Mattia Preti · 17th c.
The Death of Sophonisba
The cup of poison sent by Masinissa: a favourite subject of baroque painters.
Culture · 2,200 years of reception
The legacy of Carthage
Rome destroyed the city but never stopped talking about it. Dido, Hannibal, Sophonisba and Salammbô have passed through Latin epic, baroque opera, Romantic painting, sword-and-sandal films and video games — and in Tunisia, Carthage is still an everyday name.
LiteratureOperaPaintingFilmGames
Epic
17
books in Silius Italicus’ Punica, the longest surviving Latin poem
Opera
1689
Purcell gives Dido a voice in Dido and Aeneas
Novel
1862
Flaubert publishes Salammbô
Film
1914
Cabiria, the first great epic in film history
7 fields shown
01 · Literature
From epic to novel
Latin poets invented a legendary Carthage; modern writers reinvented it in turn.
Carthage in writing
3rd c. BCNaevius, Bellum Punicum — A veteran of the First Punic War, the poet turned it into the first Latin epic on a historical subject; only fragments survive.
c. 190 BCPlautus, Poenulus — “The Little Carthaginian”: the merchant Hanno speaks Punic in it — the longest passages in that language preserved in Latin literature. The Punic language →
29–19 BCVirgil, Aeneid — Dido, abandoned by Aeneas, curses his descendants and calls for an avenger: the founding myth of the hatred between Rome and Carthage.
Late 1st c. BCOvid, Heroides, VII — Dido’s letter to Aeneas, written before her death.
Late 1st c. ADSilius Italicus, Punica — The Second Punic War in 17 books, from Saguntum to Zama.
c. 400Augustine, Confessions — The bishop of Hippo, who studied at Carthage, admits that as a schoolboy he wept over the death of Dido (I, 13).
1338–1341Petrarch, Africa — A Latin epic in praise of Scipio, left unfinished; it helped win the poet his laurel crown on the Capitol in 1341.
1594Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage — The queen enters Elizabethan theatre.
1862Flaubert, Salammbô — The novel that fixed, for a century, the image of a lavish and cruel Carthage. The historical background →
Virgil · Aeneid, I and IV
Dido, queen of Carthage →Dido, from founder to lover
In Timaeus and Justin, Elissa takes her own life to escape a forced marriage; Virgil makes her Aeneas’ lover. This Roman version, taken up by Ovid and then by opera, long overshadowed the founder.
Silius Italicus · Punica
Hannibal →Hannibal, epic hero
Consul in 68, Silius Italicus devoted his retirement to an epic of over 12,000 lines driven by the tragic figure of Hannibal. Forgotten in the Middle Ages, it was rediscovered around 1417 by the humanist Poggio Bracciolini.
On stage · 1515–1770
Sophonisba →Sophonisba, tragic queen
Trissino (1515), Mairet (1634), Corneille (1663), Voltaire (1770): the Carthaginian princess who preferred poison to Scipio’s triumph is one of the great subjects of European tragedy.
Gustave Flaubert · 1862
The Mercenary War →Salammbô, Carthage imagined
After a stay in Tunis and Carthage in the spring of 1858, Flaubert set his novel during the Mercenary War (241–237 BC), following Polybius closely. The heroine, Hamilcar’s daughter and a priestess of Tanit, is his own invention.
The book caused a sensation: it inspired opera, Orientalist painting, Art Nouveau, silent film — and even the name of a district in present-day Carthage.
« C'était à Mégara, faubourg de Carthage, dans les jardins d'Hamilcar. »
“It was at Megara, a suburb of Carthage, in the gardens of Hamilcar.”
02 · Opera & theatre
Dido sings
Since baroque opera, the queen of Carthage has been one of the great tragic roles; Salammbô joined her in the 19th century.
On the operatic stage
1641Cavalli, La Didone — Premiered in Venice to a libretto by Busenello: one of the first operas devoted to the queen.
1689Purcell, Dido and Aeneas — Libretto by Nahum Tate, first performed at a girls’ boarding school in Chelsea. The lament “When I am laid in earth” is one of the most famous arias of the baroque.
1724Metastasio, Didone abbandonata — Premiered in Naples with music by Domenico Sarro, the libretto was set again by dozens of composers in the 18th century.
1744Gluck, Sofonisba — Premiered in Milan: Sophonisba moves from tragedy to opera. Sophonisba →
1863Berlioz, Les Troyens — Composed after Virgil; only the second part, “The Trojans at Carthage”, was staged in Berlioz’s lifetime. The whole work was not premiered until 1890, in Karlsruhe.
1863–1866Mussorgsky, Salammbô — An unfinished opera after Flaubert; the composer reused some of its pages in Boris Godunov.
1890Reyer, Salammbô — Premiered at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, then given at the Paris Opéra in 1892.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Berlioz · Les Troyens, Act V
Dido foresees Hannibal
On her pyre, Berlioz’s Dido has a vision of an avenger, Hannibal, before glimpsing the triumph of Rome: the opera stages the curse of the Aeneid (IV, 625).
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.
03 · Painting
Carthage on canvas
From Venetian baroque to Art Nouveau, painters were drawn above all to the dramas: oaths, grief, suicides and storms.
Giambattista Tiepolo · c. 1725–1730
Hannibal recognises the head of Hasdrubal
In 207 BC, after the defeat at the Metaurus, the consul Claudius Nero had Hasdrubal’s head thrown in front of his brother’s outposts (Livy, XXVII, 51).
Tiepolo painted Hannibal recoiling in horror for a cycle of Roman history intended for the Palazzo Dolfin in Venice. Carthage became a subject of grand history painting, just like Rome.
Agnoscere se fortunam Carthaginis.
“I recognise the fate of Carthage” — the words Livy gives Hannibal before his brother’s head.
Benjamin West · 1770
The Oath of Hannibal
As a boy, Hannibal swears before his father Hamilcar never to be a friend of Rome (Polybius, III, 11; Livy, XXI, 1).
Francisco de Goya · 1771
Hannibal the Conqueror Viewing Italy
Painted in Italy by the young Goya for a competition of the Parma Academy: Hannibal sees the peninsula from the heights of the Alps.
J. M. W. Turner · 1812
Snow Storm: Hannibal Crossing the Alps
A vortex of snow all but swallows the army: Turner makes Hannibal a Romantic subject, in a Europe dominated by Napoleon. (Tate, London)
Alphonse Mucha · 1896
Salammbô
An Art Nouveau lithograph: Flaubert’s priestess of Tanit, between harp and incense burners, becomes a decorative icon.
See also
A subject across the centuries
- Turner painted the rise and the fall: Dido Building Carthage (1815), then The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire (1817), often read as a warning to the British Empire. He bequeathed the first to the National Gallery on condition that it hang beside a Claude Lorrain.
- David carved Hannibal’s name on a rock, beneath Bonaparte’s, in Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801).
- Guérin (1815) and Rochegrosse (1900), higher up this page, illustrate Virgil and Flaubert.
04 · Film
Carthage on screen
Italian epic cinema turned Carthage into a legendary backdrop — and a mirror of modern Italy’s ambitions.
1914 · Itala Film, Turin
What the sources really say about the tophet →Cabiria
Directed by Giovanni Pastrone, Cabiria follows a Sicilian girl who is kidnapped, sold in Carthage and doomed to be sacrificed in the temple of “Moloch”, against the backdrop of the Second Punic War: Hannibal crossing the Alps, the siege of Syracuse and Archimedes’ mirrors, the tragedy of Sophonisba.
Nearly three hours long, with monumental sets and long tracking shots, Cabiria is the first great film epic and inspired D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916). Its sacrifice scenes owe more to Salammbô than to the ancient sources.
DirectorGiovanni Pastrone
IntertitlesGabriele D’Annunzio, who also named Cabiria and Maciste
MacisteThe strongman played by Bartolomeo Pagano, a former Genoa docker, went on to star in dozens of films
From silents to epics
1925Salammbô — Pierre Marodon adapts Flaubert, with a score by Florent Schmitt.
1937Scipione l’Africano — A propaganda film of the Fascist regime directed by Carmine Gallone: Rome’s victory at Zama prefigures the conquest of Ethiopia. History written by the victor →
1959Annibale — Victor Mature plays Hannibal in this epic by Edgar G. Ulmer and Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, elephants crossing the Alps included.
1960Cartagine in fiamme — Carmine Gallone adapts Emilio Salgari’s novel, set during the Third Punic War.
1960Salambò — A new adaptation of Flaubert by Sergio Grieco, starring Jeanne Valérie.
2006Hannibal (BBC) — A docudrama with Alexander Siddig as Hannibal, keeping close to Polybius and Livy.
Documentaries
History written by the victor →From ruins to screen
Recent documentaries draw on archaeology — the circular harbours, the tophet, the Punic quarter on Byrsa — to move beyond epic-film imagery.
The challenge remains: to tell Carthage’s story from its own traces, not only from its conquerors’ accounts.
05 · Comics & games
In panels and pixels
Comics, video games, board games: Hannibal is still the strategist everyone wants to play.
Comics
Alix, Druillet
1977Jacques Martin sends his Gallo-Roman hero into Le Spectre de Carthage, an album in the Alix series.
1980–1986Philippe Druillet transposes Salammbô into space, with his hero Lone Sloane, in three albums.
Video games
Ancient strategy
CivilizationCarthage is playable in several instalments, long led by Hannibal; Dido rules it in Civilization V, then leads Phoenicia in Civilization VI.
Age of EmpiresThe Carthaginians arrive with the Rise of Rome expansion (1998).
Total WarCarthage is a playable faction in Rome: Total War (2004) and Total War: Rome II (2013), whose Hannibal at the Gates campaign (2014) replays the Second Punic War.
Board game
Tactics →Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage
1996A simulation game by Mark Simonitch that replays the Second Punic War, from the Alps to Zama. Everywhere, the same question: could Hannibal have won?
06 · Tunisian memory
An everyday name
In Tunisia, Carthage is not a scholarly memory: it is the name of a neighbourhood, a street, a TV channel.
Carthage in daily life
Banknotes and stampsHannibal and Elissa have appeared on banknotes of the Central Bank of Tunisia; the Tunisian Post regularly devotes stamps to the sites and great figures of Carthage.
NeighbourhoodsIn Carthage, the districts and TGM stations are called Hannibal, Amilcar and Salammbô — the last a name invented by Flaubert, now a very real district near the Punic ports.
StreetsAvenue de Carthage runs through central Tunis; across the country, streets, schools and shops bear the names of Hannibal, Hamilcar or Elissa.
MediaHannibal TV, launched in 2005, was the country’s first private television channel.
1985The mayors of Rome and Carthage sign a symbolic treaty ending the Third Punic War.
A national emblem
From the Eagles to the festivals
The presidential palace, the airport, the Carthage Film Festival and International Festival, the “Eagles of Carthage” of the national football team: the name of the Punic city has become the name of Tunisia as it presents itself to the world.
Eagles of CarthageJCC · 1966Festival · 1964
Carthage lives in Tunisia →07 · Words & places
Carthage in the language
Phrases that passed into common use — often coined by Rome, the enemy.
Hannibal ad portas
“Hannibal is at the gates”: the ultimate alarm.
The phrase, attested in Cicero (Philippics, I, 11), preserves the memory of the terror of 211 BC, when Hannibal marched on Rome. Livy writes “ante portas” instead.
Carthago delenda est
“Carthage must be destroyed.”
According to Plutarch, Cato the Elder ended every opinion he gave in the Senate with this demand; the famous Latin wording is a later reconstruction.
Punica fides
“Punic faith” — in other words, treachery.
A cliché of Roman propaganda, repeated by Sallust and Livy, who credits Hannibal with “more than Punic perfidy”. Rome, for its part, did not always keep its word.
The delights of Capua
Comfort that softens you and costs you the advantage.
The phrase comes from Livy (XXIII, 18): the winter of 216–215 BC spent in Capua supposedly softened Hannibal’s army. Modern historians strongly qualify this verdict.
A Carthaginian peace
A peace that crushes the defeated.
Keynes popularised the phrase in 1919, in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, to denounce the Treaty of Versailles.
A “Cannae”
The perfect encirclement.
Hannibal’s victory in 216 BC became the byword for the battle of annihilation; the German chief of staff Schlieffen made it a model.
Place names
Carthages all over the map
Cartagena, founded by the Barcids as Qart Hadasht; Cartagena de Indias in Colombia, named after the Spanish city; Hannibal in Missouri, and more than a dozen American towns called Carthage.
CartagenaCartagena de IndiasHannibal, MissouriCarthage, Texas
The places of Carthage →Further readingSources for this page
8 references
Ancient sources
- Virgil, Aeneidbooks I and IV
- Ovid, HeroidesVII (Dido's letter)
- Plautus, The Little Carthaginian (Poenulus)
- Silius Italicus, Punica — epic in 17 books on the Second Punic War
- Livy, History of RomeXXIII, 18; XXVII, 51
- Cicero, PhilippicsI, 11 (“Hannibal ad portas”)
Modern scholarship
- Gustave Flaubert, Salammbô, Paris, Michel Lévy, 1862 — novel
- John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, London, 1919 — the “Carthaginian peace”
Read also
c. 814 BC
Dido
The founder of Carthage, before Virgil reinvented her.
? – 203 BC
Sophonisba
The princess who chose poison over Scipio’s triumph.
241–237 BC
The Mercenary War
The real conflict behind Salammbô.
Today
Carthage lives in Tunisia
A name, an emblem, a town in Greater Tunis.
Travel
The places of Carthage
From Cartagena to Trasimene, all the way to Missouri.
Sources
History written by the victor
Why our picture of Carthage comes from Rome.