Carthage Founded

Carthage was founded by Phoenician settlers from the city of Tyre on the coast of what is now Tunisia, in a settlement that would grow into one of the great powers of the ancient Mediterranean. The traditional foundation date is 814 BCE, though the date of 900 BCE given here is a rounded approximation, and archaeological evidence for the earliest occupation points to the later ninth or eighth century BCE. Its significance lies in what it became: a wealthy maritime empire and the principal rival of Rome.

The background lies in the Phoenician city-states of the Levant, including Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Their merchants were skilled shipbuilders and traders who, from around the early first millennium BCE, established ports and trading posts across the Mediterranean in search of metals, especially silver and tin, and markets for their goods. Settlements such as Utica in North Africa and Gades in Iberia formed part of this network. The site of Carthage, on a headland with good harbors and fertile land nearby, was well placed for sea routes between the eastern and western Mediterranean.

Ancient writers tied the city's origins to a legend. Greek and Roman sources, notably Virgil's later retelling, describe Queen Elissa, known to the Romans as Dido, fleeing Tyre after a dispute with her brother, King Pygmalion. She supposedly negotiated with local people for as much land as an ox hide could cover, then cut the hide into thin strips to enclose a large area. Historians regard this as a story, though it may preserve a memory of real political tensions in Tyre. The name Carthage derives from a Phoenician phrase meaning "new city."

Over the following centuries Carthage grew from a modest colony into an independent power. As Tyre declined under pressure from Mesopotamian empires, Carthage took over leadership of the western Phoenician (Punic) world. It built a large harbor, controlled trade across the western Mediterranean, and established territories in North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and southern Spain. Its government, which combined elected magistrates and a council of elites, was admired by Greek thinkers such as Aristotle. Much of what we know of Carthage, however, comes from Greek and Roman writers who were often its enemies, so the picture is partly one-sided.

The legacy of Carthage is bound up with its conflict with Rome. The three Punic Wars, fought between 264 and 146 BCE, included Hannibal's famous invasion of Italy. Rome ultimately destroyed the city in 146 BCE, later refounding it as a Roman colony, which became a major center of the empire. Today the ruins of Carthage, a UNESCO World Heritage site near Tunis, remain a reminder of a civilization whose history survives largely through the accounts of its rivals.