Carthage

The city of Carthage is situated at the inmost point of a gulf into which it protrudes on a strip of land, almost entirely surrounded on one side by the sea and on the other by a lake," observed the Greek historian Polybius in the second century BC. He pointed out some of the features that made Carthage attractive for human occupation for centuries. Today, Carthage is a suburb of Tunis, the capital city of northern Africa's Tunisia. Although cityscape covers most of the ancient port city, the area's attractions to ancient mariners remain apparent.

In the east, Carthage narrows to a point that stretches into the Gulf of Tunis. From that point, skinny strips of land extend toward the northwest and southwest, both strips enclosing water bodies. North of Carthage is Sebkhet Arina, a shallow evaporative lake. Rocky outcrops connected by sand separate this shallow lake from the Gulf of Tunis. South of Carthage is Lake Tunis, a water body actively modified and maintained by humans over thousands of years.

Minoan seamen from Crete may have set up depots on the coast of present-day Tunisia before 2000 BC, but it was only with the arrival of Phoenician traders, who penetrated the western Mediterranean before the twelfth century BC, that the region entered into recorded history. Safe harbors on the African coast, equipped to service, supply, and shelter their ships, were the links in a maritime chain that reached to Spain. Tunis, Bizerte, Sousse, Monastir, and Sfax originated as Punic trading posts where the merchants of Tyre (in present-day Lebanon) developed commercial relations with the Berber tribes of the interior and paid them tribute to ensure their cooperation in securing raw materials.

The greatest of the Punic colonies, Carthage (Qart Hadasht, the New Town), was founded, according to tradition, in 814 B.C. by a Phoenician princess whose name has come down to Western readers through Virgil's Aeneid as Dido.Skilled merchants and mariners, the ancient Phoenicians founded Carthage probably sometime between 817 and 748 BC. Carthage was governed by a mercantile oligarchy that exercised power through a senate, composed of elder statesmen, under a constitution praised by Aristotle for providing a perfect blend of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Joint executive authority was vested in two suffetes (consuls), chosen annually by an electorate that was also called upon to decide on difficult questions by referendum.

The coastal countryside was closely settled with self-governing towns dependent on Carthage for foreign affairs and defense. Carthaginian seamen developed a thriving trade in the Mediterranean as they contested control of the sea-lanes with the Greeks from Italy and Sicily. Settlers on the Atlantic coast bartered merchandise for gold from the western Sudan, in the quest of which the Carthaginian admiral Hanno made his fabled voyage to the mouth of the Senegal River. Successful merchants, seamen, and craftsmen, the Carthaginians turned to agriculture as well, raising grain and introducing the cultivation of olive trees in the region on estates that employed Berber workers. Beyond the Punic enclaves and plantations, the Berber tribes prevailed, but the influence of Punic civilization among them was deep-seated. The Berbers displayed a remarkable gift for cultural assimilation, readily synthesizing Punic religious cults with the nature worship, magic, and holy places of folk religion and adopting the Phoenicians' Semitic language, which was still spoken by Berber farmers in the coastal countryside in the late Roman period.

When the mother-city, Tyre, fell under Persian domination, the western Phoenician colonies looked for leadership to Carthage, which by the fifth century BC extended its hegemony along the coast of North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to Cyrenaica as well as to Sardinia and western Sicily. Carthage and its dependencies formed defensive alliances with the Berber tribes in the hinterland, from whom they regularly extracted payments of tribute.

Essentially a maritime power, Carthage hired Berber mercenaries for its overseas military expeditions and imported mercenaries from abroad to man African garrisons. Carthage contended for generations against Syracuse and the other Greek city-states in Sicily and, as an ally of the Etruscans, resisted the expansion of their Greek commercial rivals in Corsica and Italy. The growth of Carthaginian influence in Italy and commercial dominance in the western Mediterranean drew the Punic city-state into a confrontation with the emerging power of Rome in the third century BC. Defeated in the first Punic war (264-241 BC), Carthage was forced to surrender its colonies in Sicily and Sardinia.

Under the leadership of the Barcids - Hamilcar, Hasdrubal, and Hannibal - it rapidly built a new and larger empire in Spain to compensate for its losses. Claiming Roman interference in Carthaginian colonial affairs, Hannibal led an army of 40,000 - many of them Berbers-out of Spain, crossing the Alps into Italy with a baggage train of elephants in 218 BC to exact revenge against Rome for previous humiliations. Hannibal remained in Italy for 16 years, defeating every army that the Romans threw against him, but his goal - the capture of Rome itself - eluded him. In the meantime, Roman forces occupied Spain, cutting him off from reinforcements and ultimately compelling him to abandon Italy by bringing the war to Africa.

In 202 B.C. the Romans, under Scipio Africanus, defeated Hannibal at Zama (present-day Sidi Youssef) and dictated a harsh peace to Carthage, bringing an end to its days as a major power. Romans destroyed the city in the Punic Wars around 146 BC, but eventually rebuilt in the same area.

A 2009 paper in African Archaeological Review laid out the likely reasons for the Phoenicians to settle on this site (and for their rivals to covet it), remarking that Carthage was carefully chosen based on centuries of sea travel through the Mediterranean. Carthage enjoyed a central location along the Mediterranean Sea, and close proximity to Sicily, which probably served as a foothold for trade with the rest of Europe. Winds and ocean currents followed fairly predictable cycles in the region of Carthage. Even better, ocean currents carried ships eastward from Carthage to Sicily with ease in the best sailing months.

The local land- and seascape of Carthage offered multiple advantages for settlement and trade. The Gulf of Tunis provided natural protection for Phoenician ships from bad weather, and by occupying its "inmost point," Carthage took advantage of the gulf's protection. At the same time, the city lay on a small peninsula surrounded by water on most sides, as this image shows. This configuration offered Carthage protection if attacked by land. And the nearby fertile plain offered proximity to good croplands.