Well, according to the Cato Institute… 
Ahhh but if Rome had lost, Cato would have been hung as a war criminal 
Now that, my friends, is why I love the Dope.
:dubious: Rome was better than Carthage only in the sense that syphilis is better than AIDS. Both were superstitious, both were plutocratic, both conquered and enslaved whole populations, both practiced horrific punishments such as crucifixion. The Carthaginians had their child sacrifice, the Romans had their gladiatorial games. Rome was somewhat more advanced in law and political institutions – so far as we know, that is, based on histories written by Romans.
According to the records Rome had far more republican institutions than that of Carthage. A Carthagenean triumph may well have meant the triumph of Oriental Despotism.
With capital letters and everything?
I fail to see how, in practical terms, Oriental Despotism was any much worse than Italian Despotism. Did the trains run on time under the latter but not the former?
Those happen to be Roman records. I’m sure Carthaginian historians would have had unkind things to say about Rome and its history. Besides, according to the records Rome ended up an autocratic and corrupt empire that deified its rulers. So, hum… I guess at least the despotism wasn’t Oriental ?
Rome had republican institutions such as the Senate, the Consul, the Tribune, and so on which kept the government in check and even later on the Emperors (until the rise of Oriental Despotism in the Empire with acession of Septimius Severus) were checked by the Senate.
Carthage was a republic led by two annually elected magistrates called suffetes and an assembly of rich citizens called the Hundred – much like Rome with its consuls and Senate – and that’s what we know from Roman histories; if the Carthaginians wrote any accounts of themselves, they have not survived.
Oriental despotism. Whether you use Aristotle’s definition or Marx’, it would not appear to apply to Carthage – or, at least, would not distinguish Carthage from Rome.
Holy crap, I don’t think I’ve seen a non-ironic reference to “Oriental Despotism” since reading Gibbon. Was Carthage also a hotbed of Effeminate Luxury?
Threads like this are why I maintain my membership. However, as an amateur responding to the OP … Rome? FUCK YEAH!
Don’t SDSAB’s get free membership?
The Hundred and Four, which could appoint and dismiss generals and controlled the Carthaginian military. In addition to the Suffets, and the Hundred and Four, they also had a Senate, which had to approve the actions of the Suffets, and a popular assembly that made decisions when the Suffets and Senate disagreed.
BTW, anybody interested in this thread should check out the alternate-history novels Hannibal’s Children and The Seven Hills, by John Maddox Roberts (see here): Hannibal wins the Second Punic War and forces the Romans to abandon their city and go into national exile over the Alps to Noricum (Austria). There, they found a new city, Roma Noricum, and develop a culture even more martial than that of the Roman Republic in our timeline, and conquer and Romanize the local Germans and Celts. A century later, the Romans fulfill their national vow to return to Italy and reclaim Rome of the Seven Hills. This gives the author an absolutely delicious chance to portray the Carthage of that time as an imperial city as rich and decadent and Oriental-despotic as anything out of Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age. Also to contrast Carthaginian corruption with Roman military-republican virtue, and so on.
:dubious:
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…
“The people called Carthage, they are remembered”??
Rome had better engineers. Go aqueducts and sewers.
Sure, but apart from the aqueducts, sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
brought peace?