Milqart à Carthage et la politique barcide

Abstract

Widely attested in the private sphere, where he appears to have been especially popular, the cult of Milqart in Carthage plays a particular role within the civic framework: his status as tutelary deity of the mother city, Tyr, and his functional proximity with Herakles, make of Milqart an important element of Carthaginian foreign policy. The Punic wars allow for an analysis of the way Milqart/Herakles’s personality serves the political and military objectives of the African metropolis, especially through the development of a Hellenistic policy: this, destined to adjoin the vital forces of the Greek world in the secular conflict which opposes Carthage and Rome, will reach its peak with the Barcids. This analysis reveals how Milqart’s image under the influence of the Heraklian iconography evolves in a martial sense under the Barcid’s perspective of a militarization of Carthage’s sociopolitical structure.