Carthage

From what I understand they eventually began using Scutumesque shields, adopted from the Romans and Gauls.

Some Punic works were translated into Greek and Latin, and there are many thousand inscriptions in Punic.

You should be warned that Punic citizen soldiers were somewhat of a rarity, and that they mostly used mercenaries or allies for their military. Citizen soldiers were usually only called up in dire circumstances (such as any number of the invasions of N. Africa).

But Liby-Phoencian troops were pretty much the backbone of the army, but Carthage itself levied citizen soldiers who were called the Sacred Band and fought in the standard Phalangite Panoply, after the Battle of the Crimissus in the Sicilian wars in 340 BC, much of the Sacred Band was wiped out, so there was a increase in the recruitment of Libyans and Liby Phoneician troops along with troop compliments sent by allies and of course mercenaries, but later on during the Punic Wars, the citizen troops began to become a little more common in and around North Africa, but Libyans, Numidians, and Spanish mercenaries became the norm in Carthage's external holdings, I highly doubt they were all standardized until the the time of Hannibal.

>tfw you were born in the timeline where Rome won

Why is he black?

It's up in the are, I think he is phonecian influenced Coastal and Saharan Carthaginian which can have "black" phenotype but more along the lines of this mixed phenotype

Why is he Christian?

Not up in the air at all

Phonecian people were not black. There are basically Greeks.

I defy you to produce archeological or even textual evidence of this.

And they certainly weren't Christian.

nobody was talking about Christianity here until you showed up

Look at his helmet tho

That's why I said influenced as in cultural influence

How are they basically Greek?

Looked the same, had the same alphabet and customs

Polybius tells us that it was an extreme rarity that after the first punic war Carthage was forced to form a citizen militia.
The sacred band was more of a privilege, because there were so few citizens serving in the military. To serve in the sacred band was to be one of the few Carthaginians in the actual military. As you cite, that changed after they were wiped out in Sicily.
Keep in mind that when we say citizen soldiers, we mean those granted citizenship in the city of Carthage. Citizenship during that time was typically hard to get; simply living under Carthaginian rule or even in the city of Carthage did not give you citizenship. Therefore when we say citizen soldiers we mean more or less the upper echelons of society.

They were Phonecians, they were semetic

>They were Phonecians, they were semetic

Yeah and they had a symbiosis with Ancient Greeks. Basically they were the Greeks of the Arab world.

There was no such thing as an Arab world back then.

What's the significance of that crescent/horn emblem/standard?

>There was no such thing as an Arab world back then.

*Semitic

In fact, Greeks and mediterranean Arabs/Berbers (modern Phoenicians) have the same haplogroups. It seems in fact that Semitics were key element of the Greek ethnogenesis

Baal Hammon is the biblical demon Moloch

They were Semites

Sound familiar

Hahaha because the Middle East was a placid gathering of brotherly love before America

It was shit when we got there

A good thread on Veeky Forums for once.

...

Ah fuck, that's some good shit. OC?

Yep.

Maybe to idiots.

It'd be funny if it didn't ignore the reality that the war lasted decades and also included a land campaign on Sicily.

hey wtf is that symbol doing up there

One of the great mysteries about the Phoenicians is how they were so common in Sardinia but left no genetic impact on the population, their pottery was widespread all over the island, even in the interior areas, these are just some of Phoenicians sites in the island

It could be because a ton of the Punic settlers were massacred during the mercenary wars, right before Roman took it over.
But even then one would think at least some footprint survives.

Not really, Romans slaughtered Sardinians from the hills, the ones from the cities mostly allied with the Romans, the only city which got destroyed was founded by native Sardinians (Cornus), the big Phoenician cities such as Calaris, Sulci and Nora were spared.

Im not talking about Romans im talking about the mercenary revolt that occurred right before the Romans took over.
"After the rebels killed Bostar, the military governor on the island, and other Carthaginians, a force was dispatched from Carthage. After arriving, however, its mercenary troops mutinied and crucified their Carthaginian general, then massacred all the Carthaginians in Sicily" Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed
Once again though, its still pretty unlikely that every one of the Carthaginians were completely wiped out. Perhaps those left fled?

Sicily=/=Sardinia, also it's unlikely the Carthaginians could just flee, each and every city was inhabited by natives and phoenicians who had been mixing for several centuries, it's not like they had just come, some of those cities were older than Rome itself.

Sorry, clearly I meant to say Sardinia.

Either way Sardinians kept speaking Phoenician until like the 2nd century AD, there wasn't a clear distinction anymore between the natives and the Phoenicians by the time of the second punic war

Source on that? That would be interesting to learn.