CARTHAGE

MacDonald, senior lecturer at Cardiff University and author of Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life, has not chosen a generously endowed historical subject. Rome defeated Carthage in three wars, razed its capital in 146 B.C.E., and then wrote all the histories. Scholars agree that while the Roman cities and empire dominated the western Mediterranean, the original Carthaginians were Phoenician-speaking people from the east, related to the Canaanites of the Hebrew Bible. Great seafarers and traders, they sailed widely, beginning in the first millennium B.C.E., settling and establishing cities throughout the Mediterranean. By 300 B.C.E., they dominated a patchwork of colonies, vassals, and satellite states across North Africa, Iberia, and the Mediterranean islands. This was the period when Rome completed its conquest of the Italian peninsula and cast an eye on Sicily, then partly occupied by Carthage. MacDonald admits the difficulties of specializing in Carthage because Rome demolished it so thoroughly that essentially no documents survive. The author pays close attention to archeology, which reveals clues to Carthaginian culture, but mostly relies on surviving accounts from Greco-Roman writers whose readership had no doubt that Carthage deserved its fate. Combined with the fact that the ancients admired warriors more than we do, histories of Carthage mostly describe preparations for war, war, and preparations for the next war. The result is that this is largely an account of the Punic Wars. In the first, Rome expelled Carthage from Sicily. The second describes Hannibal’s brilliant descent on Italy from the Alps, his dazzling victories, and his ultimate defeat. In the third, a nasty business, Rome determined to obliterate its rival. Few readers will complain: A serious scholar, the author has no problem admitting that many ancient historical controversies will never be resolved, and she writes well.