Richard Miles: Carthage Must Be Destroyed [2010] hardback

The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the Ancient World. In an epic series of land and sea battles both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally buckled and their capital city, history and culture were almost utterly erased. The last great threat to Roman supremacy across the entire Mediterranean had gone, fulfilling Cato the Elder’s insistent demand that ‘Carthage must be destroyed’.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed brilliantly brings to life this lost empire – from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as the greatest sea-power in the Mediterranean, with interests stretching from the Middle East to southern Spain. Roman ferocity tried to remove Carthage from history, but it is possible nonetheless to create an extraordinary narrative of a civilization which left an indelible, if often hidden legacy for those that followed. At the heart of all attempts to understand Carthage must lie the extraordinary figure of Hannibal – the scourge of Rome and one of the greatest, most charismatic and innovative of all military leaders, but a man also who ultimately led his people to catastrophe.

Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Richard Miles makes Carthage vivid as it has never been before.