Mathos

Mathos was a leader of the rebel mercenaries and subject peoples in Carthage’s Mercenary War. After Carthage failed to settle arrears owed to troops from the First Punic War, Mathos helped lead a brutal revolt in North Africa before being defeated by Hamilcar Barca.

Mathos was born in Libya and died in Carthage. Mathos became one of the principal commanders of the mercenary revolt after the First Punic War and helped sustain the siege of Carthaginian positions in Africa; captured after Hamilcar Barca’s final victories, he was publicly executed at Carthage.

In Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbo, Mathos, one of the rebel leaders, becomes obsessed with Salammbô, the daughter of Hamilcar Barca, while the theft of a sacred veil draws her into the political and religious crisis around Carthage.