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Sunday 19 January 2014

Carthage

Carthage was founded in 814 BC by Phoenician emigrants from Tyre, led by Princess Dido.

After the capture of Tyre by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC, Carthage became the natural leader of the Phoenician colonies in North Africa and Spain.

The Second Punic War between Carthage and the Roman Republic broke out in 218 BC. The Carthaginian general Hannibal marched an his army of 38,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Italy.

By Grandiosederivative work : Augusta 89 - Shepherd, William R. (1023).

The Carthaginians occupied much of Italy for 15 years, but a Roman counter-invasion of North Africa forced Hannibal to return to Carthage, where he was decisively defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama on October 19, 202 BC.

The Roman senator Cato the Elder (234 BC – 149 BC), took the threat of Carthage so seriously that he would end all of his speeches, no matter the subject, with the phrase, "And, further, I think that Carthage should be destroyed." On the contrary, his opponent Scipio Nasica, would end his speeches with "Moreover Carthage must be spared."

The population of Carthage before its destruction by the Romans in 146 BC is said to have numbered over 700,000.

The Romans refounded Carthage, which became the empire's fourth most important city and the second most important city in the Latin West.

The refounded Carthage became a centre of early Christianity. In 397 AD at the Council at Carthage, the biblical canon for the western Church was confirmed.

It remained one of the most important Roman cities until the Muslim conquest when it was destroyed a second time in 698.

Carthage was little more than an agricultural village for nine hundred years until the middle of the 20th century; since then it has grown rapidly as an upscale coastal suburb. In January 2013 it had an estimated population of 21,276.

In 1985 the mayors of Rome and Carthage signed a symbolic peace treaty to end the state of war between the two cities technically going back over 2100 years.

Sources Wikipedia, Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2014. Helicon Publishing is division of RM.  

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