Quote:The rise and fall of Carthage

Rival to Rome

Myth and the making of history



The Economist



Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilisation. By Richard Miles. Allen Lane; 521 pages



IT IS ironic that the most famous event in the history of Carthage is a land journey, for the Carthaginians were fundamentally a seafaring nation. Their fleets dominated the Mediterranean and they grew rich through trade and the establishment of colonies in Sicily, Sardinia and Cyprus. There was abundant cause, though, for Hannibal, a Carthaginian general, to take the land route across the Pyrenees and Alps to Rome in the winter of 218BC. Hannibal had long been campaigning in Spain and invading from the north added an element of surprise. But the principal reason for not making the short sea crossing from Africa to Italy was that by then the Romans had replaced the Carthaginians as the masters of the Mediterranean.



Before the Carthaginians came the Phoenicians, the great merchants from Tyre in modern Lebanon. To satisfy the appetite of the Assyrians they created the silver routes and established a number of cities such as Gades (Cadiz). Their greatest legacy, though, was a colony in what is now Tunisia. Its renown would soon come to outshine that of its parent.



Carthage would itself be eclipsed by Rome but, as Richard Miles recounts, its existence and the rivalry it provided were essential to the growth of Rome and the way in which it sought to project its image. From the beginning, myth and history were intertwined. In the “Aeneid” Virgil describes the doomed love affair between Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Aeneas, the son of Venus and legendary forefather of the Romans, who on his journey from Troy to Italy has been washed up on the shores of her city. Ironically, the way in which Aeneas abandons Dido in favour of his preordained fate is characteristic of Carthaginian treachery.



Virgil was aware of the value of myth in establishing the divine antecedents of Augustus’s expanding empire. And he was not alone in employing it to emphasise the interlocking fortunes of the two nations. Earlier writers had claimed that Rome and Carthage were founded in the same year, 753BC. In order to establish their credentials within the Hellenic world the Carthaginians conflated the Greek hero, Heracles (better known as Hercules), with Melqart, his Tyrian counterpart. Hannibal, a master of propaganda eager to create a reputation to equal that of Alexander the Great, followed the Herculean route to Italy. The Romans were severely tested in the three Punic wars but their struggles against a worthy, if barbaric and perfidious, enemy were a necessary feature of their emergence as the dominant power.



Hannibal was a heroic figure and a superb tactician. But he was ultimately overcome by Scipio Africanus, an equally brilliant commander, who learned much of tactics and propaganda from his opponent and whose nation possessed a unique determination and resilience. Mr Miles has skilfully fused the works of ancient historians such as Polybius and Livy, a wide range of modern studies and recent archaeological research to create a convincing and enthralling narrative.

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