(October 28, 2013 at 1:49 am)The Germans are coming Wrote:(October 28, 2013 at 1:46 am)Minimalist Wrote: The Romans....stomped all over Carthage.... then re-built the city as a Roman colony.
Yet Rome stole it`s secrets and learnt the buisness of how to be an empire from Carthage.
And the most fascinating thing about Carthage is that we hardly know anything about it. Only from the biased view of Roman historians who painted an image of a foe.
History is written by the winners, yes.
The fact is that when they finally went to war....after having been allies for centuries...Rome and Carthage were fairly similar. Oligarchies masquerading as "republics" but run by a handful of noble families. Both had a "senate."
The major difference seems to be that the Romans came to dominate Italy by assimilating the locals rather than subjugating/slaughtering them. This gave them an enormous manpower advantage over Carthage which hired mercenaries or press-ganged "allied" tribes in Spain to serve under Carthaginian generals. The system worked as long as the money flowed in.
