Tunisia Way

The city of Carthage (site of its ruins near present day Tunis, Tunisia) was begun by Phoenicians coming from the Levant. Its name Kart Hudesht in their Punic language meant "new city".The Punic idiom is a member of the west Semitic language group. It was Tyre, a major maritime city-state of Phoenicia, which first settled Carthage in order to enjoy a permanent station for its trade in the western Mediterranean.

Sovereignty

By the middle of the sixth century B.C., Carthage had grown into a fully independent thalassocracy. Under Mago (r., c.550-530) and later the Magonid family, Carthage became preeminent among the Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean.

Trading partnerships were established among the Numidian Berbers to the west along the African coast and to the east in Libya, as well as stations in southern Sardinia and western Sicily, Ibiza in the Balearics, Lixus south of the straits, and Gades north of the straits, in addition to other trading stations in south and east Iberia. Also, Carthage enjoyed an able ally in the Etruscans to the north of Rome.

One of its merchant sailors, Himilco, explored in the Atlantic to the north, along the coast of the Lusitanians and perhaps as far as Oestrymnis (modern Brittany), circa 500 B.C. Carthage would soon supplant the Iberian city of Tartessus in carrying the tin trade from Oestrymnis. Another, Hanno the Navigator explored the Atlantic to the south, along the African coast well past the River Gambia. The traders of Carthage were known to be secretive about business and particularly about their trade routes; it was their practice to keep the straits to the Atlantic closed to the Greeks.

In the 530s there had been a three sided naval struggle between the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Etrusco-Punic allies; the Greeks lost Corsica to the Etruscans and Sardinia to Carthage. The Etruscans then unsuccessfully attacked the Greek colonies in the Campania south of Rome. As an eventual result, Rome threw off their Etruscan kings of the Tarquin dynasty. In 509 Carthage and the Roman Republic entered into a treaty which defined their commercial zones.

Greek rivalry

The energetic presence of Greek traders and their emporia in the Mediterranean region led to disputes over commercial spheres of influence, especially in Sicily. This Greek threat, plus the foreign conquest of Phoenicia in the Levant, had caused many Phoenician colonies to come under the leadership of Carthage. In 480 B.C. (concurrent with Persia'sHamilcar landed a large army in Sicily in order to confront Syracuse (a colony of Corinth) on the island's eastern coast, but the Greeks prevailed at the Battle of Himera. A long struggle ensued with intermittent warfare between Syracuse led by e.g., the tyrant Dionysius I (r.405-367), and Carthage led by e.g., Hanno I the Great. Later, near Syracuse Punic armies defeated the Greek leader Agathocles (r.317-289) in battle, who then attempted a bold strategic end-run by leaving Sicily and landing his forces at Cape Bon near Carthage, frightening the city. Yet Carthage again defeated Agathocles (310-307). Greece, preoccupied with its conquest of the Persian Empire in the east, eventually became supplanted in the western Mediterranean by Rome, the new rival of Carthage. invasion of Greece), Mago's grandson.