now playing around with the first two chords of the main chord chain at :46. The drums come in, slow and steady. The keyboard and clean/chorus rhythm guitars are now playing some broken arpeggios, and the bass guitar starts here, again with slow arpeggios, but with some chords hitting up above. The melody comes in at :58, and now we actually get the full chord chain for this section, which is:
e-7, C+7, a-7, b-7
e-7, G, a-7, B7 (dominant 7 chord this time!)
The lead guitar has the melody here, but it was written out on a violin track, and the violin is still playing, only it's quiet and panned off center to the left side. This melody is so sad it almost breaks your heart, especially if you've been following the history here in these blogs. This is tragic, the epitome of an emotional melody and chord chain designed to be just this way. It's supposed to be beautiful, yet tragic, sad, lonely, at the same time, and I think this works here very well.
The arpeggios continued on the rhythm guitars, and a pad synth plays the chords lightly behind the melody.
At 1:40 we hit the bridge, and there's the following chord progression:
C+7, a-7, D, B
e-7, C+7, D6, D#dim7
The melody continues over top.
Now there's a repeat of the opening chord chain for this section, and the rhythm guitars and drums pick up the intensity, more of a rock feeling, a bit of overdrive on the guitars to make them more emphatic. The bass is doing steady 8th notes here to hit with the rhythm guitars and kick drums.
And we build this to an end of this section and on to Section 2. Carthage is going off to war with the Greeks.
Section 2
For Section 2, we change styles and genres completely; think Michael Schenker from the late '70s kicked up a couple notches and crossed with Queensryche from the '90s. These two artists are some of my biggest influences, actually! It's an interesting but still very melodic heavier blend of styles. We've changed the bpm to 115 here, so it's slightly faster than the opening and Section 1, but not really fast.
There's an intro to the section, again, basically just playing with the first two chords of the chain, back and forth, like in Section 1. However, this time, the chords may sound more unusual. And I'll explain the voicing to you.
So the first note will be the biggest string in this example, and going up to the higher strings, left to right.
E-E-G-G-B-E
E-D-F#-G-B-E
E (muted) A-E-A-C-E (just a root position A minor chord)
E-C-E-G-B-E
The cognoscenti will recognize this little trick, especially since I've mentioned Michael Schenker here. I've learned this trick years ago from his track "Desert Song" from his Assault Attack album, and also from years of trying to copy Alex Lifeson of Rush, who uses a lot of open chordings. Hit the Desert Song link there, there's a video, and you can see exactly what Michael is doing there, and I'm doing the same kind of thing on this song. For three out of the four chords in this progression, I'm only changing the position of two fingers (those highlighted in red), and the bottom E and the top G-B-E stay open, only you don't play all the strings all the time, but let them ring out when you want them to! So the E-G to D-F#, then an A minor, then C-E, you see it. The drums are solid, the bass is steady, and there's a pad synth playing mainly roots and thirds here.
Anyways, we go through this chord progression in this style, lead guitar has the melody, go through a couple passes, then there's a bridge, just a few simple chords, but it's nice, the lead continues. Then back to the opening chord progression a couple more times, building up into Section 3, with the lead being my best Michael Schenker impersonation!
This whole section is meant to be a buildup to show the rising tensions of the Carthaginian forces as they cross the Mediterranean to Sicily to begin the Battle of Himera River.
Section 3 is the battle, itself!
Section 3
There's nothing other than a very heavy riff here, repeated, showing the violence and bloodshed of a long war. The lead guitar reeks of havoc and chaos with multiple huge bends, divebombs, screeches, something that sounds like a European ambulance siren, and just insanity, as happens in any battle.
Last summer, my wife, Cat, bought an 8-string guitar, and I had messed around with it a very little bit, but talked to her about using it on this track in this very spot just for this specific riff. I won't get into how 8-string guitars are tuned, because there's a lot of variations there. But Cat keeps hers so that the biggest string is tuned to F. Now, that string is almost a full octave down below your low E string in standard tuning on a 6-string guitar. But my song was in E, so I dropped it down even lower to an E, a full octave below the E on your six string. Then I ran it through my Boss Metal Zone MT-2 with a heap of drive dialed up, highs cut, into the clean channel on my tube amp with the gain cranked up halfway. And it just sounds mean, almost depressingly evil and full of malice. Exactly what I was looking for. The second-to-final battle between the Greek city states and Carthage is on, full force. Carthage will win, but not for long.
The battle ends, the Greeks retreat to Syracuse, the Carthaginians lay siege to Syracuse, and then Agathocles leads his troops to go to sack Carthage. There's a bit of lull in the battles, exemplified by Section 4.
Section 4
Section 4 is just a brief interlude, a transition to Section 5, and is meant to show this calm before the Carthaginians find out that Agathocles has gone to attack Carthage. This is basically a repeat of the introduction, with a little bit of lead guitar, only now it's faster, we're still at 105 bpm, and it's more urgent, hastened.
Section 5
Section 5 is another heavy riff, so back to the 8-string guitar, only this time there's a couple 6-strings with moderate overdrive hitting and holding some suspended chords along with the riff. This is a galloping type of riff meant to depict the two armies once again charging into battle, only now they're just outside of Carthage at the Battle of White Tunis. No leads here, just a heavy riff, the pad plays a chordal figure up high for added tension. And that brings us back to a reprise of Section 1.
Section 6
Section 6 is a reprise of the main melody once again, and it's faster now, from the original 90 to 105 bpm, demonstrating the urgency of the situation. Hamilcar was defeated at the Battle of White Tunis, and things aren't going well for Carthage, so that same tragic, sad melody as before, only it's more intense. Carthage manages to hold on, but heavily damaged, beaten up, and a peace treaty is signed. End of this part of the story. I have the violin mixed louder here in this section than in the opening section, to me it just makes it sound even more lonely, tragic and broken, desperate and crying out in pain and anguish.
Conclusion
This was one hell of a project, this track, and really, this entire album. I put a lot of emotion into that Section 1/6 melody, and I hope you can feel the sympathy I have for Carthage through the emotion of those parts. I don't want to spoil the end of our story, but I'll just say there's a lot more of this coming in the tracks Hannibal (10), Third Punic War (11) and Fall of Carthage (12). None of these tracks were released as singles, so you haven't heard them yet. I would advise that you play them when the blogs come out. Stay tuned, it's going to be a hellacious ride.
Fittingly, the main theme of Fall of Carthage is one of the most emotional sections I've ever written. After 15 months of study, research, watching endless historical videos, reading countless articles and pouring my soul into this album, I got to the end. And my heart hurts for Carthage. They were a magnificent people and contributed so much to modern societies, only to be overshadowed and destroyed by Rome. The last track, for me, is hard to listen to without tearing up. But we'll get there.
I'd like to wish everyone a very happy Independence Day. As a reward for anybody who reads this far and is a fan of my music, head over to the Carthage page, there's a music player there with a "Download Album" button, so get a free download of the album and enjoy it over your holiday weekend. Send me a video of you drinking a beer, or whatever it is that you enjoy, and listening to the album during your celebration; I'll put it up on the site of share it in my socials. But get the album, and please listen all the way through. There's a donate button there if you'd be kind enough to leave me something, I appreciate you all. You are why I do this.
До следующего раза!
Comments