Rome's great rival

Ancient Carthage was an ancient Semitic civilisation based in North Africa. Initially a settlement in present-day Tunisia, it later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropolis in the world.  It was the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, a major power led by the Punic people who dominated the ancient western and central Mediterranean Sea. Following the Punic Wars, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, who later rebuilt the city.

In this podcast, Dr. Eve MacDonald (Cardiff University/Prifysgol Caerdydd), looks at Carthage's Phoenician origins, rivalry with the Greeks and then the Romans, takes us through the Punic Wars, and reflects upon the central role Carthage plays in Rome's origin story.

1. What were the origins of ancient Carthage? What was their connection to Phoenicia?
2. How do archaeologists utilise the ‘legendary’ Greek and Roman sources?
3. How did Carthage develop from a Tyrian settlement into the centre of Phoenician civilisation? What happened to Tyre?
4. What makes Phoenician culture distinct?
5. How does Carthage develop in the 6th and 5th centuries?
6. Carthaginian and Roman parallel development in the Mediterranean world.
7. What do we know about the government of Carthage?
8. What innovations are the Carthaginians known for?
9. When does conflict begin with the Greeks? Agathocles of Syracuse.
10. Sources: Diodorus Siculus, Justin & Timaeus.
11. What were the origins of the Punic Wars? Pyrrhus of Epirus.
12. How does war in Sicily develop into something so existential?
13. How does the first Punic War progress?
14. How close do the Carthaginians get to winning the first Punic war?
15. The Treaty of Lutatius. Civil War in Carthage.
16. Hannibal and the Second Punic War.
17. Scipio Africanus and defeat. Cato the Elder and the burning of Carthage.
18. How much does Carthaginian culture survive?
19. The narrative of Carthage and Rome in the Rome’s origin story. The re-use of this narrative by succeeding European empires.
20. What should students of this history keep in mind when engaging with it?

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