Carthage: A History
B.H. Warmington
Number of quotes: 20
Book ID: 47 Page: 20
Section: 4B
This independence is shown most clearly in the Egyptian record known as the report of Wen Ammon. {4} This official was sent in the middle of the eleventh century to try to obtain some cedar wood at Byblos. He was robbed at Dor, nearly killed on Cyprus, and had the greatest difficulty in getting an interview with the king of Byblos.
Quote ID: 1052
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 25
Section: 4B
North Africa was notorious in antiquity for its abundance of wild animals, including many now extinct in the area—elephants, lions, panthers, bears, and hyenas.{15}
Quote ID: 1056
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 47 Page: 27
Section: 5D
The date almost universally accepted in antiquity {18} for the foundation of Carthage was thirty-eight years before the first Olympiad, i.e. 814.
Quote ID: 1058
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 27
Section: 5D
But it was believed that Carthage was a late-comer among the Phoenician colonies; various authors, probably ultimately dependent on Timaeus, dated Phoenician voyages to the west, and some settlements, to the period immediately after the Trojan War; specific dates were given for Gades (1110), Lixus on the coast of Morocco (earlier than Gades) and Utica, near Carthage (1101). {19}
Quote ID: 1059
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 31
Section: 5D
There were several different versions of the story of Dido, until Virgil effectively swept them away with his tale of the love of Aeneas.
Quote ID: 1060
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 47 Page: 131
Section: 5D
Carthage was defended, as might be expected, by walls of great strength, which were proof against all assaults till the last Roman attack; in fact it was so strong that Agathocles could not seriously consider making an attempt on it. The total length of the wall was twenty-two or twenty-three miles, which would have been impossible to defend with the manpower available to Carthage had not the greater part of it been along the shore.{3}
Quote ID: 1062
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 134
Section: 5D
Carthage was the city in the Mediterranean in which commerce played the largest part: when a Greek or Roman of Hellenistic times thought of a typical Carthaginian he thought of him as a merchant.
Quote ID: 1065
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 145
Section: 2B2
In common with most ancient Semitic peoples, the Phoenicians had a supreme male deity, a ‘Baal’, meaning ‘Lord’ or ‘Master’. At Carthage he was known as Baal Hammon. The meaning of the epithet is not entirely clear, but it appears to mean something like ‘burning’or ‘fiery’, and to derive from one of his characteristics as a solar deity.
Quote ID: 1066
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 47 Page: 145
Section: 2B2
Baal Hammon remained the supreme god as long as Carthage existed, and later had a long history in North Africa under his Roman identification as Saturn. But in the early fifth century he was outstripped in popular worship in Carthage and most of her dependencies by a goddess known as Tanit. It is not clear whether Tanit is even a Phoenician name—it may be Libyan.
Quote ID: 1067
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 146
Section: 2B2
When the Romans conquered Africa, Carthaginian religion was deeply entrenched even in Libyan areas, and it retained a great deal of its character under different forms. Even human sacrifice continued, though clandestinely and infrequently. {60} The deities received the names and epithets suited to them in Latin, and temples on a classical model replaced the open sanctuaries of the Carthaginians, but they were often on the same sites, even at Carthage itself, in spite of its destruction. Baal-Kronos became Saturn, Tanit became Juno, often with the epithet ‘Caelestis’ to show her position as a sky goddess.
Quote ID: 1068
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 47 Page: 146
Section: 2B2
One of the most widely worshipped deities in the east was a fertility goddess with the name of Astarte in Phoenician; at an early date she was identified with the Greek Aphrodite, whose home significantly was on Cyprus, where Greek and Phoenician met.
Quote ID: 1069
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 47 Page: 148
Section: 5D
It must be stressed that in spite of the Old Testament references, no ‘tophet’ has been found in the east, nor is there other evidence of human sacrifice in Phoenicia itself.The Cathaginian ‘tophet’ was in use from the earliest days of the colony down to its destruction, as the changes in the styles of the urns and ceremonial stelae prove.
Quote ID: 1070
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 148
Section: 2A4
At Rome, it [human sacrifice] lingered somewhat longer, and in times of great disaster, when religious feeling was intense, it was occasionally resorted to, as happened after the battle of Cannae in 216, when two Gauls and two Greeks were buried alive on the forum. {68}It was the regular and official nature of the sacrifice, and the number and age of the victims at Carthage, which impressed the rest of the Mediterranean.
Quote ID: 1072
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 156
Section: 3A1,4B
The Romans were now fully embarked upon a policy of prudent generosity, the aim of which was to bind defeated states to them by liberal treatment.{2} On the one hand the manpower at their disposal would increase with every settlement of this kind, while on the other there would be no need to disperse their strength in maintaining garrisons amongst embittered and vengeful subjects. It is true that in earlier days Rome had sometimes annihilated a defeated state completely in order to satisfy the land-hunger of an increasing population of active peasants, and in future times policy or greed led on occasion to similar acts of ruthlessness, but in general the more sensible policy prevailed in Italy.[Footnote 2] See especially A.N. Sherwin White, The Roman Citizenship, 1939.
Quote ID: 1075
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 47 Page: 166
Section: 4B
It is to be noted that the Romans sought to show that all their wars had been undertaken with proper justification in defence of themselves or their allies against aggression. Gibbon ironically remarked of the writer who consistently put forward this view of Rome’s wars: ‘according to Livy, the Romans conquered the world in self-defence’.
Quote ID: 1079
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 47 Page: 166/167
Section: 4B
The so-called ‘fetial law’ in early Rome, which governed inter-state relations, did not permit aggressive wars, and it was on the basis of this early law that views of what constituted a ‘just war’ were erected, with substantial influence down to modern times. It is too easy to reject out of hand the self-justification of imperial powers, and to assume that their conquests have always been the result of determined and ruthlessly executed plans of aggression. In early days the fetial law—which was common to the Latin states and presupposed a rudimentary but sensible way of looking at war, at a time when by Greek standards Latium was still quite barbarous—was generally observed. The difficulties arose when Rome became a major power, when her security was affected in other ways than by attacks on her own territory or that of her allies, which were not covered by the fetial law. Several of Rome’s wars from the fourth century onwards could be regarded strictly speaking as unnecessary, when the right of defending an injured ally was used as an instrument of policy, in fact so successfully that it became traditional; the defence of a weaker friend was satisfying to the Roman moral sense and often had the fortunate result of increasing Roman power. It was not, however, the case that Roman policy was directed towards the mere acquisition of territory in the early third century.
Quote ID: 1080
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 172/173
Section: 4B
The Roman achievement was one of great magnitude, for Rome had no naval tradition whatever and always felt uneasy at sea. The setting up of a small organization to look after naval matters came as late as 311, and the ships and their rowers came from allied states, chiefly Greeks.
Quote ID: 1081
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 47 Page: 196
Section: 4B
234 The consequences of a Roman enclave within the limits of the Spanish empire would have been disastrous; the Roman policy of expansion by protecting smaller states would have been applied in the Carthaginian territory, and at any moment some disgruntled tribal chief might turn to the Romans for ‘friendship’.
Quote ID: 1086
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 47 Page: 240
Section: 4B
The total destruction of Carthage was an action ever remembered in antiquity. It gained point from the sack of Corinth in the same year, when Rome once for all established her rule in Greece. Yet it was not only because of the ruthlessness of the action in itself, as an impressive demonstration of Rome’s temper at this period, that it was regarded as a critical point in the development of Rome.
Quote ID: 1092
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 47 Page: 241
Section: 4B
Sallust, following a Greek commentator Poseidonius, saw in the destruction of Carthage the opening of the floodgates to a river of vices in the Roman state. No longer having the need to preserve the good old ways, the Romans became idle and luxury-loving, filled with a lust for power and riches. It was indeed the case that at this moment in Roman history a number of political, economic, and social problems urgently needed solutions; and these solutions were not forthcoming, owing to defects in the Roman constitution and a real deterioration in the standards of political behaviour among all classes in the state.
Quote ID: 1094
Time Periods: 0
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