SAISON: 2
SYNOPSIS
The Carthaginians got a poor press from their Greco-Roman rivals as traitorous child murders, leaving no history of their own, but archeological evidence concludes better. Carthage was the greatest city state of the Phoenicians, who colonized -like the Greeks- Mediterranean (often insular) coasts from present Lebanon (notably Tyros, Tripoli, Byblos and Sidon) circa 300 BC. Only carthage, near present Tunis, became a mighty metropolis dominating trade in the Western half trough its own colonies, from its North African region to southern Iberia and Sicily*. The capital's center was admiralty within the protected port, where they built 'in line production' standardized ship types for commerce and war, even distant expeditions past Gibraltar to the Gulf of Guinea (for gold, ivory...) and the North Sea (for British metals), possibly further. Their rich merchants, envied by all, also dominated political life i a senate under two elected 'suphets' (supreme magistrates). Researchers dispute the veracity of Ancient reports suggesting buried children at cultic 'tophet' sites where sacrifices even of the aristocratic firstborn, as last religious resort, or just young deaths. After 100 years of economic primacy, rival land-expansive republican empire Rome fought, defeated and in a second war utterly destroyed Carthage as a state (rebuilding the city as a rich colony). Their legacy was however lasting, having helped spread cultural cross-fertilization, the sense for exploration, innovation -as in shipbuilding- and especially the Phoenician alphabet, basis for the Latin and Greek, hence Slavic and other Western, as well as Arabic and other oriental descendants, spread into the known world in a few centuries. Their foundations, Europe's first cities, were the basis of its urban culture.
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