Well, sometimes that actually happens, you know. For instance, something destroyed Rome’s centuries-old republican traditions and made it ripe for a monarchy. But just what is endlessly debatable.
As others have noted there is an interesting coincidence between Cato the Elder’s “Carthago Delandea Est” speeches and President George W Bush’s calls for a second war with Iraq.
I’m not really objecting the factuality of the assertion - I don’t know enough to. However, whatever did the Roman Republic in, it wasn’t un-Roman by definition.
Especially the false quantities implied by Curtis’s misspelling of the famous phrase, which has now coalesced with the Dubya reference to create an image in my mind of Cato in a ten-gallon hat with an exaggerated Texan drawl rising in the Senate to declaim “CaaarrthAAgo…day-LAND-ea…ayest!” I am now going home to put my head in the washing machine, and will attempt to find words to convey my gratitude for that mental picture in the morning. Bona nox, y’all.
But again, the Carthaginian and Roman governments were close to identical, with the only big difference that Rome was a land-owning plutocratic oligarchy and Carthage a mercantile plutocratic oligarchy.
Just out of curiosity - how sure are we of that? I mean, almost all we know of Carthage, we learned from the Romans - is it possible they didn’t really understand (or chose not to understand) Carthaginian politics? I’m thinking of how Shakespeare did such a poor job of portraying actual Roman politics - not a ding on the Bard, as he wasn’t really trying to, of course.
How sure are we about the Carthaginian government? That’s a good question, actually, because, like you said, most of what we know of Carthage, we learned from the Romans (and the Greeks), and obviously, they looked at Carthage through their own lenses. Of course, pretty much all we know of ancient Roman government, we know from the Romans too. Actually, most of what we know about the Carthaginian government comes from Aristotle, actually.
Carthage had extensive contact with the Greeks before Rome became its fatal rival, and of course we can always rely on comparison with the Phoenicians. So naturally much of what we know about Carthage comes from Greek sources. For example, details of the Carthaginian government appear in Aristotle’s Politics (see section XI). To summarize his opinion, the Carthaginian constitution resembled that of Sparta with a few improvements (e.g. the Ephors at Sparta were chosen by lot, the equivalent Carthaginian “Senate” was elected).
This is quite superficial. The Romans were perfectly happy to destroy their own republican institutions long before the advent of the principate. The creation of tribunician power, the office of the dictator, and most especially the careers of Marius and Sulla testify to how much Roman institutions could change and still be Roman. The further irony is that under the principate, traditional senatorial institutions were frequently reinvigorated. The progression you suggest is just not nearly so clear.
But, ephors were elected. (And not, as in 300, an inbred-to-the-point-of-deformity caste of hereditary priests. Where did Frank Miller get that?!) See Spartan Constitution.
Ephors generally weren’t elected. They were chosen by lot. That was, as Aristotle said, one of the ways that Carthage was superior to Sparta in government. “whereas the Ephors are any chance persons, the magistrates of the Carthaginians are elected according to merit”
(lit.) “Indeed these (the Spartans) choose their leaders from anyone, those (the Carthaginians) choose from the merited class.”
So in the translation “whereas the Ephors are any chance persons, the magistrates of the Carthaginians are elected according to merit”, the word used for “chance person” is τυχόντων, which really means “anybody at all”. The point isn’t that the Ephors were chosen by lot, but that anyone at all could be Ephor, whereas in Carthage election to the post was limited to the upper class. Sorry for the confusion.
Presumably by “anybody at all” Aristotle meant, anybody of the Spartiate citizen class (as opposed to the free noncitizen perioikoi and the enslaved helots).
The Romans changed their republican institutions several times in their history, keeping the Republic going and even making it more democratic. But the principate destroyed Rome’s republican institutions, reducing them to ceremonial importance while maintaining the fiction Rome was still a republic. As the Sibyl said of Augustus, “He will fetter Rome fast in unseen chains.” Within two generations, Caligula could rule as a mad despot and nobody but the assassins could stop him.
Actually, most of what we know about the Carthaginian government comes from Aristotle, actually.