History of Carthage

Carthage was one of a number of Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean that were created to facilitate trade from the cities of Sidon, Tyre and others from Phoenicia, which was situated in the coast of what is now Lebanon.

They were stimulated to found their cities by a need for revitalizing trade in order to pay the tribute extracted from Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos by the succession of empires that ruled them and later by fear of complete Greek colonization of that part of the Mediterranean suitable for commerce.

The city of Carthage initially covered the area around a hill called Byrsa, paid an annual tribute to the nearby Libyan tribes, and may have been ruled by a governor from Tyre, whom the Greeks identified as "king".

The Phoenicians controlled Cyprus, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta and the Balearic Islands, as well as obtaining minor possessions in Crete and Sicily; the latter settlements were in perpetual conflict with the Greeks.

"[9][10][11][12] The Punic port city of Utica was originally situated at the mouth of the fertile Wadi Majardah (Medjerda River),[13] at a point along the coast about 30 kilometres north of Carthage.

[32][33][34] The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) presents Dido as a tragic heroine in his epic poem the Aeneid, whose hero Aeneas travels from Troy, to Carthage, to Rome.

[35] The work contains inventive scenes, loosely based on the legendary history of Carthage, e.g., referring to the then well-known story how the Phoenician Queen cunningly acquired the citadel of the Byrsa.

[39] This episode employs not only the history or legends narrated by Trogus (mentioned above), but perhaps also subsequent mythical and cult-based elements, as Dido would become assimilated to the Punic or Berber goddess Tanit.

[42][43] Yet from such legends the modern reader may form some understanding of how the ancient people of Carthage spoke to each other about their city's beginnings, i.e., an aspect of their collective self-image, or perhaps even infer some of the subtlety in the cultural context of the accepted tradition, if not the personality of the characters nor the gist of the events themselves.

[49][50] Modern consensus locates this ancient, mineral-rich region (called Tarshish [TRSYS] by Ezekiel) in the south of Hispania,[51][52] possibly linked to Tartessos, a native city of the Iberians.

The initial city covered the area around Byrsa, paid an annual tribute to the nearby Libyan tribes, and may have been ruled by a governor from Tyre, whom the Greeks identified as "king".

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.

[66] Other Phoenician cities (like Leptis Magna) paid an annual tribute and ran their own internal affairs, retained their defensive walls but had no independent foreign policy.

Shortly after this event, Carthaginians under a "king" called Malchus warred successfully against the Libyan tribes in Africa, and then defeated the Greeks in Sicily, sending a part of the Sicilian booty to Tyre as tribute to Melqart.

When combined with the permanent foreign conquest of Phoenicia in the Levant, these Greek commercial challenges had caused many Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean to choose the leadership of Carthage.

In 480 BC (concurrent with Persia's invasion of Greece), Mago's grandson Hamilcar landed a large army in Sicily in order to confront Syracuse (a colony of Corinth) on the island's eastern coast; yet the Greeks decisively prevailed at the Battle of Himera.

Hannibal Mago invaded Sicily with a larger force in 409 BC, landed at Motya and stormed Selinus (modern Selinunte); which fell before Syracuse could intervene effectively.

Himilco ultimately concluded a treaty with Dionysius (an outbreak of plague may have caused this), which allowed the Greek settlers to return to Selinus, Akragas, Camarina and Gela, but these were made tributary to Carthage.

Timoleon managed to gain support of the tyrants in league with Carthage, and the Punic expedition sent to Sicily in retaliation of Syracusan raids was crushed in the Battle of the Crimissus in 341 BC by the combined Greek force.

Gisco, the son of Hanno "Magnus" was recalled and elected as "king", but he achieved little and after Timoleon had captured some pro-Carthaginian Greek cities, a peace treaty was concluded in 338 BC.

Battles among the Diadochi and the ultimate three-way struggle among Antigonid Macedon, Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria spared Carthage any further clashes with the successor states for some time.

Between 280 and 275 BC, Pyrrhus of Epirus waged two major campaigns in an effort to protect and extend the influence of the Molossians in the western Mediterranean: one against the emerging power of the Roman Republic in southern Italy, the other against Carthage in Sicily.

In the midst of Pyrrhus' Italian campaigns, he received envoys from the Sicilian cities of Agrigentum, Syracuse, and Leontini, asking for military aid to remove the Carthaginian dominance over that island.

By the end of the 6th century BC, Carthage had conquered most of the old Phoenician colonies e.g. Hadrumetum, Utica and Kerkouane, subjugated some of the Libyan tribes, and had taken control of parts of the Northwest African coast from modern Morocco to the borders of Cyrenaica.

This enterprise coincided with the expedition of Xerxes against mainland Greece in 480 BC, prompting speculations about a possible alliance between Carthage and Persia against the Greeks, although no documentary evidence of this exists.

By 206, the fortunes of war in Hispania had turned against Carthage; the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio (later Africanus, 236–183 BC) had decisively defeated Punic power in the peninsula.

At the Battle of Zama in 202 BC the Roman general Scipio Africanus, with Masinissa commanding Numidian cavalry on his right wing, defeated Hannibal Barca, ending the long war.

Tertullian rhetorically addressed the Roman governor with the fact that the Christians of Carthage that just yesterday were few in number, now "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."

[170] However, the majority of available primary source material about Carthaginian civilization was written by Greek and Roman historians, such as Livy, Polybius, Appian, Cornelius Nepos, Silius Italicus, Plutarch, Dio Cassius and Herodotus.