Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles

Another interesting text is Daily Life in Carthage at the Time of Hannibal by the academic Gilbert Charles-Picard. In my opinion, leading Lancel's book is also a good idea. I for one will be returning to it again and again in the future. This in turn allowed them to show themselves as more heroic and steadfast.Īnyone who is interested in learning the full (well, what is known) details about Carthage and its history, needs to read this book. He also explains in depth how, from the time of the Second Punic War onwards, the Romans made it their business to portray the Carthaginians as untrustworthy, perfidious liars and cheats. Apart from the obvious following of Carthage's history, he goes into great depth about subjects such as the manner in which Hannibal aped the feats of Hercules in order to show that he had divine backing, and how the Romans fought back against this religious propaganda. His style is at all times enjoyable, and his arguments well presented. Miles begins with the Phoenicians, the people who founded Carthage, and goes on from there. It's far from that: this is a better written, easier to follow, more rounded book than Lancel's. One might think that part of the reason for this is that Carthage Must Be Destroyed did not need to be translated (inevitably, there were some places where Lancel's text became unwieldy).

This, an outstanding contribution to the patchy knowledge we have of Carthage, has just been eclipsed. Until the publication of this excellent book, the preeminent text about Carthage was the 1995 volume Carthage: A History by the French historian Serge Lancel.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles