Just finished it today. Ask me anything about Carthage

What script did they use

Bingo.

Oh. Yeah. Carthage basically never even tried to do anything navy after that. Hence why they had to go through the Alps to get into Italy instead of just using boats.

This is what I have lined up next in the pipeline.

Well, based on the book itself, Hannibal was convinced that Hanno was plotting against him when they had him recalled to Africa. The book goes into detail about how both Scipio and Hannibal were politically marginalized in their respective cities after the war was over despite their battlefield success.

How hard did they deserve it?

nice. everitt's biography of cicero is a fantastic introduction to the roman republic

10,000 pages sperging about some coins they dug up in Spain

How do you ancientfags even do it?

was that book good?

Not OP but i liked it a lot

I'm going to be honest. For the first five chapters or so, I really wasn't excited about it. I listen to books on Audible, and I really wasn't crazy about the narrator's voice for this book. He did seem to get better as time went on, though, and once the Punic Wars actually get rolling, it really picks up. The most interesting parts of the book for me were the parts about religion and propaganda. But here's the thing: I wouldn't recommend the book to anybody who already knows a lot about the Punic wars going in. I knew almost nothing except "Lol, Hannibal used elephants and climbed mountains." So for me, it was all pretty fresh. But I suspect that somebody who has already read about the conflict in another book might find it lacking in drama, because it seems more like an overview than a narrative in its structure.

One annoying aspect of the book is that names tend to repeat. A lot. You'll go through several different Hannibals before you finally arrive at the Hannibal.

Another thing the author spends a lot of time on is the all-important question of whether or not the Carthaginians actually practiced child sacrifice, or if that was simply Roman propaganda. The book ultimately concludes that, yes, it did happen, although only in times of crisis when it was felt that something special was required to make the gods chill out.

In conclusion, having listened to the whole thing now, I don't regret it, and I would recommend it to anybody who has a serious interest in Roman history, because the two cities are inextricably connected.

Rome was just chimping out because they were pissed about how quickly Carthage had recovered after the 2nd Punic War. They were forcing Carthage to pay reparations, but Carthage managed to have an economic boom despite this, and because of this unprecedented economic boom they were able to pay off the reparations 40 years sooner than expected. At the same time, Rome was experiencing something like a recession.

It doesn't seem right, does it? Rome wins the war at great cost, but ends up in economic malaise. Carthage loses the war at even greater cost, but ends up having an economic renaissance. This was called "The Revenge of the Losers" and Rome didn't like it. Not one bit.

And so, Rome decided that there should be one more war against Carthage, this time a war of annihilation, to ensure that there would be no more miraculous recoveries.

What exactly was the race of the Carthaginians?

Phoenicians who came from the Levant who came from The Tigris and Euphrates area... so pretty much related to all Southern Mediterranean people

Rome was right. Razing Carthage had literally zero negative consequences for Rome.
Like most colonies, they probably consisted of a small group of male settlers who conquered the area and intermarried into the population. After 650 years, they were probably not at all discernible from the native population. They probably looked like your average Tunisian.

Ethnic displacements like the kind that happened in America, just simply did not happen in Ancient times.

I heard the the Punic Wars got extremely brutal progressively, Romans and Carthaginians were doing some fucked up shit to each other

>Razing Carthage had literally zero negative consequences for Rome.
>burn down a rich city with a population with lot of human resources and knowledge

Lebs+North Berbers, so Tunisians.
They would have been more handsome than your average North African, and probably they women were cuties.
Wars are brutal dude, specially in ancient times. Assyrians for example loved to torture and impale people for shit and giggles. The Carthaginians tough were far from the worse, they tried to use diplomacy and shekels to gain power (like USA) while having a big stick in the form of a professional army of mercs.
If the Romans weren't such a fanatic and truly scary people they would have lost vs Carthago in the second punic war, how they did rise from Cannae was truly impressive, I can't think of another nation at the time than could have done the same.

Yeah, a rich city full of people who wanted to be the rich populace. With carthage razed, Rome got the most plentiful grain powerhouse west of the Nile, and it made them the undisputed masters of the West.
Also, what fucking knowledge? The Romans lost more from the death of one man, Archimedes, than it did from the destruction of Carthage.
Oh no, they lost the 27 Volumes on how to accurately sacrifice a baby to Mammon. How harmful to Rome

>Yeah, a rich city full of people who wanted to be the rich populace.
they obliged romans on every demand. by the time of the roman siege they were no more than a city-state hemmed in by hostile numidians and roman territory. there was little chance that their city would have risen up. letting such a state live would have been good. the reason carthage recovered and thrived so quickly was because they abandoned their imperial ambitions and concentrated on developing what they had. the romans would have benefitted from trade with such a partner and may have well inherited a well developed carthage in the future through intrigue, slow settlement or something else, sort of like how they inherited pergamom from the last attalid king.
>With carthage razed, Rome got the most plentiful grain powerhouse west of the Nile
They already owned most territory west of the nile. They didn't gain much by absolutely destroying a city, its infrastructure and its wealth of human resources. There was surely knowledge in carthaginian libraries and what not or among rich peoples' collections and the romans could have benefitted from this intellectual collaboration
>they lost the 27 Volumes on how to accurately sacrifice a baby to Mammon.
They might have had a bit of child sacrifice but its silly to imply that they were only concerned with religious texts. Hanno's agricultural manual was famous (though its disputed how useful). Ironically, the Romans would overfarm and desertify carthaginian lands that the carthaginians knew from centuries of tradition how to maintain. Carthage became a fairly prosperous roman city but the destruction was reckless from a developmental perspective as i see it.

Did Carthage really have to be destroyed?

to add further, there's a reason the eastern empire surpassed the western part; because it was more heavily urbanized. Carthage could have been a fellow metropolis to compete against eastern mercantile dominance, so I think thats another reason why it shouldnt have been destroyed

How did the Author deal with the child sacrifice issue?

Is it a decent work of history or is it just a book written by / written like a journalist?

>How did the Author deal with the child sacrifice issue?

He discusses the various theories and the evidence for each of them before settling on the one that he thinks is most plausible, which is that child sacrifice did occur, but only in times of crisis.

>Is it a decent work of history or is it just a book written by / written like a journalist?

I certainly learned a lot.

Of course.

hah!

How much berber admixture did punics had?

Did the Carthagians perform human sacrifice by casting slaves and even newborns into giant fires?

The books never mentions any human sacrifice of slaves, only young children were sacrificed. After all, the entire point is to show piety to the Gods, and killing a slave isn't really a sacrifice. Killing your own child is something that really makes a statement. Also, the children who were sacrificed almost always came from wealthy, respected families. It was seen as their duty to the city to sacrifice their children to appease the Gods during times of crisis.

The theory that the Tophets were used for stillborns has been debunked right? If I recall it's because when they examined the bones its for babies of different age groups with no notable signs of them dying due to illness.

Correct. The children sacrificed were generally around 1 year in age.

Not much considering that Lebanese are 90% Canaanite

Why did they use mercenaries too much? Why they didn't levied from their city and client states like the romans, and only using locals as auxilliaries?

They did. Spain was essentially a Carthaginian client state in the hands of the Barcas, who had allegiances from the local tribes. The problem is that they didn't have a standing military or a military tradition, basically the Carthaginian Senate just raised the money and offered it to lure badasses to fight for them. They didn't train or equip them, and once they were done and had been paid they were expected to disperse so they didn't pose a danger to the city.

In the mod for Rome total war called "Europa Barbarorum" Carthage is called "Safot Softim bi'karthadast" but I have not found any other reference to that name. Are the modders full of shit?

Sufet / safot means "judge", and was the highest rank in Carthage, analogous to the Consuls of Rome. It's actually the same word and position as the "Judges" in the Old Testament, suggesting it was a pan-Canaanite thing.

he's not talking about people in lebanon, but people in north africa who lived in carthage and its surrounding lands.

The fact that they ever questioned this goes to show you that Historical skepticism has become too extreme. Now we refuse to believe anything the ancients say.
The bible says the Canaanites sacrifice children, and the Israelites have a myth about stopping the practice. The romans say the Canaanites do it, but we don't believe them.

The Romans didn't even seem that morally opposed to it, it was just a fact. They didn't destroy Carthage out of some perceived moral duty, but because of economic reasons.

>The bible

Kek. I suppose you think giants existed because of Jack and the Beanstalk?

>Romans

Well known for lying about their enemies, they made the same basic accusation about the Celts (that they practiced human sacrifice), something we have exactly ZERO archeological evidence for.

>Kek. I suppose you think giants existed because of Jack and the Beanstalk?
There's a difference between basing belief in the supernatural off of the Bible and noting that some authors of the Old Testament also attest to things attested by sources outside of the Old Testament. Everyone thought the Hittites were just a fable until one day an entire Indo-European civilization just happened to be discovered.

>Hittites

The Bible doesn't talk about Hatti, it talks about the neo-Hitties who were Canaanites who had adopted Hittie culture. By the time the Israelites reached Israel, the Hitties had already vanished.

>After the 2nd Punic War, Carthage experienced a massive economic boom despite losing the war, so much so that they were able to pay off the war reparations 40 years sooner than expected.

What the fuck, fucking how/why?

It's one of the history's great mysteries, DESU, but the book explains it like this:

>Damn, our army/navy has been annihilated
>Well, at least we can lower taxes now that we don't have to support a military anymore.
>Hmmmm, it turns out that having super low taxes is actually really good for trade

It turned out that Carthage was simply more profitable as a purely mercantile state than it had been as a military power. The city found that being free of the burden of military expenditure was actually a blessing. The only downside is that you lose the ability to defend yourself............

Probably a half assed attempt to translate republic

That doesn't really disprove his point though.

Thanks. Makes sense then that Romans wanted to take the city, even without the butthurt part.

He didn't have a point. The Bible probably contains some true things, but this is irrelevant because it also contains vast amounts of bullshit, and there is no way to tell what is true from what is bullshit. So no, just because the Bible says something, that doesn't mean you don't have to actually investigate to find what /actually/ happened.

Why would they need to translate republic? Do you imagine the Carthageans used the word "republic" to describe their state?

Don't ask me that

>Do you imagine the Carthageans used the word "republic" to describe their state?

It wouldn't really be an inaccurate description. The Carthaginians hated the idea of autocratic power just as much as the Romans did during this time period.

Sure, but if you wanted to translate what they called their state, the word would be "Kritarchy".

God and other fantastical stuff from the Bible not existing doesn't mean you should discount all the other stuff in the Bible. It doesn't mean that you should investigate a possibility of something having happened just because you read it in the Bible, but if it happens to be mentioned elsewhere you can use the Bible to get a broader picture about that specific incident.

>God and other fantastical stuff from the Bible not existing
>God is a bearded man that lives in the clouds.
How do you reconcile that belief, when for example, the Greeks believed their Gods to live on Mount Olympus, a very climbable hill? Many other faiths have had similar godly residences, and despite being less educated than you, understood it far better than you. Do you still not understand what God is or is representative of? Do you still not understand the purpose of religion?

Any proof that the Barca family was a native Carthaginian noble line, and not just merc generals from Greece like the others?

>The Romans were super-butthurt about this, especially since they were experiencing something like a recession at the same time that this was going on.

that's because Italy itself WAS pretty devastated by the war, and they had lost like, 20% of their male population at that point.

Can I see what Carthage was like somewhere? I've seen how Rome was supposed to look in many movies and tv documentaries, but what was Carthage like? Also, I'd like to learn something about their culture, religion, and traditions. But not from a book. Pls, recommend a movie or a documentary.

The "historical" parts of the Bible are also fiction for the most part. Exodus? Never happened. The genealogies in the Torah? Fictionalized. The narrative of Joshua? Myth. So while there may be the occasional thing that corresponds with roughly reality, such as Sennacherib and the Hittites, the vast majority of the Bible is simply not true. So if you were to simply dismiss the whole thing you would be more right than wrong, but even AT BEST, all you can say about it is "well, if we do the investigations, then maybe some of this will turn out to be semi-accurate".

youtube.com/watch?v=EdYhshaAZDY

>We must increase our meme production. Oh, and Carthage must be destroyed.

Shovld it be destroyed?

I don't, and I don't care, I'm an atheist. I'm just saying how the accounts of battles/people from the Bible should be took into account with caution when you study said battles/people, whatever

Well that's all I was getting at. I didn't say it should be taken at face value.

>But not from a book.
Faggot

Who are "the others"?

>something we have exactly ZERO archeological evidence for
Except for all those Bog Bodies of Celtic human sacrifices?

We have enough archeological evidence for child sacrifice in Carthage that the accusations of Roman and Greek writers cannot be dismissed as mere propaganda. Tthere was indeed a cultural tradition for sacrificing young children during times of crisis to appease the gods.

How did Hannibal payed all those mercenaries in Gaul and Italy?

Did he just carried a bag of coins???