Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization Paperback – June 26, 2012

“Repeating History?”This is truly an amazing book of ancient Mediteranean history. Reading Livy, Polybius, Gibbon, and J.D. Bury, among many others, seemed exciting but confusing. These earlier historians employed long lost city and cultural references making it difficult to get a solid focus on sequence of events. Not so Richard Miles. He makes all the social, political, cultural and mercenary issues in the two Punic Wars absolutely clear. Where clarity may have been less in the body of the narrative it is satisfactorily explained in almost a hundred pages of notes at end of the book. It was simply a pure pleasure reading “Carthage” as though a piece of entertaining fiction. It is, of course, an amply lucid recounting of history between ancient cities of Rome and Carthage. Any of my doubts or misunderstandings from reading earlier historians of this period are generally here put to rest. It is the smoothest retelling of history I have ever read, and as thorough.The full story covers history from about 1000 BC to a couple decades before the present historical era. Prelude to the main events between Rome and Carthage is told of commercial and cultural activity in the Mediterranean from 969 BC up to a first treaty between Rome and Carthage in 509 BC. This portion of the book would be well worth time spent reading if going no further. The meat of the tale begins with this background of commercial and cultural change from Greece on the east, to a lesser extent, and the pillars of Hercules on the west. The arena is Mediterranean North Africa and what became Southern European states. This geographical portion of Mediterranean history clearly establishes relationships of early European countries on the north coast to those on the North African continent.Substance of the Carthage-Rome relationships begins at about Chapter 5. From this point on the full history of Roman and Carthaginian commerce, war, cultural changes, religions, ‘families’ and component ‘peoples’ (such as the Numidians) is retold in modern terms based on the history of languages and personalities of the times. As well this history is also based on results from more recent archaeological ‘digs’. In my experience this portion of the book makes an excellent clarification for portions of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of Rome” while repeating bits of the prehistory.In this part of the book I came fully to understand Hannibal, along with his Barcid family. In particular his exploits leading Carthaginians from Spain (crossing the Pyrennes Mountains) across what became France and thence over early winter Alps! A landmark movement of resources and service to daily human needs let alone elements affected by multi-cultural confrontations. That anyone in this era could cross all this geography, generally on foot, and arrive in condition suitable to wage war must be regarded as even more amazing than worldwide movement of troops and weapons at present for similar purposes.After reading the book I went through complete notes at the end. Before doing so I had come to a conclusion this explication of history offered a terrible moral parallel to our present, since the world wars, but more significantly for our ‘limited’ wars in Viet Nam and Iraq particularly. In so many ways all of this ancient history between ‘powers’ of that era has been repeated, with little significant variation, by the United States and more than one other major ‘enemy’. Our present enemies are no more ‘real’ threats than those of the Mediterranean past. In both cases motives were less those of threats to our nation than to personal interests. Families of Carthage and Rome have simply been replaced by international corporations and financial interests as well as the ‘families’ behind them.Surely this book should be considered as curricula for courses at the USA national war college, Westpoint and Colorado Springs, among other such military ‘educational’ institutions. That ‘families’ of this Rome-Carthage era profited from war and made that a conclusive consideration in their decision making is exactly the same in USA experience with such as Haliburton. Consequences of atrocities in war then are no more horrendous than at present. The destruction of nature, infrastructure and social cohesion in Iraq and Viet Nam are exactly the same (thought time compressed) as in the decades long conflict between Carthage and Rome. The only difference seems to be power of weapons used and distance between areas of combat. Perhaps the cruelty then was more personal since thousands of combatants confronted each other face to face, across a battle ground fighting hand to hand. Thus different but no less disastrous for humans.Footnotes to the book hint at examination of this parallel between past and present even though the author did not. A Toronto Star reporter concluded ‘An iron fisted foreign policy: Bush’s hard line on Iraq serves notice that no Carthage will be allowed to challenge today’s Rome.”The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same!

First and foremost -- this is an excellent study of Carthage, its antecedents and main characters. The writing is crisp, informative and well-worth reading particularly the passages on Hannibal. I believe teh architectural/art aspects were well-displayed, and in some conflict with other reviewers, thought the Heracles-Melquart narratives helpful. I was also interested in the tophet information and how it was related to other contemporary cultures. The author does put an interesting light on not only who the Carthaginians were, but also how they were perceived by their foes. This aspect is not revisionist, just a different perspective I found fascinating.So why say 'marred'? This is mostly a quibble, but as others have observed, the obsession with the Heracles myth and also with a few select historians went from informative to the academic equivalent of a rat hole. Being interested in how the myth fed the reality is one thing; to relentlessly beat it to death in service to the thesis was ultimately a detractor. I found myself skimming these sections after a while; I 'get it' that the myths played much more of a role than later historians depict but to use the fact as a blunt instrument ends up being something of a disservice to the reader.That said, this book is a good one which I recommend.

The author has done us a valuable service in uniting the disciplines of Archaeology and Classical Studies to either validate ancient assertions, such as the Carthaginian practice of "tophet," or human/child sacrifice; or, invalidate long held biases perpetuated by Greek and Latin authors which argue for a polarized mediterranean world in which the Carthaginians represent the dark forces of barbarity and all that is alien to Western Civilization, while the Greeks and Romans represent the vanguard of all that is civil and good, with little cultural cross pollination occurring between them. Miles does a good job, mostly with the assistance of archeology to show that contrary to the above, the ancient mediterranean was a potpourri of the syncretism of Carthaginian, Etruscan, Roman, Greek, and Egyptian influences...in art, architecture and religion. The clash between Carthage and Rome was the outcome of the inevitable clash of regional hegemonies whose interests clashed as each sought to extend its influence further, and consequently into the orbit of the "other's" influence. Overall, Miles provides us with a highly readable volume of scholarly value, and which belongs to the growing genre of the interdisciplinary partnership of history, literary criticism and archeology.One of the standout themes is the syncretism and competition with regard to the legacy of Heracles, not only between rival peoples, such as the Romans and Carthaginians, but even between rival generals of the same party, such as was the case with the dictators Fabius Maximus and Minucius Felix. How the highlights of this god's journey from Spain, through Italy onward to Greece with Geryon's herd are exploited by Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians to stake their territorial claims in Spain, Sicily, Sardinia and North Africa is a recurring theme, and does much to forward and validate the author's worldview/thesis of syncretism. So interesting is this Hereclean theme alone, that it merits an entire work on its own right (perhaps Richard Miles will take on this "Hereclean" task?).Lastly, after the extensive background that Miles provides to the conflict itself, once the book reaches the Second Punic War, the reader is treated to what reads like a great story/narrative, while never loosing its scholarly tenor. The chapter, "Desolation of Carthage," in which the fateful meeting between the Roman consul and Carthaginian emissaries takes place several miles away from Carthage, during which the emissaries are told that they must agree to the destruction/oblivion of their city and their way of life as seafaring merchants, and to their relocation inland as simple agrarians left me empathizing with those Carthaginians, and at the same time, loathing Rome, whose calculus behind the destruction of the city was the manifestation of nothing more than greed and lust for empire (as the Carthaginians comprised no real threat then). It also reinforced my own skeptical approach to any postmodern view towards the subject of today's arena of international affairs, which would have us think that we have entered an age of unlimited cooperation and potential goodwill among the nations and defining elements of the power structure of the world. The same brutal end that the Carthaginians met awaits any of us who dismiss what lust for power and empire is still capable of doing.