Forget Rome – this was the ancient empire that made the modern world

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22-07-2025

Napoleon is relatively unusual in western history for aligning himself with the brutal Hannibal – not Hannibal's Roman enemy, Scipio Africanus. The Frenchman's interest in the Carthaginian bordered on obsessional. He read every book about him he could find, including the Latin histories of Livy, and made copious notes. He could work examples from Hannibal's life into conversation with ease, and when he crossed the Alps in 1800, he knew precisely whose footsteps he was following in. Hannibal was more than a man: he was, like Napoleon, a god.
Hannibal was no stranger himself to self-mythologising. His name meant 'he who is favoured by Ba'al': Ba'al Hamon being the chief god of the Carthaginians, who reached the apex of their global powers from their city near Tunis (in modern Tunisia) in the third and second centuries BC. Hannibal had the air of an immortal, but also believed that he enjoyed the protection of Melqart, the Phoenician equivalent of Hercules. Melqart was often equated with the sun itself. Such confidence in one's divine credentials can only breed an appetite for risk-taking.
Hannibal was clever, charismatic and fair. His success as a commander, argues Eve MacDonald in her comprehensive new book, Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire, 'rested in his soldiers and their loyalty to him'. The general was known for distributing bounties to his soldiers – a professional army drawn from many territories, including North Africa, Iberia, Greece and Italy – and following with further payments. The Romans, of course, despised him as the apparently unbeatable foe. The phrase Hannibal ad portas ('Hannibal is at the gates') gained currency during the Punic Wars between the two ancient superpowers, epitomising the fear as well as the awe he inspired in his adversaries.
But has Hannibal's fame eclipsed that of his civilisation? This is one of the questions MacDonald, a senior lecturer in Ancient History at Cardiff, poses in Carthage. The fact that Greek and Roman sources dating from soon after Hannibal's time focus so heavily upon him, she suggests, 'tends to skew our evidence about Carthage around the life of one man and his great deeds and adventures.' As a result, wider-ranging historical interest in the region 'gets lost in the appetite for daring deeds of great soldiers'. Napoleon's fascination is a prime example. MacDonald's history, then, is not so much revisionist as expansionist. Its subtitle might have been: 'Who Were the Carthaginians?'
Inhabitants of the ancient city were committed to comfortable living. Men – we know far more about them than we do the women – wore long tunics and earrings for pierced ears. On the evidence of Aristophanes, the Greek comedian, we can conjecture that they were mainly circumcised. From as early as the third century BC, the wealthier members of society had bathrooms with cisterns in their homes. They dined well on fish and a porridge consisting of grain with eggs, curd and honey. Meat was consumed mainly after religious sacrifices. One very early banquet, the remains of which were recently uncovered in the former Carthaginian city of Utica (near modern Bizerte), featured goat, oxen, pig, horse, and even turtle and dog.
The ruins of Carthage's Antonine baths in modern-day Tunisia - Getty
The architects of Carthaginian cities gave some consideration to the breeding and keeping of animals. MacDonald, who draws effectively upon her background in archaeology, describes stabling for horses and spaces inside the double 'casemate' walls of Carthage for raising elephants. Before Hannibal famously led 37 of the beasts across the Alps, Pyrrhus, King of the region of Epirus, introduced 20 to Italy, prior to his expedition to expel Carthaginians from Sicily. Having seen elephants in action, the Carthaginians were smitten, and went on to use them during their conquests of the Iberian Peninsula. The animals provided unparalleled cover for their retreat during a river-crossing beset by an hostile Celtic tribe. There's no consensus over which species the Carthaginians used, but a combination of African and Asian elephants is likely.
The Carthaginians would not have been nearly so famous had they not fought with Rome. And the Romans might never have created their enduring empire had it not been for Carthage, which they mercilessly destroyed in 146 BC following a lengthy siege. The difficulty for the modern historian is that, in putting Carthage on the map, the Romans cast shadow on its virtues.
It's a typical story of history being written by the conquerors. MacDonald's ambition to retell the history of Carthage from a Carthaginian perspective, then, is hampered by the limitations of the written material. This is unavoidable and only to be expected. No historian of the ancient world should be taken to task over the gaps in the sources; it's how they navigate those gaps that matters.
MacDonald pieces the material together admirably and succeeds in creating a thickly-layered portrait of a culture that has often struck readers as peculiar and violent. She takes a particularly sensitive approach to the interpretation of phenomena such as child-sacrifice. An open-air sanctuary in Carthage has been found to contain thousands of urns filled with the cremated bodies of babies, young children and animals. It is known as a tophet – from the Hebrew name of a valley in Jerusalem where the Philistines were said to 'sacrifice their children through fire'. Greek and Roman writers wrote with abhorrence of Carthaginian children being rolled into flame-filled pits.
Dido Building Carthage by J.M.W. Turner, 1815 - Getty
Were children sacrificed in prayer for the wellbeing of the city? Or are these the dedicated remains of infants who died from natural causes? Most were very young when they died and we know that the rate of infant mortality was high. MacDonald draws attention to the inscriptions upon the stelae erected next to the urns, and particularly to the words, 'because he / she heard our voice'. This looks very much like a divine offering in fulfilment of a vow or an answered prayer. While it remains unclear exactly what was happening here, it is interesting to observe, as MacDonald does, that similar sanctuaries have been discovered in Malta, Sardinia, Sicily and elsewhere in north Africa.
MacDonald is more vehemently myth-busting in her examination of the foundation of Carthage. According to the legend elaborated in Virgil's Aeneid, the city was established by Dido (known to the Carthaginians as Elissa), who fled her home in the Phoenician city of Tyre (in modern Lebanon) to escape her tyrannical brother Pygmalion. Having made landfall on the coast near Tunisia, the beleaguered Dido requested a piece of land only as large as an ox-hide. Her wish was granted, and she proceeded to chop up a hide into skinny strips, which she laid end to end to encompass a sizeable area for her new city. The citadel at Carthage was known thereafter as Byrsa, from the Greek for 'ox-hide'.
It's a brilliant story, and according to MacDonald, calls on the well-known concept of 'using an ox to plough an area of land to mark out boundaries'. That sounds plausible. One thing the ancient writers did get absolutely right was that Carthage was founded in the 9th century BC and had Phoenician origins. The earliest inscription found at Carthage – on a gold pendant placed in a tomb – dates to then and even refers to a 'Pygmalion'. Radiocarbon dating further supports a foundation date in the 9th century BC.
MacDonald writes clearly and frankly, and has produced an enjoyable and readily digestible introduction to Carthage. Hers is not a book of stylish prose or vivid description. The closest we come to the latter is in the opening pages, which recount the final destruction of Carthage, and in a survey of the aftermath of the Battle of Cannae, when 'steam rose in the morning off the still warm bodies of the dead and injured'. Some readers will favour such an information-over-atmosphere approach, and there is much to be said for giving it to us straight. But there were moments in which I felt that MacDonald could have let go a little. If Hannibal has one lesson for writers, it is surely that triumph is dependent upon risk.
★★★★☆
Daisy Dunn is the author of books including The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It. Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire is published by Ebury at £22. To order your copy, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books
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