Carthage

"e;EpicMore than two millennia after its destruction, Carthage now has its Iliad."e; Martyn Rady, author of The HabsburgsA landmark new history of ancient Romes most famous rivalhome of Hannibal, jewel of North Africa, and foundational power of the western Mediterranean.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 areas 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 at last, the city was razed, and the tale of its defeat became a mere foundation stone in Romes legend. But in this landmark new historythe first in over a decaderising-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.Drawing on brand-new archaeological analysis to uncover the history behind the legend, MacDonald takes readers on a journey from the Phoenician Levant of the early Iron Age to the Atlantic and all along the shores of Africa. She reveals ancient Carthage as a cosmopolitan city not only of extraordinary wealth and brave warriors, but also of staggering beauty and technological sophistication. Home to Hannibal and Dido, to war elephants and vast fleets, at its height Carthage commanded one of the ancient worlds greatest navies and controlled territory spanning the coast of northwestern Africa to modern-day Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, and beyond. 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 themand what the world lost when it was finally gone.Reclaimed from the Romans, Carthage is a dramatic tale from the other side of historyrevealing that, without Carthage, there would be no Rome, and no modern world as we know it.