Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is very difficult to find true objective information on Carthage, as the author himself recognizes at the beginning of the book. The writers that wrote about it were usually heavily biased against it, so it's hard to discern fact from propaganda. Archaeological information can only do so much.

Mr Miles does a good job of juggling between biased sources and the way archaeology confirms their information. He also uses mythology to show how the Carthaginian culture developed over time. In the end, though, the picture he paints is still quite vague. It is obviously not his fault, but before you start this book maybe you should set your expectations straight: there is not much known about Carthage before Rome. Most of it is supposition.

The Punic wars take up about half the book, despite being only the end of the Carthage story. It's only natural - since that's what most writings focus upon. But what really would have interested me - Carthage before Rome, is just a misty image.

I will end this review with one observation, slightly unrelated to the book itself. There is a chapter that describes how, after Carthage lost its conquests and managed to focus on itself more than on wars, it started doing so well that it paid its enormous penalties to Rome in advance. To the point that Rome started being afraid that it would go back to its old ways. It would be nice if we learnt from this - glory is expensive. A lot of the world history would have been different had more people thought things that way.

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