Eve MacDonald's enthralling Carthage: A New History employs archeology and scientific evidence to tell the fullest story yet of the mighty African empire's rise and fall.
The old maxim that history is written by the victors is never truer than in the case of Carthage, which was defeated and destroyed by the Romans in the Third Punic War; what is known of Carthage and its customs comes chiefly from Roman historians. Using revelations from recent archeological excavations and DNA analysis, MacDonald seeks to "fill in the gaps" to reveal a vibrant, pious, and multicultural society with vast trade networks across the Mediterranean. With an eye toward understanding the practice from the Carthaginian perspective, MacDonald grapples with the evidence of infant sacrifice, long expounded on by ancient historians to prove the barbarity of the Carthaginians. She offers another lens to view the decades-long Punic Wars that refutes the myths Roman writers crafted to justify Rome's destruction of Carthage. By claiming the prominent father and son statesmen Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca were motivated by a "personal vendetta" fueled by their indiscriminate hatred of Rome, these authors reduced "Mediterranean-wide geopolitics to the story of one family." The battles are all here, from Alalia to Zama, and analysis of their main characters is pithy and precise: the war general Hannibal's "aura of power... was the most essential part of his survival."
Full of fresh insights, Carthage is a brilliant and accessible recentering of this ancient civilization and its dynamic contributions to the legacy of the Western world. --Peggy Kurkowski, freelance book reviewer in Denver