Carthage, << KAHR thihj, >> was one of the greatest cities of ancient times. A wealthy trading center, it stood on a peninsula in northern Africa, near the present city of Tunis, Tunisia. Carthage was one of the colonies founded by Phoenician merchant seamen as a trade and shipping outpost. The Phoenician name for Carthage is Karthadasht, meaning new capital or new city. Legend says that Dido, daughter of a king of Tyre, a city in Phoenicia, founded Carthage. The story of her tragic love for Aeneas, a Trojan prince whose family founded Rome hundreds of years later, is sung in Virgil’s poem, the Aeneid.
Importance.
Carthage grew quickly because of its location on a peninsula and its two excellent harbors. One harbor was inside the city walls and was large enough to shelter hundreds of military vessels. The city was well protected. A wall about 40 feet (12 meters) high and 30 feet (9 meters) wide stretched across the peninsula. Another wall enclosed the Byrsa, an inner fortress.
Carthage was probably the first city-state to conquer and control an empire. Much of western North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, and the western half of Sicily came under Carthage’s rule.
History.
According to tradition, colonists from Tyre founded Carthage in 814 B.C. But archaeologists who have searched the ruins of Carthage have found no remains from earlier than about 750 B.C.
Tyre and other Phoenician cities weakened during a period of Assyrian and Babylonian control from the mid-800’s to the 500’s B.C. Meanwhile, the colony of Carthage grew stronger and more independent. When the Phoenician cities fell to the Persian Empire in the 500’s B.C., Carthage became the leader of the western Phoenician territories.
Leadership brought new responsibilities. Carthage often fought with Greek forces on Sicily. The city made an alliance with the Etruscans, a people who lived in central Italy. But Etruscan power declined as Roman power rose after 500 B.C. In 480 B.C., the Greeks crushed a Carthaginian army at Himera, in Sicily. Carthage could not get help from eastern Phoenicians, who lost many ships to the Athenians while taking part in the Persian invasion of Greece.
Carthage then went through a period of isolation and decline. The government system changed from a one-man rule to an oligarchy (rule by a few). There was an assembly of citizens, but the real power lay with the sufets (magistrates), the generals, and a council of nobles.
Carthage expanded in Sicily again about 410 B.C., and ruled much of Sicily at times. After 265 B.C., the Romans also wanted Sicily. Carthage fought and lost three wars called the Punic Wars with Rome, from 264 to 241, from 218 to 201, and from 149 to 146 B.C. The genius of Hannibal, a Carthaginian general, nearly won the second war for Carthage. But the Romans destroyed Carthage in the third war. Carthage later became an important city and a center of Christianity in the Roman Empire. St. Augustine was one of its famous inhabitants. Carthage was overrun by a Germanic people called the Vandals around A.D. 430. The final destruction of Carthage came in A.D. 698, during the Arab conquest of North Africa.
