Carthage: A New History

Summary

For six hundred years, the city of Carthage dominated the western Mediterranean. Founded in the ninth century BCE as a small colonial outpost, by the third, it had grown into the area's largest, richest empire. When, inevitably, it clashed with Rome for supremacy over the region, the conflict spanned over one century, three wars, and forty-three years of active fighting. After Carthage fell, the city was razed, and the tale of its defeat became a mere foundation stone in Rome's legend. But in this landmark new history—the first in over a decade—rising-star ancient historian Eve MacDonald restores the story of Carthage and its people to its rightful place in the history of the ancient world, reclaiming a lost culture long overshadowed by Roman mythmaking.

MacDonald takes listeners on a journey from the Phoenician Levant of the early Iron Age to the Atlantic and all along the shores of Africa. In gripping narrative, MacDonald shows how and why the Romans came to so fear Carthage, as one of the few rivals ever to inflict multiple defeats upon them—and what the world lost when it was finally gone.

Reclaimed from the Romans, Carthage is a dramatic tale from the other side of history—revealing that, without Carthage, there would be no Rome, and no modern world as we know it.