The Carthaginians

by Dexter Hoyos

The Carthaginians reveals the complex culture, society and achievements of a famous, yet misunderstood, ancient people. Beginning as Phoenician settlers in North Africa, the Carthaginians then broadened their civilization with influences from neighbouring North African peoples, Egypt, and the Greek world. Their own cultural influence in turn spread across the Western Mediterranean as they imposed dominance over Sardinia, western Sicily, and finally southern Spain. As a stable republic Carthage earned respectful praise from Greek observers, notably Aristotle, and from many Romans – even Cato, otherwise notorious for insisting that ‘Carthage must be destroyed’. Carthage matched the great city-state of Syracuse in power and ambition, then clashed with Rome for mastery of the Mediterranean West. For a time, led by her greatest general Hannibal, she did become the leading power between the Atlantic and the Adriatic. It was chiefly after her destruction in 146 BC that Carthage came to be depicted by Greeks and Romans as an alien civilization, harsh, gloomy and bloodstained. Demonising the victim eased the embarrassment of Rome’s aggression; Virgil in his Aeneid was one of the few to offer a more sensitive vision. Exploring both written and archaeological evidence, The Carthaginians reveals a complex, multicultural and innovative people whose achievements left an indelible impact on their Roman conquerors and on history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Roman History

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2010

About the author

Dexter Hoyos is retired Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, Australia. His many books include, most recently, Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Enemy, The Carthaginians, A Companion to the Punic Wars, Livy: Rome's Italian Wars (with J. C. Yardley), and A Companion to Roman Imperialism.

Reviews

[Vladimiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un ottimo libro, che ricostruisce in dettaglio numerosi aspetti di una civiltà di cui si sa pochissimo, e quel pochissimo viene da fonti esterne greco-romane. I cartaginesi riuscirono a creare un modello

L'autore smentisce, o almeno contesta, alcuni dati che poi sono stati acquisiti dalla nostra storiografia sulla scorta del pregiudizio degli storici romani: Cartagine diede grande importanza al commercio e alla navigazion, è vero, ma non può essere definita una civiltà "mercantile", ma fu anzitutto una grande entità statuale a tutto tondo, paragonabile nei suoi momenti migliori a Roma e alla città stato-greche, come ricordano Polibio ed Aristotele.

Grande sforzo l'autore fa nei capitoli dedicati all'ordinamento politico e sociale. Interessantissimi i capitoli sulle dimenticate guerre greco-puniche.

Forse l'autore ogni tanto esagera nel dubitare del dato storico; libro comunque godibilissimo ed utilissimo, anche per le ottime cartine. Stile ovviamente "arido" ma efficace.
Consigliato.

[Michael Joosten · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are guardrails implicit in a non-fictional book with a broad purpose that keep it from being hard to rate too low--or hard to rate too high. Any book intended to impart knowledge to a general readership is not likely to be too difficult, but also not likely to amaze and wow. The Goodreads scale from hated to loved doesn't map neatly onto nonfiction.

That said, after a year in which I read hardly anything (too much thinking at work, too many small children at home), I flew right through it. Some of that is just strong interest in a topic I knew only the edges of: and, really, why wouldn't "Canaanites from the Bible speaking a language cognate to ancient Hebrew get on ships and found a civilisation that paralleled the Roman Republic and became its nemesis" not fascinate me?

The dullest parts of the book--for me--are the "slice of life"/"how did people actually live?" bits--an inevitable part of the modern history book that tries to balance away from only being about what the great people do during wars, but I find that what the great people do during wars is still the most interesting bits.

I'd really like them to find a long form scroll in Punic in the desert someday, just because Carthage is fascinatingly oblique. "Delenda est Carthago, the great Cato said..." and delend-ed it was. That's the real fascination: something as big and real as the parts of ancient civilisation we know so well (Rome, Israel, Greece) but not part of the chain of inheritance and so obscured.

[Martijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very accessible primer on all things Carthaginian. Written in an easy style and well structured.

The author refrains from making bold claims and instead stresses how the sparse sources make it hard to be exact about Carthaginian culture or even history. He does, however, try to explain his own interpretations and the counter arguments in well written prose.

Helpful maps and a detailed time line complete the book.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was quite happy with this book. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is very much pro-Carthaginian in tone, which was a bit strong at times but a welcome change nonetheless. Large parts of Carthage’s history and most of its religion appear to remain lost to us, and even much of the language, since we don’t even have most of the vowels, Punic being a Phoenician language. I think I’ll have to read a further treatment of Phoenician religion at some point soon, and I will say it was disconcerting to see Baal constantly invoked as the chief god. Hoyos’ organization is sensible, though it does sometimes lead to the same period being covered repeatedly, once in detail and many times with a different aspect of the story emphasized. It is really too bad that we have essentially no surviving Carthaginian literature or other writing, not even Mago’s famous agricultural treatise.

On that note, the Carthaginians were bloody terrible when it came to naming people. So the Magonids were Mago, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Gisco, and then Mago 2 or 3 more times, and their successors the Hannos had the exact same set of names, and so did the Barcids, and so did every single Carthaginian of any note, and they didn’t even have last names. At least the Romans had family names.

Hoyos is, unsurprisingly, not a Carthaginian child-sacrifice believer, and lays out a fairly clear argument against it. On the other hand, the tophet remains suspicious. There are a great number of arguments that it seems will remain unsolvable, unless perhaps we get some great new stuff from those Pompeiian scrolls, or maybe some new stelae from Carthage.

[Wilhelmina · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Dan Armstrong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hoyos attempt to tell the story of Carthage is an interesting read, but hampered by the fact that very little is really known.