CARTHAGE, called Carthago by the Romans, Carehetion by the Greeks, both of which are but forms of the native name Kartle-hadtha, i.e., " New Town" (found on ancient coins), was the greatest city of antiquity on the rt. coast of Africa, and was situated in what now constitutes the state of 'Tunis, on a peninsula extending into a small bay of the Mediterranean sea. It was founded, according to legend, by Dido (q.v.), a Phenician queen, who had fled from Tyre after the murder of her husband, almost nine centuries before the Christian era, but more probably (like the Anglo-Indian Calcutta) it origi nated in an emporium or factory established by the colonial merchants of Utica, and the capitalists of the mother-city Tyre, on account of the convenience of its situation. Unfortunately, we know very little of its growth. Our information only begins after C. had become oue of the greatest commercial cities of the world, and we have but very scanty and one-sided accounts of it even then. The number of the inhabitants before its destruction amounted to about 700,000. The population was partly of Phenician, partly of Libyan descent. The territory which the Carthaginians acquired by the sub jugation of the Libyan tribes, and by the ultimate annexation of other older Phenician colonies, with which they had at first been simply in alliance, such as Utica, Iladru metum, Tunis, Hippo, the two Leptes, etc., extended in the middle of the 5th c. B. C. south ward to lake Triton, eastward to the Great Syrtis, and westward to Ilipporegius (now Bona). The maritime power of the Carthaginians enabled them also to extend their settlements and conquests to the other coasts of the Mediterranean. In the 6th c. they were masters of Sardinia, and had begun to contend for the possession of Sicily. Hanno (q.v.) founded colonies on the w. coast of Africa beyond the straits of Gibraltar, and Ilimilco visited the coasts of Spain and Gaul. The relations of C. to foreign states in earlier times are not very clear. The first treaty with the Romans was concluded in 509 p.c.; the second, in 348 B.C. ; the third, in 306 me. The connected history of C. begins with the 5th c. n.c., a period of wars between the Carthaginians and the Greeks in Sicily. The Carthaginian army under Hamilcar was destroyed by Gelon at IIimera in 480 B.C. It was not till 410 B. C. that the war began which ended in the conquest by the Carthagini s of some parts of the island. Dionysius the elder, or rather the pesti lence working or him, put a stop to their conquests, but did not succeed in expelling them. War ragld alinost constantly between Dionysius and the Carthaginians. The more feeble reign of Dionysius the younger afforded them an opportunity if extending their conquests, yet they were frequently repelled and defeated by the Sicilian Greeks; and during 311-301 B.C. , Agathoc]es carried the war into Africa, and attacked C. itself. After his death, the Carthaginians amain increased their dominions in Sicily, and although Pyrrhus contended successfully against them at first, he left that island in 275 B.C. The subjugation of the s. of Italy by the Romans, brought the two great
and conquering nations into collision, and the first Punic war arose, 264 B. C., and after a great naval victory of the Romans, terminated in 241, the Carthaginians giving up Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and paying to the Romans a large sum of money. Soon after this, a mutiny of the hired troops of C., combined with an insurrection of the Libyan tribes, the ancient inhabitants of the country, who were kept down by the arbi trary rule of the Carthaginian colonists, threatened the entire ruin of the city. Hamilear brought that bloody war, however, to a successful termination, and led an army to Spain, where he, and after him Hasdrubal, obtained great successes. Here was founded New C., now Cartagena (q.v.). After Hasdruhars death, 221 B.C., Hannibal (q.v.), burning to revenge the defeat which his native city had sustained from the Romans, broke the treaty with them, and took Saguntum, 219 B.C. Thus began the second Punic war, in which Hapnibal pursued his career of conquest from Spain, through Gaul, and across the Alps into Italy itself, defeated the Romans with terrible slaughter in various battles, and, by that of Canute in particular, brought Rome to the very brink of ruin. Yet the war terminated in the total defeat of the Carthaginians by Publius Cornelius Scipio, who overthrew their power in Spain, and was victorious over Hannibal in the final and decisive battle of Zama, in Africa, in Oct., 202. A peace was then concluded, in which the Carthaginians were limited to their African territories; but most of their ships of war and war-elephants were taken from them, besides an immense sum of money, and they were taken bound not to make war without permission of the Romans. Massinissa, king of Numidia, skillfully availed himself of dissensions which arose within C. between the nobles and the people, to advance his own interests at the expense of the Carthaginians; and as they (151 n.c.) opposed him, and drove his adherents out of the city, the Romans seized the opportunity for a new declaration of war, 149 B.C., on the ground that the treaty was broken; and after a siege of two years, C. was taken by Publius Cornelius Scipio lEmilianus, 146 B.C. For six days the combat was main tained in the streets of the city, and for seventeen days the work of its destruction by fire was carried on by the conquerors. The country became a Roman province. C. Gracchus sent out 6,000 colonists to found a new city on the site of Carthage. It was called Junonia, but it did not prosper. Augustus, carrying out the intention of his great uncle, restored the city, and the new C. had become, in the second and third centuries of the Christian era, one of the finest cities of the Roman empire. In 439 A.D., Genseric made it the capital of the Vandal kingdom; Belisarius conquered it in 533, and named it Justiniana; the Arabs under Hassan utterly destroyed it in 647 A.D.; and now only two or three small hamlets and a few ruins mark its site.