Carthage must be destroyed
The struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased. Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Richard Miles vividly brings to life this lost empire--from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as the greatest sea power in the Mediterranean. And at the heart of the history of Carthage lies the extraordinary figure of Hannibal--the scourge of Rome and one of the greatest military leaders, but a man who also unwittingly led his people to catastrophe.--From publisher description.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
4people
2020–2026years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- This month I read "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10133950-carthage-must-b...), which dives deep into Hannibal's war against Rome (and the other punic wars).
I highly recommend reading about what happened from the Carthaginian perspective instead of the typical Roman perspective.
There's also some elaboration on the usage of elephants, the feasibility of of this, and how ultimately ineffective it was for war. (It was great for scaring the enemy, but the issue is they indiscriminately hurt both armies).
- I’m currently reading “Carthage must be destroyed”. If you want to look at the event from a not-solely Roman perspective I recommend this
- What were its arguments? Do you have enough of an understanding of astronomy to know whether it actually made good arguments that are grounded in scientific understanding, or did it just write persuasively in a way that looks convincing to a layman?
> I've had success getting it to offer the Carthaginian perspective in the Punic Wars.
This is not surprising to me. Historians have long studied Carthage, and there are books you can get on the Punic Wars that talk about the state of Carthage leading up to and during the wars (shout out to Richard Miles's "Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization"). I would expect an LLM to piggyback off of that existing literature.
- Try "Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization" by Richard Miles. It is not in dispute that Carthage had a long presence in Spain. If you are arguing that this had no impact on local culture, you'd need to provide some compelling evidence.
- The original comment is almost certainly thinking of https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199858683/ (Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East).
It's a very good book.
A minor theme is indeed that Mesopotamian city-kings had a hard time trading with Egypt. Mesopotamia seems to have produced mostly textiles, which Egypt made domestically. What Egypt needed from international trade was copper and wood.
All the Mesopotamian city-kings wanted gold, though, which came from Egypt. They could get this one time, by marrying a daughter to the Pharaoh. We have an example of Pharaonic correspondence with a king who repeatedly asked for unworked gold, finally sent a daughter over, received a mountain of gold in return, and concluded by complaining that the gold had been worked (into statues).
I assume many of those statues got melted down.
There is some discussion in https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670022667/ (Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization) of how the Phoenician city-states of the bronze age (source of cedar wood to Egypt) gradually succumbed over the centuries to Assyrian empire-building. It's not the main focus of the book though.
