Carthage (from either a Phoenician Qart-Hadasht "New City" (written forswearing vowels when QRT HDŠT קרת חדשת), was an ancient city around North Africa located on the eastern side of Lake Tunis, across from either a center of modern Tunis in Tunisia. It remains the popular tourist attraction.

Founding of Carthage
Around or so 814 BC, Carthage was founded by Phoenician settlers from a city of Tyre, bringing with a two the city-god Melqart. Traditionally, a city was founded by Dido, & the total of foundation myths use at times survived across Greek and Roman literature. (Watch Byrsa for one case.)

Carthage's early years were defined by an extended competition between a landholding & marine families. In the main, ascribable the city's dependence in marine trade, a marine faction controlled a food & drug administration, and in the period of the 6th century BC, Carthage began to acquire dominance on top a American Mediterranean. Merchandiser & explorers established the brobdingnagian network of trade, bringing wealth & power to the city-state. In the early 6th century BC, Hanno the Navigator is supposed to have sailed down the African coast, mayhap when far when Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, under a leader known as Malchus, a city began a orderly conquest of two the African interior & the coastal lands.

Per beginning of the 5th century BC, Carthage was the commercial center of the vicinity, the position it would locate until overthrown per Roman Republic. A city experienced conquered a territory of the old Phoenician colonies, like Hadrumetum, Utica and Kerkouane, and a Libyan tribes, spreading its control along the N African coast from either modern Morocco to the borders of Egypt. Its influence got as well spread into a Mediterranean, by owning control above Sardinia, Malta, the Balearic Islands and the western half of Sicily. Colonies got besides been established around Iberia.

Life in Carthage

Carthaginian Commerce
A early futures trading empire of Carthage depended heavy in its trade using Tartessos and other cities of the Iberian peninsula, from either which it found brobdingnagian quantities of silver and, even additional importantly, tin ore, which was essential to the manufacture of bronze objects by the civilizations of antiquity. Carthage followed trade routes already established by her parent city, Tyre. While Tartessos fell, a Carthaginian ships went directly to the primary sources of tinside in the northwestern part of the Iberian peninsula & farther northerly, in Cornwall in the British Isles. More Carthaginian ships went down the Atlantic coast of Africa & brought back gold from either Senegal. the single account has the Carthaginian futures trading vessel researching Nigeria, including identification of distinguishing geographic features, like a coastal volcano & an encounter by having gorilla gorilla. (Look at Hanno the Navigator.) Non-permanent trade relations were established when far west as Madeira and the Canary Islands, and when far south when southern Africa.

In case a heroic poetry of Greece & a contemporary historiographer of majestic Rome record a military opposition of Carthage to the forces of the Greek city-state, & down the road to Rome, so these are a lot to the Greek theatre & Greek comedies that we are indebted for depictions of the generic Carthaginian merchandiser, hawking textile, pots and jewelry. He was commonly portrayed as an amusing villain, the comparatively peaceful & colourful day trader out to making the profits & cheating lord however clean-handed Greeks of each spare penny it may develop. Excavation indicate grounds to believe of 100% kindthe exchanges, from either a brobdingnagian quantities of tin required for a bronze-depending metals civilization to 100% manner of fabric, ceramics & ticket metalwork. Prior even to & around between a wars Carthaginian merchandiser were inside each port inside the Mediterranean, purchasing & merchandising, establishing storage warehouse in which it can, or good bargaining in open-air markets when having off their ship.

A Etruscan language has not however been deciphered, however archeological excavations of Etruscan cities indicate that a Etruscan civilization was for several centuries a client & the marketer to Carthage, yearn prior to the rise of Rome. A Etruscan city-states were, at days, two commercial partners of Carthage & military allies.

Carthaginian Government
Carthage's government was an oligarchy, not unlike that of republican Rome, but couple details come known. Roman writers referred to its heads of state when reges "kings"; Punic inscriptions & Greco-Hellenic accounts indicate a endemic term was Sōfield-effect transistorīone thousand "Judges" (a equivalent title early rulers come given in a Bible), which will originally use at times been the title of the city's governor installed per mother city of Tyre. Late, of these sōfield-effect transistor even or deuce sōfetêm, world health organization were believed to keep around exercised judicial & executive (but not military) functions, were elected annually from either among a virtually all moneyed & influential families. These sternotherus families were represented within the supreme council like to the Roman senate that had the wide range of powers. Still, these are non known whether a sōfield-effect transistorīm were elected by this council or even by an assembly of the population. Although a city's administration was firmly controlled by oligarchs, popular elements were to exist as encountered too: Carthage experienced elected legislators, brotherhood & town meetings. There wwhen a body of checks & balances, besides as public answerability: the Head of the Admiralty would own to pay sustaining his life for military kill.

Eratosthenes, head of the Greek library of Alexandria, noted that the Greeks experienced been incorrectly to describe entirely non-Greeks when barbarians, since a Carthaginians too when the Romans got a constitution. Aristotle also knew and wrote all about a Carthaginian constitution inside his Politics (Book 2, Chapter 11).

Carthaginian Religious Practices
Carthage under a Phoenicians was ill-famed to its neighbors for child sacrifice. Plutarch (ca. 46-120 CE) mentions the practice, when run Tertullian, Orosius and Diodorus Siculus. Livy and Polybius do not. Modern archaeologic excavations can be taken to confirm Plutarch's look at. Inside one tyke memorial park known as a Tophet an estimated 20,000 urns were deposited between 400 BC and 200 BC, with a practice continuing until a early years of the Christian time. A urns contained a charred bones of newborns & inside occasionally events a bones of foetus & Two-month-olds. These remains use been interpreted to mean that in the legal actions of stillborn babies, the parents would sacrifice their immature little one. There is a clear correlation between a frequency of sacrifice & a easily-upbeat of the city. Around bad days (war, unfortunate harvests) sacrifices became extra frequent, indicating an increased assiduity within shopping for divine calming.

These are periodically argued, still, that these bodies were simply a cremated remains of youngsters that died naturally, although around weak of more Canaanite evidence this seems less in all likelihood. A couple of Carthaginian texts which stand survived produce absolutely there is no mention of toddler sacrifice. It has been argued by a bit of modern scholars that grounds to believe of Carthaginian toddler sacrifice is unelaborated at the best & that these are far supplementary in all likelihood to own been section of Roman propaganda against the Carthaginians to justify their conquest & destruction. A debate is on-going among modern archaeologist & more antiquary.

When the living Punic texts mention there are no practices of religious sacrifices, it is detailed plenty to give the portrait of the super easily organised caste of temple priests & acolytes performing different types of functions, for a kind of cost.

Carthage got several gods. A supreme divine few was that of Tanit and Ba`al Hammon. Priests were clean and jerk shaven, unlike virtually all of the people. In the 1st centuries of the city ritual celebrations involved rhythmical dance, from either Phoenician traditions. A goddess Astarte seems to have been popular around early days. At a height of its cosmopolite era Carthage seems to own hosted a big array of divinities from either a neighboring civilizations of Greece, Egypt & the Etruscan city-states.

Conflict with the Greeks and Romans

First Sicilian War
Carthage's profits led to the creation of the mighty navy to discourage each pirates & rival nations. This, coupled by using its profits & growing hegemony, brought Carthage into increasing conflict sustaining a Greeks, the more great power contending for control of the central Mediterranean.

A island of Sicily, prevarication at Carthage's threshold, became a arena in which this conflict played out. From either their earliest times, two the Greeks & Phoenicians got been attracted to the big isl&, establishing a heavy total of colonies and general store along its coasts. Little battles experienced been fought between these settlements for centuries.

By 480 BC, Gelon, the tyrant of Greek Syracuse, backed in section by Greek trend lines, was attempting to unite a island under his rule. This impending threat may not exist as ignored, & Carthage - possibly as a share of an alliance by having Persia, then engaged within a war sustaining Greece - fielded its big military group up to now, under the leadership of the general Hamilcar. Traditional accounts give Hamilcar's army the nature and severity of ccc thousand men; though which are actually about surely exaggerated, it must even so use been of formidable inflict.

On the way to Sicily, still, Hamilcar suffered losses (even severe) due to unfortunate weather condition. Landing at Panormus (modern-contemporary Palermo), he was then decisively defeated by Gelon at a Battle of Himera. He was either flushed within a period of the battle or even committed suicide in shame. A loss severely weakened Carthage, & a old government of entrenched nobility was ousted, replaced per Carthaginian Republic.

Second Sicilian War
By 410 BC Carthage had recovered under the series of successful rulers. It experienced conquered tremendously of modern day Tunisia, strengthened & founded fresh colonies around N Africa, and sponsored Mago Barca's journey through a Sahara Desert and Hanno the Navigator's journey down the African coast. Although, in this season, a Iberian colonies seceded—cutting off Carthage's major supply of silver and copper—Hannibal Mago, the grandson of Hamilcar, began preparations to reclaim Sicily, when expeditions were too led into Morocco and Senegal, and likewise into a Atlantic.

Inside 409 BC, Hannibal Mago set retired for Sicily using his click. He was successful around capturing a little cities of Selinus (modern Selinunte) and Himera, before giving triumphantly to Carthage by having a spoils of war. However a primary enemy, Syracuse, remained untouched, & within 405 BC Hannibal Mago led a second Carthaginian expedition, this instance to claim a island within its totality. This period, yet, he met sustaining fierce trend lines & ill-fortune. When you took a siege of Agrigentum, the Carthaginian forces were ravaged by plague, Hannibal Mago himself succumbing to that. Although his successor, Himilco, successfully extended a campaign by breaking a Greek beleaguering, capturing the city of Gela and repeatedly defeating the army of Dionysius, the freshly tyrant of Syracuse, he, as well, was weakened per plague & forced to sue for peace before returning to Carthage.

Around 398 BC, Dionysius had regained his nature & severity and broke a pacification, striking at a Carthaginian fastness of Motya. Himilco responded decisively, leading an expedition which non simply reclaimed Motya, however as well captured Messina. Eventually, he placed military blockade to Syracuse itself. A beleaguering met sustaining groovy profits throughout 397 BC, but within 396 BC plague again ravaged a Carthaginian forces, & it collapsed.

Sicily by this instance got get an obsession for Carthage. Above the next lx years, Carthaginian & Greek forces engaged around a constant series of brush. By 340 BC, Carthage had been pushed totally into a sou'west corner of a isl&, and an uneasy peace reigned above the island.

Third Sicilian War
Around 315 BC Agathocles, a tyrant of Syracuse, seized the city of Messene (present-day Messina). Inside 311 BC he invaded a previous Carthaginian holdings in Sicily, breaking the terms of the todays peace, & placed beleaguering to Akragas.

Hamilcar, grandson of Hanno the Navigator, led the Carthaginian response & met by having wow profits. By 310 BC he controlled almost 100% of Sicily & experienced placed beleaguering to Syracuse itself. Inside desperation, Agathocles secretly led an expedition of 14,000 men to the mainland, hoping to save his rule by leading the counterstrike against Carthage itself. Therein, he was successful: Carthage was forced to recall Hamilcar & virtually all of his army from either Sicily to face a fresh & unexpected threat. Although Agathocles' army was yet defeated around 307 BC, Agathocles himself escaped back to Sicily and was entity to negotiate the peace which maintained Syracuse as a fastness of Greek power around Sicily.

Pyrrhus of Epirus
Between 280 BC and 275 BC, Pyrrhus of Epirus waged two major campaigns around an effort to protect & extend a influence of a Greeks in the american Mediterranean: of these against the emerging power of the Roman Republic to defend the Greek colonies inside southern Italy, the more against Carthage in the renewed attempt to wrest Sicily all from either their control.

When winning a complete triumph all over Rome at Heraclea, & a second complete eventually super costly triumph at Asculum, Pyrrhus was shortly distracted by chance inside Macedonia which got recently been invaded per Galatians, & the Greeks of Sicily. Making a irregular peace sustaining the Romans he left for Sicily & between 278-276 BC, defeated each Carthaginian inflict against him. Pyrrhus potentially managed to require Eryx, a strongest Carthaginian holdout. Eventually at Lilybaeum, a Carthaginians were respire to survive against Pyrrhus, & a encroacher, presently encountered that he was there are no yearn welcome per Greek Sicilians. Allowing over again for Italy, he fought the Romans once again to a draw. Non getting a resources & hands to prove my point, Pyrrhus left for Epirus. For Carthage, this intended the link to to the status quo. For Rome, but, it intended capturing Tarentum and holding the integrality of Italy. a symptom was a shift around the balance of power in the american Mediterranean: the Greeks were profits reduced to their toehold in Sicily, when Rome's growing nature & severity and territorial ambitions brought it directly into conflict using Carthage first.

The Messanan Crisis

Once Agathocles died within 288 BC, a big company of Italian soldier of fortune world health organization experienced antecedently been held within his service discovered themselves suddenly forswearing employment. Like than leave Sicily, it seized a city of Messana. Naming themselves Mamertines (or "sons of Mars"), it became a law unto themselves, terrorizing a encompassing countryside.

the Mamertines became a growing threat to Carthage & Syracuse similar. Around 265 BC, Hiero II, former general of Pyrrhus & a freshly tyrant of Syracuse, took action against the babies. Faced by owning a immensely superior click, a Mamertines divided into ii factions, a single advocating surrender to Carthage, the more preferring to search help from either Rome. Following, embassies were sent to two cities.

When a Roman Senate debated the better course, the Carthaginians thirstily agreed to send a garrison to Messana. a Carthaginian garrison was admitted to the city, & the Carthaginian fleet sailed into the Messanan harbor. But, before long later it began negotiating by using Hiero; alarmed, a Mamertines sent a second embassy to Rome request a two to expel the Carthaginians.

Her intervention got positioned Carthage's military unit directly through a narrow channel of water supply that separated Sicily from either Italy. Furthermore, a presence of a Carthaginian fleet gave the children effectual control across this channel, the Strait of Messina, & demonstrated the clear & present danger to nearby Rome and her interests.

Following, the Roman Assembly, although reluctant to ally by owning a band of soldier of fortune, sent an expeditionary inflict to link to control of Messana to the Mamertines.

The Punic Wars
A Roman attack on a Carthaginian forces at Messana triggered the foremost of the Punic Wars. Across a course of a next century, these iii major conflicts between Rome & Carthage would determine the course of Western culture.

The First Punic War (264 BC to 241 BC) The Second Punic War (218 BC to 201 BC) The Third Punic War (149 BC to 146 BC)

Rome systematically triumphed on top Carthage in a period of the Punic Wars. A prevent of a Third Punic War resulted in the prevent of Carthaginian power & the complete destruction of the city by Scipio Aemilianus: Roman soldiers went from home to home, slaughtering a population of Carthage & enslaving any world health organization survived. Carthage's harbor was burned & a city demolished.

Between the 1st & a 2nd Punic war, Carthage faced a major mercenary revolt.

These are disputed whether a Carthaginian farmland was salted following the Battle of Carthage.

Roman Carthage
a places was as easily well-happy to let it attend waste, but, & a newly city grew higher there, sooner or later becoming the 2nd big city in the american half of the Roman empire. Per late Second century, Carthage was a center of the Roman province of Africa, with a population of on top 400,000 people. It briefly became a capital of an supplanter, Domitius Alexander, in 308-311.

Carthage too became the centre of early Christianity. Tertullian rhetorically addresses a Roman governor by owning a fact that the Christians of Carthage that good yesterday were couple within total, today "have filled every place among you—cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palaces, senate, forum; we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods." (Apologeticus written at Carthage, c. 197.) It is worth noting that Tertullian omits any mention of the circumferent countryside or even its network of villas non unlike compound hacienda society.

In the number 1 of the string of like badly reported Councils at Carthage two or three years late, there is no fewer than 70 bishops attended. Tertullian late broke by using a mainstream that was represented other & other per bishop of Rome, however a further good rift among Christians was the Donatist controversy, which drew in the young Augustine of Hippo while he finished his educatiin at Carthage before moving on to Rome. Inside 397 at the Council at Carthage, the Biblical canon for the western Church was confirmed.

a political fallout from either a deep disaffection of African Christians was a important factor out the ease by having which Carthage & the more centres were captured in the 5th century by Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, who defeated a Byzantine general Bonifacius and made a city his capital. Gaiseric was considered the heretic as well, an Arian, and though Arians unremarkably hated Catholic Christians, the mere promise of toleration may keep around caused the city's people to assume him. Fallowing a failing attempt to recapture the city in the 5th century, a Byzantines eventually subdued the Vandals in the 6th century. Applying Gaiseric's grandson's deposal by the distant full cousin, Gelimer, as a pretext, a Byzantines dispatched an army to conquer the Vandal kingdom. In Sunday, October 15 533, the Byzantine general Belisarius, accompanied by his wife Antonina, made his formal entry into Carthage, sparing it the sack & the massacre.

In a period of the emperor Maurice's reign, Carthage was made into an Exarchate, as was Ravenna in Italy. These ii exarchates were a american walls of Byzantium, tons that remained of its power in the west. In the early 7th century, it was the Exarch of Carthage, Heraclius (of Armenian origin), who overthrew Emperor Phocas.

A Byzantine Exarchate was non, but, entity to withstand a Arab conquerors of the 7th century. A foremost Arab assault on the Exarchate of Carthage was initiated from either Egypt without much profits around 647. The extra extended campaign lasted from either 670-683. Inside 698 the Exarchate of Africa was finally overrun per rising forces of Islam.

Carthage in Fiction
''Hannibal's Children'', an alternate history novel, about the Carthaginians.