Carthage, Tunisia
Today we visited Tunis, the bright and bustling capital of Tunisia. After a morning visit to the National Bardo Museum and some time in the colorful medina, we spent the afternoon in Carthage. The capital of the Phoenician Empire in North Africa, Carthage was simply too inviting a target for an emerging Rome. Carthage was the most active trader in the Mediterranean and was loaded with money. In 265 B.C., Rome decided to help itself and started the First Punic War. The War lasted 24 years and Rome ended up with Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica and a very large compensation from Carthage. After 22 years of peace, Hannibal decided to even the score by attacking Rome with 37 elephants driven across the Alps, starting the Second Punic War. Attacking Rome in this way turned out to be more difficult than he had expected, and Hannibal finally returned to Carthage in very low spirits. While he may have thought the war was over, Rome had other ideas and in 203 B. C. landed at Zama and advanced on Carthage. Hannibal’s allies quickly gave him 80 more elephants to defend the homeland, but when the elephants saw the Roman army, they stampeded and wiped out much of the Carthaginian army. The final blow to Carthage came when Rome attacked again in 149 B. C. and dealt such a blow that by the end of the Third Punic War in 146 B. C., "not one stone lay on top of another.”
Carthage today is a very wealthy suburb of Tunis where most of the diplomatic community chooses to live. Among the beautiful villas which line its streets is a small lake at the foot of Byrsa Hill where the mighty city once stood. This lake was once the military harbor of Carthage, an incredible engineering creation, protected and isolated from the sea by a commercial harbor. The military harbor included an immense covered ship house on the island in its center where warships could be hauled up out of the water on slipways and stored in dry storage vaults to keep their hulls as clean as possible for battle. It is difficult to imagine, looking at the serene scene in today’s affluent neighborhood, that this was once the site of the greatest city in the western world.
Today we visited Tunis, the bright and bustling capital of Tunisia. After a morning visit to the National Bardo Museum and some time in the colorful medina, we spent the afternoon in Carthage. The capital of the Phoenician Empire in North Africa, Carthage was simply too inviting a target for an emerging Rome. Carthage was the most active trader in the Mediterranean and was loaded with money. In 265 B.C., Rome decided to help itself and started the First Punic War. The War lasted 24 years and Rome ended up with Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica and a very large compensation from Carthage. After 22 years of peace, Hannibal decided to even the score by attacking Rome with 37 elephants driven across the Alps, starting the Second Punic War. Attacking Rome in this way turned out to be more difficult than he had expected, and Hannibal finally returned to Carthage in very low spirits. While he may have thought the war was over, Rome had other ideas and in 203 B. C. landed at Zama and advanced on Carthage. Hannibal’s allies quickly gave him 80 more elephants to defend the homeland, but when the elephants saw the Roman army, they stampeded and wiped out much of the Carthaginian army. The final blow to Carthage came when Rome attacked again in 149 B. C. and dealt such a blow that by the end of the Third Punic War in 146 B. C., "not one stone lay on top of another.”
Carthage today is a very wealthy suburb of Tunis where most of the diplomatic community chooses to live. Among the beautiful villas which line its streets is a small lake at the foot of Byrsa Hill where the mighty city once stood. This lake was once the military harbor of Carthage, an incredible engineering creation, protected and isolated from the sea by a commercial harbor. The military harbor included an immense covered ship house on the island in its center where warships could be hauled up out of the water on slipways and stored in dry storage vaults to keep their hulls as clean as possible for battle. It is difficult to imagine, looking at the serene scene in today’s affluent neighborhood, that this was once the site of the greatest city in the western world.
