Greek city of Carthage in Zeugitana
Bronze 16mm (3.2 grams) Struck 234-228 B.C.
Head of Tanit left, wreathed with corn.
Horse prancing right.
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Carthage (Arabic:
قرطاج Qarāj,
Ancient Greek: Καρχηδών Karkhēdōn,
Kartajen,
Hebrew: קרתגו kartago,
Latin: Carthago or Karthago,
from the
Phoenician Qart-ḥadašt
קַרְתְּ חַדַשְתְּ meaning New City, implying it was a 'new Tyre'[1])
refers to a series of cities on the
Gulf
of Tunis, from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BCE to the current
suburb outside Tunis,
Tunisia.
The first civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence
is referred to as Punic (a form of the word "Phoenician") or Carthaginian. The
city of Carthage is located on the eastern side of
Lake Tunis across from the centre of Tunis. According to Roman legend it was
founded in 814 BCE by
Phoenician
colonists from Tyre under the leadership of Elissa (Queen
Dido). It became a large and rich city and thus a major power in the
Mediterranean. The resulting rivalry with
Syracuse and
Rome
was accompanied by several wars with respective invasions of each other's
homeland.
Hannibal's invasion of Italy in the
Second Punic War culminated in the Carthaginian
victory at Cannae and led to a serious threat to the continuation of Roman
rule over Italy; however, Carthage emerged from the conflict at its historical
weakest. After the
Third Punic War, the city was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BCE. However,
the Romans refounded Carthage, which became one of the three most important
cities of the Empire and the capital of the short-lived
Vandal kingdom. It remained one of the most important Roman cities until the
Muslim conquest when it was destroyed a second time in CE 698.
The study of the history of
Carthage
is often problematic. Due to the subjugation of the civilization by the Romans
at the end of the
Third Punic War, very few Carthaginian
historical primary sources survive. There are a few ancient translations of
Punic texts into Greek and Latin, as well as inscriptions on monuments and
buildings discovered in North Africa.[1]
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.
These authors came from cultures which were nearly always in competition, and
often in conflict, with Carthage. The Greeks contested with Carthage for
Sicily,[2]
for instance, and the
Romans fought the
Punic Wars
against Carthage.[3]
Inevitably the accounts of Carthage written by outsiders include significant
bias. Recent excavation of ancient Carthaginian sites has brought much more
primary material to light. Some of these finds contradict or confirm aspects of
the traditional picture of Carthage, but much of the material is still
ambiguous.
Carthage was one of a number of Phoenician settlements in the western
Mediterranean that was created to facilitate trade from the cities of Sidon,
Tyre and others from
Phoenicia,
which was situated in the coast of what is now Syria, Lebanon and Israel. In the
10th century BC, the eastern Mediterranean shore was inhabited by various
Semitic-speaking populations, who had built up flourishing civilizations.
The people inhabiting what is now Lebanon called their language
Canaanite, but
were referred to as Phoenicians by the
Greeks. The
Phoenician language was very close to ancient Hebrew, to such a degree that
the latter is often used as an aid in translation of Phoenician inscriptions.
The Phoenician cities were highly dependent on both land- and seaborne trade
and their cities included a number of major ports in the area. In order to
provide a resting place for their merchant fleets, to maintain a Phoenician
monopoly on an area's natural resource, or to conduct trade on its own, the
Phoenicians established numerous colonial cities along the coasts of the
Mediterranean, stretching from Iberia to the Black Sea. 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
initial Phoenician colonization took place during a time when other neighboring
kingdoms (Greek, Hittite, Cretan) were suffering from a “Dark Age”, perhaps
after the activities of the
Sea
Peoples.
Carthage was founded by
Phoenician
settlers from the city of
Tyre, who brought with them the
city-god
Melqart.
Philistos of Syracuse dates the founding of Carthage to c. 1215 BC,
while the Roman historian
Appian dates
the founding 50 years prior to the
Trojan War
(i.e. between 1244 and 1234 BC, according to the chronology of
Eratosthenes). The Roman poet
Virgil imagines that the city's founding coincides with the end of the
Trojan War. However, it is most likely that the city was founded sometime
between 846 and 813 BC.[4]
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