With Dr. Eireann Marshall

No city threatened Rome’s very existence more than the Punic city which dominated the Western Mediterranean before Rome. Its demise at the hands of Rome, in a series of wars which transformed European history, is a tragedy in that it ultimately meant the end of so much which was unique to Carthage. With its conquest, Rome would no longer be threatened by an outside power for centuries, which induced Roman writers, such as Sallust, to suggest Rome had become soft and corrupt. Although Carthage flourished under the Romans, becoming one of the largest and most prosperous cities of the Roman empire, the threat it once posed was never forgotten. Why else would Virgil have described Aeneas, Rome’s founder, as stopping off at Carthage before venturing to Italy?