Richard MilesCarthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

“Repeating History?”This is truly an amazing book of ancient Mediteranean history. Reading Livy, Polybius, Gibbon, and J.D. Bury, among many others, seemed exciting but confusing. These earlier historians employed long lost city and cultural references making it difficult to get a solid focus on sequence of events. Not so Richard Miles. He makes all the social, political, cultural and mercenary issues in the two Punic Wars absolutely clear. Where clarity may have been less in the body of the narrative it is satisfactorily explained in almost a hundred pages of notes at end of the book. It was simply a pure pleasure reading “Carthage” as though a piece of entertaining fiction. It is, of course, an amply lucid recounting of history between ancient cities of Rome and Carthage. Any of my doubts or misunderstandings from reading earlier historians of this period are generally here put to rest. It is the smoothest retelling of history I have ever read, and as thorough.The full story covers history from about 1000 BC to a couple decades before the present historical era. Prelude to the main events between Rome and Carthage is told of commercial and cultural activity in the Mediterranean from 969 BC up to a first treaty between Rome and Carthage in 509 BC. This portion of the book would be well worth time spent reading if going no further. The meat of the tale begins with this background of commercial and cultural change from Greece on the east, to a lesser extent, and the pillars of Hercules on the west. The arena is Mediterranean North Africa and what became Southern European states. This geographical portion of Mediterranean history clearly establishes relationships of early European countries on the north coast to those on the North African continent.Substance of the Carthage-Rome relationships begins at about Chapter 5. From this point on the full history of Roman and Carthaginian commerce, war, cultural changes, religions, ‘families’ and component ‘peoples’ (such as the Numidians) is retold in modern terms based on the history of languages and personalities of the times. As well this history is also based on results from more recent archaeological ‘digs’. In my experience this portion of the book makes an excellent clarification for portions of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of Rome” while repeating bits of the prehistory.In this part of the book I came fully to understand Hannibal, along with his Barcid family. In particular his exploits leading Carthaginians from Spain (crossing the Pyrennes Mountains) across what became France and thence over early winter Alps! A landmark movement of resources and service to daily human needs let alone elements affected by multi-cultural confrontations. That anyone in this era could cross all this geography, generally on foot, and arrive in condition suitable to wage war must be regarded as even more amazing than worldwide movement of troops and weapons at present for similar purposes.After reading the book I went through complete notes at the end. Before doing so I had come to a conclusion this explication of history offered a terrible moral parallel to our present, since the world wars, but more significantly for our ‘limited’ wars in Viet Nam and Iraq particularly. In so many ways all of this ancient history between ‘powers’ of that era has been repeated, with little significant variation, by the United States and more than one other major ‘enemy’. Our present enemies are no more ‘real’ threats than those of the Mediterranean past. In both cases motives were less those of threats to our nation than to personal interests. Families of Carthage and Rome have simply been replaced by international corporations and financial interests as well as the ‘families’ behind them.Surely this book should be considered as curricula for courses at the USA national war college, Westpoint and Colorado Springs, among other such military ‘educational’ institutions. That ‘families’ of this Rome-Carthage era profited from war and made that a conclusive consideration in their decision making is exactly the same in USA experience with such as Haliburton. Consequences of atrocities in war then are no more horrendous than at present. The destruction of nature, infrastructure and social cohesion in Iraq and Viet Nam are exactly the same (thought time compressed) as in the decades long conflict between Carthage and Rome. The only difference seems to be power of weapons used and distance between areas of combat. Perhaps the cruelty then was more personal since thousands of combatants confronted each other face to face, across a battle ground fighting hand to hand. Thus different but no less disastrous for humans.Footnotes to the book hint at examination of this parallel between past and present even though the author did not. A Toronto Star reporter concluded ‘An iron fisted foreign policy: Bush’s hard line on Iraq serves notice that no Carthage will be allowed to challenge today’s Rome.”The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same!

When looking at world history, Carthage is perhaps best known as the enemy of Rome during the 200s and 100s BCE. In Carthage Must Be Destroyed, the entire history of the Carthage, not just how it relates to Rome, is looked at.Carthage started out as a trading colony of the Phoenicians. As time moved on, Carthage became more independent and expanded its territory. This would come into conflict with the also expanding Rome. Through three large scale wars, the Punic Wars as they are called, Rome beat Carthage each time. In the First Punic War, Rome took possession of Sicily. In the aftermath, Carthage found itself with serious internal problems. A war was fought against mercenaries Carthage had hired to fight in war against Rome. During this period, Rome annexed Sardinia and Corsica, formerly Carthaginian possessions. The Second Punic War would be the most famous for the actions of Hannibal such as his trek through the Alps. The war would be another loss for Carthage seeing all of its Spanish territories lost to Rome. In the end, Carthage was left with only North African territory. Despite a growing economy, Rome would wipe Carthage off the map in the Third Punic War.Aside from the relations with Rome, the religious history and mythology of Carthage is also extensively looked at such as how parallels existed between them and the Greeks.My only problem with the book is that this is one of the drier histories I have read. Despite the massive conflict and war, the prose of the book is not all that exciting, just very factual. Sometimes, the author tends to meander from one subject to another when he would have been better off just separating these into different sections.All in all, this was a generally enjoyable and informative look at the history of Carthage. I would recommend this to those interested in world history, ancient history, or Roman history.