# Did Carthage need to be destroyed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 26, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543 "2010-01-26T18:46:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/41 "2010-02-04T18:40:59Z")
> [@bmalion](#): > > brought peace? Shut Up!! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/42 "2010-02-04T19:04:04Z")
Marginally relevant: I read in H.G. Wells’ _Outline of History_ that after the destruction of Carthage, many Carthaginians converted to Judaism (which was welcoming converts during that period), as being the only Semitic thing left going; so many modern Jews are their descendants. I’ve never read this elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/43 "2010-02-04T19:15:31Z")
I’ve never heard that. There was a Jewish community in Roman Carthage. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/44 "2010-02-04T19:19:09Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Rome was also a superstitious plutocracy … they had gods for everything, borrowed gods from every cultural group they came across and conquored, and consulted various forms of divination before during and after pretty much every official act… Comicus: But we Romans are rich. We’ve got a lot of gods. We’ve got a god for everything. The only thing we don’t have a god for is premature ejaculation… but I hear that’s coming quickly. ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/45 "2010-02-04T20:24:53Z")
what does “need” mean? Carthage seemed to be the only nation constituting a strategic threat to Roman regional power. If Romans were to have a religious aversion to destroying nations, maybe there would have been a moral debate along the lines of “would damage from potential punishments from the gods for an unjust action of destroying Carthage outweigh the benefits accruing from it?” But in practice I don’t think they had such religious scruples, so it made good sense for them to destroy the potential enemy when they were too weak to resist. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/46 "2010-02-04T20:32:37Z")
As many posters here have pointed out, “need” is a relative term. However, it’s worth remembering that much of Carthage’s power came via trade advantages. Their army consisted for the most part of hired mercenaries, and like the Athenian empire some centuries before the unrivaled Carthaginian navy guaranteed access to a variety of markets. The first two Punic wars reversed this advantage: Rome saw the military and commercial value of shipyards, and by seizing Sicily and the other islands of the western Mediterranean new farmland could feed Italy’s growing population. The third war, then, could be seen as a natural extension of this trade advantage, and from that perspective, a final war was inevitable. **Captain Amazing** ’s summary lists the proximate cause for the third Punic war, but IMO the reaction to the supposed re-militarization of a traditional rival was alarmist; it was more likely a convenient excuse to get hold of the rich resources of North Africa. Importing grain from North Africa was a lot easier once the Carthaginians were out of the way, and it should come as no shock the Romans took out Numidia a few decades later in the Jugurthine war. Public unrest over grain prices in ancient Rome played an important role in the politics of the time, much like oil in the 21st century. It’s probably a little glib to draw a parallel between the destruction of Carthage and, say, the invasion of Iraq (or the demonization of any oil-rich government who doesn’t play ball with the US–see Venezuela), but it’s not completely ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/47 "2010-02-04T20:36:03Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > what does “need” mean? Carthage seemed to be the only nation constituting a strategic threat to Roman regional power. If Romans were to have a religious aversion to destroying nations, maybe there would have been a moral debate along the lines of “would damage from potential punishments from the gods for an unjust action of destroying Carthage outweigh the benefits accruing from it?” But in practice I don’t think they had such religious scruples, so it made good sense for them to destroy the potential enemy when they were too weak to resist. In _I, Claudius,_ Robert Graves has Claudius speak of a “Punic Curse” which befell Rome because of its unjust destruction of Carthage (a reason for its being unjust is given, but I forget it), and which took the form of the sudden immense wealth accruing to the senatorial class, eroding Rome’s traditional republican virtue and ultimately destroying the Republic. (And a case could indeed be made for that. E.g., the fall of the [Gracchi,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracchi) whose doomed land-reform struggle was intended to restore the decaying class of citizen yeoman farmers, certainly weakened the Republic’s institutions.) When young Claudius, living in the reign of Augustus, seeks a prophecy of Rome’s fate from the Sibyl at Cumae, she intones: Who groans beneath the Punic Curse And strangles in the strings of purse Before she mends must sicken worse Her living mouth shall breed blue flies And maggots creep about her eyes No man shall mark the day she dies But whether Romans of Claudius’ time or any time after the Third Punic War actually spoke of any “Punic Curse,” or it is just Graves’ literary invention, I do know know. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/48 "2010-02-04T20:54:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But whether Romans of Claudius’ time or any time after the Third Punic War actually spoke of any “Punic Curse,” or it is just Graves’ literary invention, I do know know. It’s Graves’ literary invention, which he uses, in terms of a prophecy, to describe the Julio-Claudians. > [@](#): > > A hundred years of the Punic Curse > And Rome will be slave to a hairy man, > A hairy man that is scant of hair, > Every man’s woman and each woman’s man. > The steed that he rides shall have toes for hooves. > He shall die at the hand of his son, no son, > And not on the field of war. > > The hairy one next to enslave the State > Shall be son, no son, of his hairy last. > He shall have hair in a generous mop. > He shall give Rome marble in place of clay > And fetter her fast with unseen chains, > And shall die at the hand of his wife, no wife, > To the gain of his son, no son. > > The hairy third to enslave the State > Shall be son, no son, of his hairy last. > He shall be mud well mixed with blood, > A hairy man that is scant of hair. > He shall give Rome victories and defeat > And die to the gain of his son, no son - > A pillow shall be his sword. > > The hairy fourth to enslave the State > Shall be son, no son, of his hairy last. > A hairy man that is scant of hair, > He shall give Rome poisons and blasphemies > And die from a kick of his aged horse > That carried him as a child. > > The hairy fifth to enslave the State, > To enslave the State, though against his will, > Shall be that idiot whom all despised. > He shall have hair in a generous mop. > He shall give Rome water and winter bread > And die at the hand of his wife, no wife, > To the gain of his son, no son. > > The hairy sixth to enslave the State > Shall be son, no son, of this hairy last. > He shall give Rome fiddlers and fear and fire. > His hand shall be red with a parent’s blood. > No hairy seventh to him succeeds > And blood shall gush from his tomb. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/49 "2010-02-04T21:06:12Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Don’t SDSAB’s get free membership? Don’t remind them, but I haven’t had a report published in a year and will soon be a “guest” if I don’t get off my ass and start writing. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/50 "2010-02-04T21:36:54Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > It’s Graves’ literary invention While the poetic “prophecies” and maybe also the term “Punic Curse” were indeed made up by Graves, I’ve [read](http://books.google.com/books?id=0qAY29cYNxsC&pg=PA85) that its basic theme appears already in some of the Roman historians: namely, that the Roman republic was ultimately corrupted and destroyed by the wealth and commercialization that resulted from the destruction of Carthage. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/51 "2010-02-04T23:23:51Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > the Suffets Weren’t they produced by Phil Spector? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/52 "2010-02-05T01:00:00Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > While the poetic “prophecies” and maybe also the term “Punic Curse” were indeed made up by Graves, I’ve [read](http://books.google.com/books?id=0qAY29cYNxsC&pg=PA85) that its basic theme appears already in some of the Roman historians: namely, that the Roman republic was ultimately corrupted and destroyed by the wealth and commercialization that resulted from the destruction of Carthage. Meh. I admit I’m not well-versed in Roman history, but this sort of reeks of true scotsmanship, doesn’t it ? As in, “no \*True \*Roman would become a corrupt merchant, we’re proud warrior race guys ! Morals and values gone to the dogs these days, t’s all the Carthaginian influence and their ghastly heavy metal music, blah blah blah” Similar arguments were made when the mercantile class started rising from the muck in the mid to late Middle Ages (both in Europe and in Japan) - valorous hearts turned astray by perfid coin, dastardly Lombard and Tchooz bankers undermining the nobility and sanctity of the established order, cats and dogs gnashing their teeth together, etc. Then it was all the philosophers’ fault, and the revolutionaries, and the Commies, and now the Kenyan Muslims :p. The Empire’s \*always \*being corrupted and its morals and values threatened by some nefarious and unEmpir-y force. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/53 "2010-02-05T01:37:45Z")
Rome may have been superstitious but it’s intellectuals like Seneca and the preservation of the great Greek philosophers helped pave the way for the Church Fathers and St. Augustine. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/54 "2010-02-05T01:41:28Z")
How do you figure the same couldn’t have been said of a Phoenician hegemony ? And where does the destruction of Carthage play a part in the preservation of Greek/Roman philosophy ? ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/55 "2010-02-05T01:45:13Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > How do you figure the same couldn’t have been said of a Phoenician hegemony ? And where does the destruction of Carthage play a part in the preservation of Greek/Roman philosophy ? Carthage if they had won would have destroyed the Roman philosophy and system of governance. Thus no Roman philosophy survives. Plus Butterfly Effects would make the world utterly unrecognizable by today. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/56 "2010-02-05T02:00:38Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Meh. I admit I’m not well-versed in Roman history, but this sort of reeks of true scotsmanship, doesn’t it ? Similar arguments were made when the mercantile class started rising from the muck in the mid to late Middle Ages (both in Europe and in Japan) […] > > Then it was all the philosophers’ fault, and the revolutionaries, and the Commies, and now the Kenyan Muslims . The Empire’s always being corrupted and its morals and values threatened by some nefarious and unEmpir-y force. Hey, maybe so, whatever you say. _Hoc bello canis meus non est._\* 😉 I hold no brief for the argument that it was Rome’s destruction of Carthage that eventually led to the downfall of the Republic; I was just pointing out that that idea didn’t originate with Robert Graves but goes back to the Roman historians themselves. - That’s “I don’t have a dog in this fight”. In purest dog-Latin, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/57 "2010-02-05T02:03:07Z")
Not necessarily - they could very well have treated Rome the way Rome treated Greece. The Romans razing Carthage to the ground, salting the ruins and consciously destroying every last scrap of its culture was pretty exceptional and extreme, even by the standards of that time. I’m not sure the Phoenicians bore an equivalent ill will towards Rome. Don’t get me wrong, they were quite probably ticked off by the first two Punic wars :). But enough to have ethnocide (culturecide ?) on the books ? I honestly cannot say. As for the Butterfly Effect… well, yes. That’s the point of alternative history musings, really. If your position is that the past needed to have happened the way it did \*because \*it did, and therefore it’s good that it did, there’s not much to talk about. Circular reasonings are self sufficient like that 😉 ETA : Besides, since we don’t have any Carthaginian philosophy left, who’s to say their thinkers weren’t just as good, or even better, than the Roman ones ? ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/58 "2010-02-05T02:58:38Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Not necessarily - they could very well have treated Rome the way Rome treated Greece. The Romans razing Carthage to the ground, salting the ruins and consciously destroying every last scrap of its culture was pretty exceptional and extreme, even by the standards of that time. I’m not sure the Phoenicians bore an equivalent ill will towards Rome. > Don’t get me wrong, they were quite probably ticked off by the first two Punic wars :). But enough to have ethnocide (culturecide ?) on the books ? I honestly cannot say. > > As for the Butterfly Effect… well, yes. That’s the point of alternative history musings, really. If your position is that the past needed to have happened the way it did \*because \*it did, and therefore it’s good that it did, there’s not much to talk about. Circular reasonings are self sufficient like that 😉 > > ETA : Besides, since we don’t have any Carthaginian philosophy left, who’s to say their thinkers weren’t just as good, or even better, than the Roman ones ? Well I don’t support the ethnocide that followed but the conquest of Carthage was to (ostenibly) prevent Carthage from becoming strong again so it may have been justified in a world that was very much dog eat dog. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/59 "2010-02-05T03:07:41Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Carthage if they had won would have destroyed the Roman philosophy and system of governance. Thus no Roman philosophy survives. Plus Butterfly Effects would make the world utterly unrecognizable by today. How do you know? Roman philosophy was entirely derivative of Greek. The culture of Carthage was destroyed so thoroughly that there is no way to tell if it did not have similar potential, or better, to learn from the Greeks. And the Carthaginians certainly mastered republican government all on their own. (In government, neither Rome nor Carthage seems to have taken any lessons from Greece.) Of course the world would look very different if Carthage had prevailed, but there’s no way to say if it would be better or worse. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543/60 "2010-02-05T03:32:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > In _I, Claudius,_ Robert Graves has Claudius speak of a “Punic Curse” which befell Rome because of its unjust destruction of Carthage (a reason for its being unjust is given, but I forget it), and which took the form of the sudden immense wealth accruing to the senatorial class, eroding Rome’s traditional republican virtue and ultimately destroying the Republic. (And a case could indeed be made for that. E.g., the fall of the [Gracchi,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracchi) whose doomed land-reform struggle was intended to restore the decaying class of citizen yeoman farmers, certainly weakened the Republic’s institutions.) When young Claudius, living in the reign of Augustus, seeks a prophecy of Rome’s fate from the Sibyl at Cumae, she intones: > > Who groans beneath the Punic Curse > And strangles in the strings of purse > Before she mends must sicken worse > Her living mouth shall breed blue flies > And maggots creep about her eyes > No man shall mark the day she dies > > But whether Romans of Claudius’ time or any time after the Third Punic War actually spoke of any “Punic Curse,” or it is just Graves’ literary invention, I do know know. Got the book out of the library. Claudius writes: > [@](#): > > Speaking now as a practiced diviner, a professional historian and a priest who has had opportunities of studying the Sibylline books as regularized by Augustus, I can interpret the verses with some confidence. By the Punic Curse the Sibyl was referring plainly enough to the destruction of Carthage by the Romans. We have long been under a divine curse because of that. We swore friendship and protection to Carthage in the name of our principal Gods, Apollo included, and then, jealous of her quick recovery from the disasters of the Second Punic war, we tricked her into fighting the Third Punic war and utterly destroyed her, massacring her inhabitants and sowing her fields with salt. “The strings of purse” are the chief instruments of this curse – a money-madness that has choked Rome ever since she destroyed her chief trade rival and made herself mistress of all the riches of the Mediterranean. With riches came sloth, greed, cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, effeminacy and every other un-Roman vice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-carthage-need-to-be-destroyed/526543.md?page=4)