Carthage | History, Location, & Facts (2024)

Carthage, great city of antiquity on the north coast of Africa, now a residential suburb of the city of Tunis, Tunisia. Built on a promontory on the Tunisian coast, it was placed to influence and control ships passing between Sicily and the North African coast as they traversed the Mediterranean Sea. Rapidly becoming a thriving port and trading centre, it eventually developed into a major Mediterranean power and a rival to Rome. The archaeological site of Carthage was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1979.

According to tradition, Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians of Tyre in 814 bce; its Phoenician name means “new town.”

Carthage was probably not the earliest Phoenician settlement in the region; Utica may have predated it by half a century, and various traditions concerning the foundation of Carthage were current among the Greeks, who called the city Karchedon. The Roman tradition is better known, however, because of the Aeneid, which tells of the city’s foundation by the Tyrian princess Dido, who fled from her brother Pygmalion (the name of a historical king of Tyre). The inhabitants of Carthage were known to the Romans as Poeni, a derivation from the word Phoenikes (Phoenicians), from which the adjective Punic is derived. The traditional date of the foundation of Carthage as 814 bce was probably exaggerated by the Carthaginians themselves, for it does not necessarily agree with the archaeological data. Nothing earlier than the last quarter of the 8th century bce has been discovered, a full century later than the traditional foundation date.

The Phoenicians selected the locations of their maritime colonies with great care, focusing on the quality of harbours and their proximity to trade routes. The site chosen for Carthage in the centre of the shore of the Gulf of Tunis was ideal; the city was built on a triangular peninsula covered with low hills and backed by the Lake of Tunis, with its safe anchorage and abundant supplies of fish. This location offered access to the Mediterranean but was shielded from many of the violent storms that afflicted other Mediterranean ports. The site of the city was well protected and easily defensible, and its proximity to the Strait of Sicily placed it at a strategic bottleneck in east-west Mediterranean trade. On the south the peninsula is connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land. The ancient citadel, the Byrsa, was on a low hill overlooking the sea. Some of the earliest tombs have been found there, though nothing remains of Carthage’s domestic and public buildings.

Although Punic wealth was legendary, the standard of cultural life enjoyed by the Carthaginians may have been below that of the larger cities of the Classical world. Punic interests were turned toward commerce rather than art, and Carthage controlled much of the Western trade in the luxurious purple dye from the murex shell. Arguments about the virtual lack of Punic literature are largely moot; when the Romans sacked the city, Carthage’s libraries and archives were either given to Numidian kings or did not survive the destruction. One notable exception was the work of a Carthaginian writer named Mago, whose 28 books on agriculture were translated into Greek by Cassius Dionysius and later cited by Romans such as Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella. In Roman times Punic beds, cushions, and mattresses were regarded as luxuries, and Punic joinery and furniture were copied. Much of the revenue of Carthage came from its exploitation of the silver mines of North Africa and southern Spain, begun as early as 800 bce near Gadir (modern Cádiz, Spain) and in the 3rd century bce near what is now Cartagena, Spain. From the middle of the 3rd century to the middle of the 2nd century bce, Carthage was engaged in a series of wars with Rome. These wars, which are known as the Punic Wars, ended in the complete defeat of Carthage by Rome and the expansion of Roman control in the Mediterranean world. When Carthage finally fell in 146 bce, the site was plundered and burned, fulfilling the demand by the senator and orator Cato the Elder that had been distilled in the phrase delenda est Carthago: “Carthage must be destroyed.” See also North Africa: The Carthaginian period.

In 122 bce the Roman Senate entrusted Gaius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius Flaccus with the foundation of a colony on the site of Carthage. Though the venture was largely unsuccessful, Julius Caesar later sent a number of landless citizens there, and in 29 bce Augustus centred the administration of the Roman province of Africa at the site. Thereafter it became known as Colonia Julia Carthago, and it soon grew prosperous enough to be ranked with Alexandria and Antioch. Carthage became a favourite city of the emperors, though none resided there. Of its history during the later empire, very little is known, but in the mid-3rd century, the city began to decline.

From the end of the 2nd century, it had its own Christian bishop, and among its luminaries were the Church Fathers Tertullian and St. Cyprian. Throughout the 4th and 5th centuries, Carthage was troubled by the Donatist and Pelagian controversies.

In 439 ce the Vandal ruler Gaiseric entered almost unopposed and plundered the city. Gelimer, the last Vandal king, was defeated at nearby Decimum by a Byzantine army under Belisarius, who entered Carthage unopposed (533 ce). After its capture by the Arabs in 705, Carthage was totally eclipsed by the new town of Tunis.

Though Roman Carthage was destroyed, much of its remains can be traced, including the outline of many fortifications and an aqueduct. The former Byrsa area was adorned with a large temple dedicated to Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva, and near it stood a temple to Asclepius. Also on the Byrsa site stood an open-air portico, from which the finest Roman sculptures at Carthage have survived. Additional remains of the Roman town include an odeum, another theatre constructed by Hadrian, an amphitheatre modeled on the Roman Colosseum, numerous baths and temples, and a circus.

The Christian buildings within the city, with the exception of a few Vandal structures, are all Byzantine. The largest basilica was rebuilt in the 6th century on the site of an earlier one. Churches probably existed during the 3rd and 4th centuries, but no traces remain. Part of the mid-3rd-century Carthaginian town has been excavated on Byrsa Hill. Once occupied by the temple of a Carthaginian god and then by the Roman forum, it is now the site of a late 19th-century French cathedral dedicated to Louis IX, the Crusading French king who died in Tunis in 1270.