| Dorekim Bashetulim (Carthaginian Settler Infantry) | |
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![[defaults to 250]px](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/europabarbarorum/images/d/dc/EB2_Blastophoenicians.png/revision/latest?cb=20160619081135) Dorekim Bashetulim (Carthaginian Settler Infantry) | |
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Flexible infantry drawn from former Carthaginian mercenaries, allies and their descendants. They can be relied upon to defend their homeland and to hold the line of battle, but are also useful for harassing and flanking the enemy.
Description[]
These men of different ethnicities (Numidian, Libyan and Sardinian) used to be mercenaries and allied soldiers of Carthage, but have now been rewarded by the Carthaginians with lands in the southwest of the Iberian peninsula, where they have formed their own cities in which they are their own magistrates. These rights will be inherited by their descendants, most of them fruit of the union between these new Semitized citizens and native Phoenician and Turdetanian women. Their treaty with Carthage entails that these men should protect the zones of Carthaginian influence throughout their new lands, which are located in strategic locations near the borders with hostile Lusitanians, Vettones and western Oretani. These land grants are also linked to the essential routes that lead to the gold, silver and copper mines on the Iberian Peninsula, as well as to the coastline and the inland routes from where Carthage can get mercenaries from peoples like the Celtiberians.
These men, who live as soldier-farmers, are always ready to take up arms to protect their interests and the Carthaginian affairs, though only for as long as war does not result in a forced move to distant lands in the form of long invasions, since they already have their own comfortable homes and hearths. Nevertheless, their civic mentality and their mercenary past make them good soldiers and their Hellenistic panoply (with a few native elements), formed by metal helmets, linothorakes, greaves, shields, javelins, spears and swords, makes them able to fight as either heavy infantry presenting a solid line or as light infantry protecting the flanks and harrassing the enemy army.
Sometimes, to increase the number of available forces, these communities can fight together with their native Phoenician neighbours, i.e. with recruits from cities like Gadir or Malaka whose ancestors founded several Phoenician cities on the Iberian Peninsula centuries ago.
Ignoring those Phoenician cities which were founded by the inhabitants of Phoenicia in the X-VII centuries B.C. (e.g. Gadir), there was a second Punic flood to the Iberian Peninsula through the arrival of the Barcid family: the historical sources show that Hasdrubal imported 50,000 infantrymen and 6,000 cavalrymen, while Hannibal added even more men to the list of settlers. Many of them were settled in the proximities of Gadir and the Turduli-Baeturia (the part that wasn't inhabited by the Celtici-Lusitanians). In this way they formed new Punic communities that probably and eventually were called "Blastophoenician", i.e. the Phoenicians who inhabited the territory of the Bastuli (like the Liby-Phoenicians, who were Phoenicians who inhabited Libya). One should not confuse the Bastuli(Blastophoenicians according to Appian) with the Bastetani (an Iberian people), a mistake Strabo probably made because of the similarity of the two names (Strabo, III, 4,1). The Bastuli inhabited the proximities of the Strait of Gibraltar (Pliny, NH, III, 8,19) and eastern Baeturia, whereas the Bastetani lived a little further east (in what is currently eastern Andalusia). Ptolemy (II, 3,6) placed the Bastuli in the same area where Pliny said that they lived and additionally called them Punics; in fact the Blastophoenicians were foreign settlers like Numidians, Lybians and Sardinians that eventually assimilated into the Semitic culture of southern Iberia, once they'd been settled there.
These communities persisted after the Second Punic War and, like the older city-states, minted their own coins, on which they used Latin and a Neo-Punic language with its own anomalies. These anomalies appeared because the Semitic language wasn't their native tongue, but a lingua franca: these communities were in origin composed of different ethnicities, but shared a common Punic culture from when they had lived with Carthaginians and adjacent Phoenician cities in Spain. Some of these new communities were Asido, Lascuta, Baila, Oba, Iptuci, Turricenina, Arsa and Vesci and their coins give the image of organized communities that used terms like "sb'l/'sdn", which means the "the citizenship" or "the curia of Asido". Whichever form is correct, these coins reveal that the new cities kept a Punic administration, even after the defeat of Carthage and its loss of influence in Spain. \n\nAmong the actions of these communities should be noted a pro-Punic revolt, in which they weren't the leaders, but only a component of the uprising. In the year 197 B.C. there was a rebellion against Rome, lead by Culcha and Luxinius in which "[...] the powerful cities of Carmo and Baldo were with Luxinius and [...] on the coast, the Malacini and Sexetani [Phoenicians from the cities of Malaka and Seks] and all Baeturia and other states which had not yet disclosed their intentions would soon rise to join the revolt of their neighbours" (Livy 33,21). In other words: the places that were inhabited by the ancient Phoenicians and the last settlers settled down by the Barcid family were involved, which shows that these Punics were still militarized after the Second Punic War (from 218 to 201 B.C.) and that their position was something similar to a cleruchy.
About the first Phoenician colonization in the Iberian Peninsula should be noted that it was coordinated by the main cities from Phoenicia, such as Tyre. When Nebuchadnezzar captured the city in 573 B.C. however, its socio-economic links with other cities from Spain like Gadir collapsed. Due to the end of the Phoenician sovereignty, a new phenomenon ocurred amongst the Phoenician settlers: they terminated their connections with the palatial aristocracy and the temple of Tyre, while a new western oligarchy appeared. At this juncture Gadir got the political hegemony amongst its Phoenician neighbours (Malaka, Seks, Abdera, Carteia etc.) and after the battle of Alalia (535 B.C.) and the end of the Phocean thalassocracy the western Phoenicians founded a league lead by Gadir. In this way the oligarchs (large landowners, ship owners and wealthy merchants) formed the magistrates (like in many poleis around the Mediterranean), coordinated the trade (based on salting) with Carthage and Athens and also established good relations between their cities and Carthage (until the end of the Second Punic War), supported by oligarchical family ties, mutual trading objectives and the necessity of Iberian mercenaries, whom these cities facilitated. Finally, these elites, together with other population strata like craftsmen and farmers, prompted an agricultural and a mining colonization inland. These groups of population and the abundant fishers of the region were surely used by Carthage: they were part of the sailors who were defeated by Romans in the battle of the Ebro river and, after that, the ones who rebelled against Carthage in the year 216 B.C. (the rebellion of the Tartesii; Livy 23,26)