Carthage Tunis Tunisia

Phoenician colonists from the Levant establish Carthage in 814 BCE, according to Roman sources.

Archaeological evidence of settlement on the site of Carthage before the last quarter of the eighth century BCE has yet to be found.

Historians over the centuries will give various dates, both for the foundation of Carthage and the foundation of Rome.

Appian, in the beginning of his Punic Wars, will claim that Carthage was founded by a certain Zorus and Carchedon, but Zorus looks like an alternative transliteration of the city name Tyre and Carchedon is simply the Greek form of Carthage.

Philistos of Syracuse will datethe founding of Carthage to about 1215 BCE, while the Roman historian Appian will date the founding fifty years prior to the Trojan War (i.e., between 1244 and 1234 BCE, according to the chronology of Eratosthenes).

The Roman poet Virgil will imagine 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 BCE.

The Phoenicians brought with them the city-god Melqart.

The historical study of Carthage is problematic.

Because its culture and records were destroyed by the Romans at the end of the Third Punic War, very few Carthaginian primary historical sources survive.

While 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, the main sources are Greek and Roman historians, including Livy, Polybius, Appian, Cornelius Nepos, Silius Italicus, Plutarch, Dio Cassius, and Herodotus.

These writers belonged to peoples in competition, and often in conflict, with Carthage.

Greek cities contested with Carthage for Sicily, and the Romans fought three wars against Carthage.

Not surprisingly, their accounts of Carthage are extremely hostile; while there are a few Greek authors who took a favorable view, these works have been lost.

Legend has the founding Carthaginians as followers of Queen Dido (Elissa, or "Alissar"), an exiled princess of Tyre.

The person of Dido can be traced to references by Roman historians to lost writings of Timaeus of Tauromenium, who lived in Sicily from about 356 to 260 BCE.

Timaeus made Carchedon's wife Elissa the sister of King Pygmalion of Tyre.

Elissa's brother, King Pygmalion of Tyre, had murdered her husband, the high priest.

Elissa escaped the tyranny of her own country, founding the "new city" of Carthage and subsequently its later dominions.

Details of her life are sketchy and confusing, but the following can be deduced from various sources.

According to Justin, Princess Elissa was the daughter of King Matten of Tyre (also known as Muttoial or Belus II).

When he died, the throne was jointly bequeathed to her and her brother, Pygmalion.

She married her uncle Acherbas (also known as Sychaeus), the High Priest of Melqart, a man with both authority and wealth comparable to the king.

This led to increased rivalry between religion and the monarchy.

Pygmalion assassinated Acherbas in the temple and kept the misdeed concealed from his sister for a long time, deceiving her with lies about her husband's death.

At the same time, the people of Tyre called for a single sovereign, causing dissent within the royal family.

In the Roman epic by Virgil, the Aeneid, Queen Dido, the Greek name for Queen Elissa, is first introduced as an extremely respected character.

In just seven years, since their exodus from Tyre, the Carthaginians have rebuilt a successful kingdom under her rule.

Her subjects adore her and present her with a festival of praise.

Her character is perceived by Virgil as even more noble when she offers asylum to Aeneas and his men, who have recently escaped from Troy.

A spirit in the form of the messenger god, Mercury, sent by Jupiter, reminds Aeneas that his mission is not to stay in Carthage with his newfound love, Dido, but to sail to Italy to found Rome.

Virgil ends his legend of Dido with the story that, when Aeneas tells Dido, her heart broken, she orders a pyre to be built where she falls upon Aeneas' sword.

As she lay dying, she predicted eternal strife between Aeneas' people and her own: "rise up from my bones, avenging spirit" (4.625, trans. Fitzgerald) she says, an invocation of Hannibal.

The details of Virgil's story do not, however form part of the original legend and are significant mainly as an indication of Rome's attitude towards the city she had destroyed.

At its peak, Carthage will come to be called the "shining city," ruling three hundred other cities around the western Mediterranean and leading the Phoenician (or Punic) world.

Kart-Hadasht (Carthage) is supposedly founded on the Tunisian coast of North Africa under Pygmalion of Tyre (820–774 BCE) as a way station and trading post for merchants in 814 BCE (the traditional date; archaeology confirms no date earlier than around 740 BCE.)

Habitation of the Phoenician colony of Cathage is confirmed by archaeology as occurring in the year 750 BCE (some sixty-four years after the traditional date of the founding of Kart-Hadasht).

Phoenician colonial culture has gained a distinct "Punic" characteristic by the end of the seventh century BCE, indicating the emergence of a distinct culture in Western Mediterranean.

Carthage had planted her own colony in 650 BCE, and fifty year on she is warring with Greeks on her own away from the African mainland and becoming one of the leading commercial centers of the West Mediterranean region, a position she is to retain until overthrown by the Roman Republic.

Carthage, unlike Rome, had not concentrated on conquering lands adjacent to the city prior to embarking on overseas ventures.

Her dependence on trade and focus on protecting that trade network had seen the evolution of an overseas hegemony before Carthage pushed inland into Africa.

It may be possible that the power of the Libyan tribes had prevented expansion in the neighborhood of the city for some time.

Carthage had probably colonized the Syrtis region (the area between Thapsus in Tunisia and Sabratha in Libya) between 700-600 BCE.

Carthage has also focused on bringing the existing Phoenician colonies along the African coast into the hegemony, but exact details are lacking.

Carthage, founded by the Phoenicians of the Eastern Mediterranean but now only nominally under Tyrean control, becomes the Phoenicians' largest western colony after 580, because of its fine harbor and central location for western trade.

It has begun to expand throughout the western Mediterranean, colonizing western Sicily and parts of North Africa, Sardinia, the Balearics and Spain.

Carthaginian foreign policy appears to have changed dramatically with the arrival of Mago I, king of Carthage, who ad been chosen as general after his predecessor was ousted for seeking royal power, as related by Justin, a Latin historian who lived under the Roman Empire.

If previously Carthage had tentatively colonized the island of Ibiza on its own, it now takes the lead, establishing itself firmly as the dominant Phoenician military power in the western Mediterranean.

Although she remains an economic dependent of Tyre, Carthage now acts increasingly independently.

King Mago I has abandoned Carthage's purely citizen army and begun depending heavily on mercenaries, the city’s small population base forcing him to do so.

His son Hasdrubal I succeeds hime in 530 BCE.

Carthage, mostly under the leadership of the Magonid dynasty, establishes a commercial empire that will dominate Western Mediterranean trade during the latter half of the sixth century BCE.

The Carthaginian empire, founded by the Phoenicians but now only nominally under Tyrean control, continues to expand throughout the western Mediterranean, colonizing western Sicily and parts of North Africa, Sardinia, the Balearics and Spain.

Judahites compose a significant proportion of the Canaanite settlement at Carthage (Kart Hadash, or “New City”).

Carthage concludes treaties with several powers, but the one with Rome is the most famous.

In 509 BCE, a treaty is signed between Carthage and the fledgling Roman Republic indicating a division of influence and commercial activities.

This is the first known source indicating that Carthage has gained control over Sicily and Sardinia, as well as Emporia and the area south of Cape Bon in Africa.

Carthage may have signed the treaty with Rome, at this time an insignificant backwater, because Romans have treaties with the Phocaeans and with Cumae, who are aiding the Roman struggle against the Etruscans at this time.

Carthage has similar treaties with Etruscan, Punic and Greek cities in Sicily.

Carthage has conquered most of the old Phoenician colonies—e.g., Hadrumetum, Utica and Kerkouane—subjugated some of the Libyan tribes, and taken control of parts of the North African coast from modern Morocco to the borders of Cyrenaica by the end of the sixth century BC.

It is also fighting wars in defense of Punic colonies and commerce, however, only the details of her struggle against the Greeks have survived—which often makes Carthage seem "obsessed with Sicily".

The island of Sicily, lying at Carthage's doorstep, becomes the arena on which this conflict plays out.

From their earliest days, both the Greeks and Phoenicians have been attracted to the large island, establishing a large number of colonies and trading posts along its coasts.

Small battles have been fought between these settlements for centuries.

Carthage has had to contest with at least three Greek incursions, including those in 580 BCE, in 510 BCE, and a war in which the city of Heraclea was destroyed.

Gelo, ruler of Gela and Syracuse, had fought in the last war and had secured terms for the Greeks.

Carthage, always trying to rid itself of its opponent, the Greeks, might even have entered into an alliance with the Persian Xerxes (the accounts are unsure) in order to defeat the joint foe.

Its further expansion in Sicily thwarted by the Greeks, Carthage turns its attention to North Africa, consolidating control over the Phoenician colonies from west of Cyrene to Gibraltar.