SOURCE: Kropp, Sonja Dams. “Language Dynamics: The Carthaginian Exploitation of the Mercenaries in Flaubert's Salammbô.” Dalhousie French Studies 53 (winter 2000): 42-8.

[In the following essay, Kropp emphasizes how Carthaginian leaders manipulate the Barbarians by exploiting their naïve “belief in the transparency of language.”]

In 1862, following five years of extensive study of documentary evidence and two trips to the Orient, Flaubert published his second novel, Salammbô. The story, set in the ancient Punic universe around 240-238 B.C., is based on an account in Polybius. It recounts the war between Carthage and its mercenaries who, after returning from their battle with Rome, are denied their wages. In the end, the hired soldiers are annihilated by their Punic general, Hamilcar. Parallel with the depiction of this war runs “the story of attraction” between Salammbô—daughter of Hamilcar—and Mâtho, a Libyan commander.

Initially, Flaubert had intended to introduce his work with a survey of the Republic's politico-social structure, a project he later abandoned as the information was selectively integrated in the narrative. The notes for “Un chapitre inédit de Salammbô,” published by Max Aprile in the Club de l'Honnête Homme edition of the novel (hereafter CCH), contain a detailed analysis of Carthaginian civilization. Here, Flaubert only refers in passing to Carthage's reliance on hired soldiers in order to fight its greedy wars. The drafts for the novel pertaining to mercenary recruitment, though, emphasize the ruthless character of an imperialist power whose wealth was bought with the blood of others:

Il lui fallait des soldats. Elle en achetait aux Barbares […]. Elle profitait à la défaite des peuples étrangers—chaque conquête, en expulsant des hommes, lui fournissait à meilleur compte. Quelquefois une armée périssait, vite on en formait une autre—la chair des Barbares était toujours à vendre […].

(CHH II:287)

In Salammbô, the representation of the Barbarians' condition reveals Carthaginian strategies manipulating the fighters' lack of verbal sophistication. The language of authority, powerful because of its dynamic capacity to operate ambiguity, falsification and equivocation, creates the mercenary means for exploitation.

Emphasis on the manipulative capacity of language immediately brings to mind the character of Spendius, whose persuasive effectiveness is largely responsible for the Barbarians' engagement in a full-blown war with their Carthaginian employer. However, the agitator's success is based on the identity of his mercenary audience already molded by Carthage. Prior to any conflict, the superiority of the Republic over its hired soldiers is alluded to in terms that signal linguistic maneuvering.

In a scenario for the second chapter of the novel, “À Sicca,” Flaubert comments on the facility with which the Mercenaries agree to leave Carthage: “Différencier les deux espèces d'hommes: la ruse punique, la naïveté barbare” (CHH II:314). This reflection is integrated in the final text: showered with promises of taxes to be levied in order to pay and repatriate them, the Barbarians “ne savaient que répondre à tant de discours; […] on n'eut pas mal à les convaincre, et le peuple monta sur les murs pour les voir s'en aller” (68).¹ The narrator's insistence on the opposition of Carthaginian ruse versus Barbarian naïveté is based on language—with the civilized realizing its slippery nature and the primitive believing in its transparency. A reconstitution of the mercenary's profile reveals how Carthaginian strategies, using language to change and shift meaning, guarantee profitable exploitation and simultaneously further the Barbarians' naïveté.

The commitment of the mercenary to endure the rigid discipline of the Republic's oppressive regime is mainly motivated by dreams of wealth. In the story, the Mercenaries, returning from Sicca to Carthage upon Hannon's empty-handed visit, are overconfident after being reassured that they will receive their arrears of pay. They increase their demands to include tents, horses, silver coins and even “des vierges choisies dans les grandes familles” (119). While this last request appears outrageous enough for the Carthaginians to interrupt the negotiations, the narrator justifies the Barbarians' behavior:

La mauvaise foi des Mercenaires n'était point aussi complète que le pensaient leurs ennemis. Hamilcar leur avait fait des promesses exorbitantes, vagues il est vrai, mais solennelles et réitérées.

(119)

The cupidity of the Barbarians is explained as the consequence of vague promises made by their Carthaginian general, promises that correspond to dreams inciting these men to risk their lives in the first place: “On savait que de simples soldats avaient porté des diadèmes, et le retentissement des empires qui s'écroulaient faisait rêver le Gaulois dans sa forêt de chênes, l'Éthiopien dans ses sables” (119).

If Hamilcar, in manipulating the soldiers' imagination, sustains the intensity of their bravery by vague promises of wealth, he is only able to do so because of the Republic's deliberate decision to keep its mercenary army “on site,” away from the metropolis where ostentatious luxury betrays the real beneficiaries of the Mercenaries' spent courage. While living in isolation with their general for an extended period of time, the legionaries develop a sense of security under his command, and they have blind faith in his loyalty. Hamilcar's appearance at the head of the Carthaginian troops following Hannon's defeat and Giscon's capture does not at all worry the Mercenaries. According to them “il revenait pour accomplir ses promesses,” a reflection on which the narrator comments: “espérance qui n'avait rien d'absurde, tant l'abîme était profond entre la Patrie et l'Armée” (234). Even when observing Hamilcar's routine of giving orders to his Punic soldiers, the Barbarians who had previously fought under him fail to recognize the true character of the scene, and they are moved by memories of his leadership: “Alors plus d'un se rappela des matinées pareilles, quand, au fracas des clairons, il passait devant eux lentement, et que ses regards les fortifiaient comme des coupes de vin. Une sorte d'attendrissement les saisit” (266). The Mercenaries identify the army with a surrogate homeland, an inclination that is first provided by their perception of Hamilcar as a commander who will lead them to the wealth they covet, then enhanced by their sense of belonging to the troops of a charismatic general. Their isolation creates a climate in which mercenary allegiance evolves to equal that of a soldier fighting for his own country. Consequently, by hiding its parasitic motives, the Republic promotes optimal fighting conditions.

For the Carthaginians, the recruitment of mercenaries amounts to nothing more than a simple business transaction. They consider the soldiers a commodity, and calculate the efficiency of their troops with a keen mercantile spirit. In his Histoire romaine, one of the historical sources consulted by Flaubert for his fictionalized account of the Mercenary revolt, Michelet describes the process in the following terms:

La vie d'un marchand industrieux, d'un Carthaginois, avait trop de prix pour la risquer, lorsqu'il pouvait se substituer avec avantage un Grec indigent ou un Barbare espagnol ou gaulois. Carthage savait, à un drachme près, à combien revenait la vie d'un homme de telle nation. Ce tarif du sang bien connu, Carthage commençait une guerre comme une spéculation mercantile […].

(Quoted in CHH II:463)

The Carthaginian perception of a hired soldier in terms of a commodity receives emphasis via the description of Giscon's reimbursement of the Mercenaries. The general and his assistants “read” the body of a soldier in order to determine its value as they would any other merchandise. Depending on the number of years the Barbarians have been enlisted, “on les marquait successivement au bras gauche avec de la peinture verte” (121), only to verify these marks in function of the deteriorated bodies. A Lybian who claims to have served twelve years is caught as he lacks the physical evidence that would substantiate his claim: “Giscon lui glissa les doigts sous la mâchoire, car la mentonnière du casque y produisait à la longue deux callosités; on les appelait des caroubes, et avoir les caroubes était une locution pour dire un vétéran” (121). The narrator's explanatory comment concerning the identification of the liar contains two features underscoring the banality of the expression “avoir les caroubes.” Introduced by the phrase “on les appelait […]” and its italicized form, the statement is integrated in the Carthaginian realm of le déjà-parlé.

In his study of Madame Bovary, Claude Duchet indicates how italicized text affects the representative effort:

Dans tous les cas l'italique sert doublement l'illusion réaliste, puisqu'il actualise une parole et renforce le caractère objectif de l'énoncé en lui donnant une seconde assise, en désignant un imposé du texte, un matériau langagier originel qui paraît échapper à l'arbitraire du romancier. Il instaure ainsi dans le récit un espace de référence extradiégétique, un hors-texte du texte, le déjà parlé de la société du roman.

(365)

Typographical designation in the text of an idiomatic expression underscores the tenuous nature of the mimetic enterprise; it indicates that capturing a reality is in part reduced to the repetition of a discourse, appropriated through the subjective perspective of those who experience this reality. In Salammbô, the invented cliché “avoir les caroubes” expresses the extent to which the Carthaginian view of the Mercenaries as a commodity has pervaded its society.

At the moment of reimbursement, the Mercenaries also boast about the condition of their bodies to obtain higher wages. Some soldiers enter Giscon's tent, and in order to persuade the general, they force him to examine their scarred bodies: “Ils prenaient ses mains, lui faisaient palper leurs bouches sans dents, leurs bras tout maigres, et les cicatrices de leurs blessures” (122). Giscon's visit to the Barbarians resembles the final stage in meeting the obligations of a contract agreed upon by both parties, with each side admitting to the commercial value of the human body. However, the legionaries' adoption of the body as a commodity, if motivated by their own materialistic concerns, also bears the imprint of the exploiter's manipulation: strategies of control over the mercenary army, using shifting language, indirectly influence the Barbarian sense of identity.

Despite their sharing of a common objective and a common allegiance with their commander, the Mercenaries constitute a fragmented group. Michelet notes how this fragmentation, arising from the soldiers' diverse origins, is consciously preserved by the Carthaginians who separate the Barbarians in units according to language and religion: “Les différents corps d'une armée étaient isolés entre eux par la différence de langue et de religion” (quoted in CHH II:464). In his account of the Mercenary revolt, Polybius explains this strategy as a Carthaginian precaution against organized rebellion: “[D]es troupes ainsi ramassées ne s'ameutent pas sitôt pour s'exciter à la rébellion, & les Chefs ont moins de peine à s'en rendre maîtres” (quoted in CHH II:471). However, with language being confined, the effectiveness of such separation is enhanced by the limitations it imposes on the soldiers' creation of meaning and on the evaluation of their condition.

The Barbarians' preservation of native customs is repeatedly underscored throughout the narrative. From the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator, of the Carthaginians or of the Mercenaries themselves, the diversity of races is portrayed via particular customs: the way people dress, set up camp, bury their dead, etc. These accumulated descriptions produce paradigms revealing stereotypical representations of the cultures involved. Fighters of Northern Europe, for instance, include the Gauls, who appear at the orgy “aux longs cheveux retroussés sur le sommet de la tête” (46). Setting up camp, “[ils] se firent des baraques de planches” (78). The Celts, burying their fellow fighters according to native rites, “regrettaient trois pierres brutes, sous un ciel pluvieux, au fond d'un golfe d'îlots” (324). Within the narrative, such portrayal suggests that the Barbarians, being exposed to diverse customs, might identify other units in function of evidence referring to native heritage. As I hope to show, though, the Mercenaries' perception of their own and other cultures is profoundly contaminated by the discourse of the exploiter.

Lacking the verbal sophistication to detect shifting and ambiguous language, the soldiers are forced to rely on sight and sound in order to identify their foreign companions. The description of the different cultures participating in the orgy at the beginning of the novel may illustrate the process:

On entendait, à côté du lourd patois dorien, retentir les syllabes celtiques bruissantes comme des chars de bataille, et les terminaisons ioniennes se heurtaient aux consonnes du désert, âpres comme des cris de chacal. Le Grec se reconnaissait à sa taille mince, l'Égyptien à ses épaules remontées, le Cantabre à ses larges mollets.

(45)

The narrative voice of the passage, ascribable to an omniscient narrator, may also be attributed to the Mercenaries. Not only does the agent “on” suggest that those who are present are familiar with the ambiance (commanders and Carthaginians are absent from the feast); moreover, the reliance on sound and sight in order to convey cultural diversity is characteristic of the soldiers' limited perception. The comparisons of desert-like consonants to “des cris de chacal,” and of Celtic syllables “bruissantes comme des chars de bataille,” contain imagery that betrays the war-dominated world of reference in which the Barbarians are immersed. Identification of native heritage is based on a specific strength associated with each race, and the Mercenaries perceive of their companions' native culture only insofar as this culture distinguishes their qualities as warriors. This perception implies a process of signification that foregrounds the soldiers' view of each other in terms that echo those of their military exploiters. Classification based on external signs is inscribed in a discourse prefiguring the identity of the individual as a commodity.

On the battlefield, the Barbarians distinguish their fellow fighters from Carthaginian cadavers by identifying tattoos on the body of slain companions:

On reconnaissait les Mercenaires aux tatouages de leurs mains: les vieux soldats d'Antiochus portaient un épervier; ceux qui avaient servi en Égypte, la tête d'un cynocéphale; chez les princes de l'Asie, une hache, une grenade, un marteau […] et on en voyait dont les bras étaient couverts entièrement par ces symboles multipliés, qui se mêlaient à leurs cicatrices aux blessures nouvelles.

(324)

Symbols of nations in whose service a mercenary previously fought, tell the story of his life and, providing information that cannot be communicated through language, reduce this story to the individual's sacrifice of his body (cf. the scars) for the imperialistic motives of a powerful government. Recognition is based on the reading of signs that are engraved on the body in a manner reminiscent of the branding of cattle. The inscriptions, simultaneously facilitating and controlling the Barbarians' production of meaning, imply the abdication of native subjectivity to that of the exploiter.

Adoption of the language of authority leads to the loss of self-identity. The Mercenaries, angered by Hamilcar's “defection,” demonstrate their rejection of the Carthaginians by adopting Roman symbols that represent the enemy against whom they previously fought. Approaching Spendius's army, the Punic soldiers, descending into a valley, “aperçurent devant eux, à ras du sol, des louves de bronze qui semblaient courir sur l'herbe” (264), a distorted impression which the narrator explains: “C'était l'armée de Spendius; car des Campaniens et des Grecs, par exécration de Carthage, avaient pris les enseignes de Rome” (265). Aside from suggesting Spendius's potential for falsification, the scene demonstrates how the renunciation of the current employer finds expression via identification with an opposing power.

The representation of the mercenary identity—anchored in that of the subjugating Republic—exemplifies a process of exploitation that, in the bourgeois setting of nineteenth-century France, will victimize Félicité in Un cœur simple. Shoshana Felman defines the servant's simplicity in terms of her adherence to a natural order of things whose only foundation is the language of authority controlling her identity by keeping her illusions alive:

Si Félicité est simplement vraie, c'est en tant que victime soumise à un ordre social qui l'exploite et qui lui avait appris—au moyen d'un langage d'emblèe ordonné, autoritaire, hiérarchique—à accepter comme allant de soi fausse évidence, d'un « ordre des choses », de réalité naturelle.

(161)

Both the Mercenaries' and Félicité's naïveté is prefigured by their appropriation of a reality that is formulated by those who represent the established order. In the portrayal of nineteenth-century French society, the exploiting character of bourgeois ideology may escape the occidental reader who readily identifies with its structure. In Salammbô, the language of authority, written in part on the body of the mercenary soldiers, emerges on the surface of the narrative, thus foregrounding the mechanism that operates the abdication of subjectivity.

The Barbarians' adoption of the discourse of their employer implies the inability to discern the connoted meaning of the marks on their bodies, or their less-than-human status acquired in the process. For the Mercenaries, signifiers collide with referents, and interpretation is limited to denotation. Hamilcar's strategies in order to outsmart the Mercenaries clarify further the soldiers' system of signification. They illustrate the general's success, guaranteed by his opponents' belief in the transparency of signs.

From early on in the novel, it is suggested that the Punic commanders—those who know the Barbarians well—rely on slyness in order to control them. During “Le Festin,” Giscon, fearing a riot following his refusal to give the drunken Mercenaries the “vases de la Légion sacrée”—cups belonging to an exclusive Carthaginian militia—, avoids any entanglement: “Il songeait que son courage serait inutile contre ces bêtes brutes, exaspérées. Il valait mieux plus tard s'en venger dans quelque ruse” (52). The nature of such ruses is revealed via Hamilcar's handling of the mercenary enemy.

Driven to the walls of Carthage, the Punic army only manages to enter the city thanks to a stratagem of Hamilcar which diverts the attention of the Barbarians. The general dismounts his prized stallion and sends it back to the Mercenaries. The latter, baffled by this gesture “pendant qu'ils s'écartaient, tâchaient de l'arrêter ou regardaient tout surpris” (399), give the Carthaginians the opportunity to escape. The Barbarians' reaction confirms their expectation of a certain order of things, since they consider the horse as inseparable from its master: “C'était un étalon orynge qu'on nourrissait avec des boulettes de farine, et qui pliait les genoux pour laisser monter son maître. Pourquoi donc le renvoyait-il? Était-ce un sacrifice?” (399). In addition, surprise is provoked by the visual effect of a staged incident, thus revealing the soldiers' heavy reliance on manifest signs in order to create meaning, a characteristic underscored by yet another of Hamilcar's tactics.

While attempting to penetrate the city during the siege of Carthage, the Mercenaries climb the exterior walls, and find themselves in front of a second wall, in which beams and stones alternate in pattern reminiscent of a chessboard. The narrator comments: “C'était une mode gauloise adaptée par le Suffète au besoin de la situation; les Gaulois se crurent devant une ville de leur pays. Ils attaquèrent avec mollesse et furent repoussés” (371). Hamilcar's ruse is based on the Gauls' sensitivity to tangible evidence that metonymically refers to native identity, prior to the enlistment in the mercenary army. Nostalgic weakness results from the confrontation with signs that produce a visual resemblance to the known, an observation that is confirmed by the description of Autharite's nostalgia, provoked by his view of the desert void of sunshine:

Souvent, au milieu du jour, le soleil perdait ses rayons tout à coup. Alors, le golfe et la pleine mer semblaient immobiles comme du plomb fondu […] et le Gaulois, les lèvres collées contre les trous de sa tente, râlait d'épuisement et de mélancolie.

(165)

The landscape resembles the grey and foggy atmosphere of Northern Europe and stirs the Gaul's emotion.

Both the Mercenaries' confrontations with Hamilcar's horse and with the Carthaginian wall underscore the significant contribution of the visual element for the success of the general's ruses. They illustrate how the Barbarians' system of meaning is based on the immediate association of visual signifiers with one unique, firmly established meaning. The soldiers' faith in the denoting value of the “Gaulmade wall” neutralizes any possibility of discerning its connoting value—its inauthenticity, an assertion confirmed by Autharite's real tears caused by his distorted perception of the desert. Confrontation with signs that literally escape the world of reference with which the Mercenaries are familiar (such as Hamilcar's horse separated from its master and running in the opposite direction of its assumed place) provokes surprise and an inability to act. Consequently, Hamilcar's tactics, defining Carthaginian ruse as the manipulation of the Mercenaries' sign system, confirm the soldiers' unfamiliarity with the slippery nature of language.

Semiotically, the Mercenaries' production of meaning constitutes a process in which signifiers collide with referents. Void of any connotation, interpretation of signs is reduced to their affirmation of an assumed never-changing reality.

In “L'effet de réel,” Roland Barthes demonstrates how the impression of reality, aimed at by realist writing, is enhanced by the inclusion in the fictional text of descriptive elements that resist integration into the narrative. Representation of superfluous detail, such as Madame Aubain's “baromètre” in Un cœur simple, insures the production of the referential illusion on the part of the readers. Familiarity with such objects enhances the perception of the fictional text as corresponding to a known reality. The barometer has no other function but to affirm “I am reality”: “[L]a carence même du signifié au profit d'un seul référent devient le signifiant même du réalisme: il se produit un effet de réel, fondement de ce vraisemblable inavoué qui informe l'esthétique de toutes les œuvres courantes de la modernité” (88).

Flaubert, acutely aware of the slippery nature of language, repeatedly portrays characters who are not. In Madame Bovary, Emma's naïveté resulted from her belief in the reality of idealized romances, read within the walls of the convent school she attended. In Salammbô, the Barbarians' inability to recognize the staged nature of Hamilcar's ruses is exteriorized via their association of visual signifiers with referents. The ignorance of the mercenary soldiers results from their faith in the fixed meaning of signs, regardless of the context in which they appear. Both Emma and the collective “character” of the Barbarians, exemplifying within the narrative the belief in the transparency of language, actualize the effect of such adherence and demonstrate the process of being caught by the referential illusion.

Throughout the portrayal of the Barbarians' condition prior to their involvement in the war with the Republic, the opposition of ruse versus naïveté emerges as the foundation for successful exploitation. Spendius's success, later on in the novel, will be made possible largely because of his infiltration of the resulting structure. Filling the vacuum left by Hamilcar's leadership, the agitator will manipulate Carthaginian ruse as well as Barbarian naïveté in order to realize his own objectives. In Madame Bovary, Emma's belief in the transparency of signs affected only herself and her family; in Flaubert's second novel, Salammbô, the danger of such belief is underscored via its expansion on a massive scale, ultimately resulting in the total annihilation of the Mercenaries.

Note

1. All Salammbô quotes are taken from the Garnier edition.

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. “L'effet de réel.” Communications 11 (March 1986): 84-89.

Duchet, Claude. “Signifiance et in-signifiance: le discours italique dans Madame Bovary.” La production du sens chez Flaubert. Ed. Claudine Gothot-Mersch. 10/18. Paris: U.G.E., 1975. 358-79.

Felman, Shoshana. La folie et la chose littéraire. Paris: Seuil, 1978.

Flaubert, Gustave. Œuvres complètes. 16 vols. Eds. Maurice Bardèche et al. Paris: Club de l'Honnête Homme, 1971-76.

———. Salammbô. Paris: Garnier, 1970.