This commercial empire was secured by one of the largest and most powerful navies of classical antiquity, and an army composed heavily of foreign mercenaries and auxiliaries, particularly Iberians, Balearics, Gauls, Britons, Sicilians, Italians, Greeks, Numidians, and Libyans.

Like other Phoenician peoples, its society was urban, commercial, and oriented towards seafaring and trade; this is reflected in part by its notable innovations, including serial production, uncolored glass, the threshing board, and the cothon harbor.

[21] The majority of available primary sources about Carthage were written by Greek and Roman historians, most notably Livy, Polybius, Appian, Cornelius Nepos, Silius Italicus, Plutarch, Dio Cassius, and Herodotus.

These stories typify the Roman attitude towards Carthage: a level of grudging respect and acknowledgement of their bravery, prosperity, and even their city's seniority to Rome, along with derision of their cruelty, deviousness, and decadence, as exemplified by their practice of human sacrifice.

The peninsula was connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land, which combined with the rough surrounding terrain, made the city easily defensible; a citadel was built on Byrsa, a low hill overlooking the sea.

Finally, Carthage would be conduit of two major trade routes: one between the Tyrian colony of Cadiz in southern Spain, which supplied raw materials for manufacturing in Tyre, and the other between North Africa and the northern Mediterranean, namely Sicily, Italy, and Greece.

As the main hub for trade between Africa and the rest of the ancient world, it also provided a myriad of rare and luxurious goods, including terracotta figurines and masks, jewelry, delicately carved ivories, ostrich eggs, and a variety of foods and wine.

[57] Carthage took control of all nearby Phoenician colonies, including Hadrumetum, Utica, Hippo Diarrhytus and Kerkouane; subjugated many neighboring Libyan tribes, and occupied coastal North Africa from Morocco to western Libya.

The loss of such strategically important mineral wealth, combined with the desire to exercise firmer control over shipping routes, led Hannibal Mago, grandson of Hamilcar, to make preparations to reclaim Sicily.

[91] These concerns proved prescient: during the Italian campaign, Pyrrhus received envoys from the Sicilian Greek cities of Agrigentum, Leontini, and Syracuse, which offered to submit to his rule if he aided their efforts to eject the Carthaginians from Sicily.

Livy likens the sufetes to Roman consuls, in that they ruled through collegiality and handled various routine matters of state, such as convening and presiding over the Adirim (supreme council), submitting business to the popular assembly, and adjudicating trials.

[143] Unique among rulers in antiquity, the suffetes had no power over the military: From at least the sixth century BC, generals (rb mhnt or rab mahanet) became separate political officials, either appointed by the administration or elected by citizens.

[145][146] Although he compares this body to the ephors of Sparta, a council of elders that held considerable political power, its primary function was overseeing the actions of generals and other officials to ensure they served the best interests of the republic.

[citation needed] Extant documentation from the early period of Carthaginian-Greek contact and conflict suggest that Carthage was protectionist or mercantilist in economic policy, with a goal of ensuring that its African harbors served as ports of export while simultaneously keeping Greek goods out.

Its empire consisted of an often-nebulous network of Punic colonies, subject peoples, client states, and allied tribes and kingdoms; it is unknown whether individuals from these different realms and nationalities formed any particular social or political class in relation to the Carthaginian government.

Greek accounts describe a "Sacred Band of Carthage" that fought in Sicily in the mid-fourth century BC, using the Hellenistic term for professional citizen-soldiers selected on the basis of merit and ability.

Official state terminology of the late Roman Republic and subsequent Empire re-purposed the word sufet to refer to Roman-style local magistrates serving in Africa Proconsularis, which included Carthage and its core territories.

[138][need quotation to verify] Three sufetes serving simultaneously appear in first-century AD records at Althiburos, Mactar, and Thugga, reflecting a choice to adopt Punic nomenclature for Romanized institutions without the actual, traditionally balanced magistracy.

Although Carthage's navy was always its main military force, the army acquired a key role in extending Carthaginian power over the native peoples of northern Africa and the southern Iberian Peninsula from the sixth to third centuries BC.

[168] Owing to Hannibal's campaigns in the Second Punic War, Carthage is perhaps best remembered for its use of the now extinct North African elephant, which was specially trained for warfare and, among other uses, was commonly utilized for frontal assaults or as anticavalry protection.

[187] The Romans, who had little experience in naval warfare prior to the First Punic War, managed to defeat Carthage in part by reverse engineering captured Carthaginian ships, aided by the recruitment of experienced Greek sailors from conquered cities, the unorthodox corvus device, and their superior numbers in marines and rowers.

[197] The empire of Carthage depended heavily on its trade with Tartessos and other cities of the Iberian Peninsula,[198][199] from which it obtained vast quantities of silver, lead, copper and – most importantly – tin ore,[200] which was essential to manufacture the bronze objects that were highly prized in antiquity.

Diodorus shares an eyewitness account from the fourth century BC describing lush gardens, verdant plantations, large and luxurious estates, and a complex network of canals and irrigation channels.

[148] The latter wrote what was essentially an encyclopedia on farming and estate management that totaled twenty-eight books; its advice was so well regarded that, following the destruction of the city, it was one of the few, if not only, Carthaginian texts spared, with the Roman Senate decreeing its translation into Latin.

[276] The Hebrew Bible mentions child sacrifice practiced by the Canaanites, ancestors of the Carthaginians and Jews, while Greek sources allege that the Phoenicians sacrificed the sons of princes during times of "grave peril".

Sergio Ribichini has argued that the tophet was "a child necropolis designed to receive the remains of infants who had died prematurely of sickness or other natural causes, and who for this reason were 'offered' to specific deities and buried in a place different from the one reserved for the ordinary dead".

Foreign visitors, including otherwise hostile figures like Cato the Censor and Agathocles of Syracuse, consistently described the Carthaginian countryside as prosperous and verdant, with large private estates "beautified for their enjoyment".

[292] Diodorus Siculus provides a glimpse of Carthaginian lifestyle in his description of agricultural land near the city circa 310 BC:It was divided into market gardens and orchards of all sorts of fruit trees, with many streams of water flowing in channels irrigating every part.

[313] While little remains of its literature and art, circumstantial evidence suggests that Carthage was a multicultural and sophisticated civilization that formed enduring links with peoples across the ancient world, incorporating their ideas, cultures, and societies into its own cosmopolitan framework.

[citation needed] "Delenda Est," a short story in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, is an alternate history where Hannibal won the Second Punic War, and Carthage exists in the 20th century.