Carthaginian armies usually included a large proportion of mercenaries that were recruited from virtually any part of the ancient World. This set depicts some of these men, with several different groups represented.

To begin with, the detail on these figures is not good. What there is cannot be described as clear and it is therefore quite tricky to identify the origins of the costumes. None appear to be Celts, which were a significant part of many Carthaginian armies, but there would seem to be figures in Greek style costume, some from the Iberian Peninsula and some that look more like Liby-Phoenician troops. As such this is a fair mix of the sort of troops Carthage called upon, but naturally you don't get many poses of each type in a set with only eight poses to begin with.

The choice of poses is neither imaginative nor particularly well executed, though we have seen worse. In particular we could not decide what the man with the falcata sword (second figure on top row) was supposed to be doing. This man has been given an extremely small base, and is consequently very unstable. However the man with his spear over his head leans so far to his right that no amount of bending would persuade him to stand.

Eight spears have been provided, but only six are required by the figures. The spears are thick and quite crude, and do not fit in the ring hands (we had to split the hands open to do the scans). Four shields are also provided as shown above, yet from the position of their left arm it would seem that many more figures than that require one, and indeed most infantry at the time would have considered a shield as an essential item. The design of the shield on the bottom row does not seem appropriate for any of these troops at this period.

As with most of the HYTTY sets we have reviewed, there is a tremendous amount of flash around these figures. We also have doubts about some aspects of the costume that they wear, and we are left with the conclusion that this is a far from impressive set.