A tiny Punic glass pendant of two faces back to back
Glass double-headed pendant, late 4th–3rd century BCE
Marked Carthage

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Carthage

Founded by settlers from Tyre on the coast of what is now Tunisia, Carthage became a great sea power, ruling much of the western Mediterranean until Rome destroyed it in 146 BC.

Place
Carthage · Motya, Sicily · CannaeAfrica
Laid out as
A cityOne city, district by district, from its centre outwards.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IA Phoenician colony
  2. IIThe harbours
  3. IIIA trading empire
  4. IVThe Punic Wars
  5. VHannibal crosses the Alps
  6. VICarthage must be destroyed

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Elissa (Dido, in legend)
  • Hamilcar Barca
  • Hannibal

Objects

  • The circular military harbour
  • Punic stelae

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

814 BC to 146 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?