Nice small map titled Carthage, from wood engraving with fine  detail and clear impression, nice hand coloring. Overall size approx. 19.5 x  16.5 cm, image size approx. 11.5 x 11 cm. From La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes, 19 vol. (1875-94), great work of Elisee Reclus. Cartographer is Charles Perron.

Carthage,

Phoenician KART-HADASHT, Latin CARTHAGO, great city of antiquity, traditionally  founded on the north coast of Africa by the Phoenicians of Tyre in 814 BC. It is  now a residential suburb of the city of Tunis. Its Phoenician name means New  Town.

Various traditions concerning the foundation of Carthage were current among the  Greeks, who called the city Karchedon; but the Roman tradition is better known  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 were known to the Romans as Poeni, a derivation  from the word Phoenikes (Phoenicians), from which the adjective Punic is  derived.

The date of the foundation of Carthage was probably exaggerated by the  Carthaginians themselves, for it does not agree with the archaeological data.  Nothing earlier than the last quarter of the 8th century BC has been discovered,  a full century later than the traditional foundation date.

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. The site of the city was well protected and easily defensible. 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.

The standard of cultural life enjoyed by the Carthaginians was probably far  below that of the larger cities of the classical world. Punic interests were  turned toward commerce. 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 BC.

From the middle of the 3rd century to the middle of the 2nd century BC, 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. When Carthage  finally fell in 146 BC, the site was plundered and burned, and all human  habitation there was forbidden.

In 122 BC 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  unsuccessful, Julius Caesar later sent a number of landless citizens there, and  in 29 BC 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 from 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 AD 439 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 (AD 533).  Carthage, after its capture by the Arabs in 705, 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 of these no traces remain.