Talk:Carthage

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Carthage's skilled sailors could have reached the Americas

Very vague statement.

The sailors might have reached the Americas if they wanted to

-or-

actually reached and saw the Americas?

-G

Archives of this page

A long and heated discussion of whether child sacrifice should be mentioned in this article has been archived to Talk:Carthage/Human Sacrifice. All new comments about the Carthage article should be entered at the bottom of this page, not on any of the archive pages. From time to time, comments will be moved from here to archival pages as appropriate.

Richard 02:57, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Entries posted to this page from 2003 thru 2005 have been archived to Talk:Carthage/Archive 1.

Entried posted to this page in 2006 have been archived to Talk:Carthage/Archive 2

--Richard 17:18, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Settlement section -- vandalism?

I am just here reading, not as any kind of knowledgable person. But the following sentence in the Settlement section up top seems pretty odd to me: "These losses led to a decline in Carthage's political and economic strength, mostly due to the harsh penalties imposed on Carthage by Rome as conditions of the Wee Wee Pee Pee of hostilities." What is that? Soupyx 02:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Trivia Section

I think that somebody should find a way to incorporate the facts in the trivia section into other sections of the article--Tabun1015 03:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

move child sacrifce to a different article

I suggest to move the whole child sacrifice discussion to a different article on the Punic culture or to the existing article on the Punics. Any objections? I think it is like discussing homicide in the article Tokyo. Wandalstouring 10:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see the analogy ("like discussing homicide in the article Tokyo"). This article has not just been about the town of Carthage, but about the Carthaginians in general. If you are saying that it should only be about the town then we need to decide that. Note that the subject is already discussed in a separate article - Religion in Carthage. Paul B 10:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The article "Punic" to which you refer, stated life as a simple definition of the word and its later connotation of "treacherous". Carthaginians, which redirects here, is a far more common usage in English. Yes, we use the term "Punic wars", but it's not typically asserted in English that the Romans fought the "Punics", usually it's "the Romans fought the Carthaginians". Paul B 10:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

"Carthage (Greek: Καρχηδών: Karchedon, from the Phoenician Kart-hadasht meaning new town, Arabic: قرطاج also قرطاجة, Latin: Carthago) refers both to an ancient city in North Africa located in modern day Tunis and to the civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence. The city of Carthage was located on the eastern side of Lake Tunis across from the center of modern Tunis in Tunisia."

This is the intro of the article. It clearly defines the scope as the city of Carthage. Any questions? Your suggestion religion in Carthage sounds OK. Wandalstouring 11:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have missed "and to the civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence." How does that differ from Punics unless Punics is a synonym for Phoenecians, who already have an article? Paul B 11:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The issue raised by Wandalstouring is partly one of language and partly one of article scope. The language problem is that, in theory, you have "Carthage the City" and "the Punic empire/civilization" or the "Carthaginian empire". Thus, the proposal to move discussion of child sacrifice to Punic culture on the "Carthage" vs. "Punic" distinction would require that most of this article be moved to other articles since most of this article is not about Carthage per se but about the Punic civilization as a whole.

Now, we don't have the same approach with Rome. The Rome article covers the city of Rome and there are many subsidiary articles covering the rich History of Rome.

Perhaps we should consider a similar approach with Carthage. Based on the preceding discussion, I think the consensus is against such a wholesale move of content. Perhaps this consensus will change. However, the point I am making is that we should not move just "child sacrifice" to Punic culture.

Now, moving on to the question of article scope, the question we should ask is whether child sacrifice is such a signal attribute of Punic culture as to warrant significant coverage in this main article about Carthage. Wandalstouring crafted a poor analogy when he suggested that it was like "discussing homicide in the Tokyo article". It's more like discussing suicide in the Japan article. Or like discussing human sacrifice in the Aztec article. Now, it should be obvious that all of these are aspects of the culture or religion and do not warrant a lengthy discussion in the main article. I think these should be mentioned in the main article as notable and widely-known understandings or misunderstandings of the culture but comprehensive treatment should be left for a subsidiary article.

In fact, in April of last year we had a huge debate on this Talk Page about whether or not to even mention child sacrifice in this article. Partly as a result of that debate, I created the Religion in Carthage article as a place to describe the practice of child sacrifice. My intent was that the coverage of child sacrifice in this article could be reduced to a brief summary while the more detailed discussion could be placed in the subsidiary article Religion in Carthage. It appears that, although I created the Religion in Carthage article, I never fully executed this second half of the plan i.e. reducing the coverage in this article to a short summary. I haven't been watching the edits to this article closely. It appears that the coverage of child sacrifice in this article has been promoted to a more prominent emphasis since last April. If this is so, I would suggest that it be trimmed back to a one paragraph subsection of the "Religion" section with detail to be covered in the Religion in Carthage article.

--Richard 15:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

As you say, there are really two quite separate questions:

1. What should we have as the title of the main article on the Carthaginians? (Carthage; Carthaginians; Punics etc)

2. How much prominence should be given to child sacrifice in the main article, whatever it may be named?

The prominence here is largely due to the edit warring - both sides wanted their POV to be fully and clearly represented. The fear of changing it is also a left-over from anxieties that any changes would restart the war.

I assume that the difference between this article and the Rome related ones partly arises from the simply fact that there is much more material about and interest in Rome and the Roman empire than there is in Carthage. There is also the fact that the city of Rome has prominence for other reasons (Capital of modern Italy; the centre of the RC church). Carthage is almost - but not quite - solely notable for the Carthaginan empire. Paul B 17:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I have to look it up, but without doubt the "Carthaginian Empire" existed during a rather short period from during the mercenary war until Hamilcar starts his conquest in Spain. Before the official state name according to inscriptions from Athens was "Carthage and Utica" (the new and the old city) and for Barcid Iberia it is supported by several scholars that Carthage had an independent junior partner, Gades. Quality literature on the subject does make a difference between the Punic culture with its most important, but not only, center at Carthage in Africa (there was also a Carthage in Sardinia and later the more famous one on the Iberian peninsula). To say Punics are Phoenicians is like mixing up USA and UK (and making George W Tony's poodle). Wandalstouring 22:00, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

If you can demonstrate that "Punics" or "Punic culture" is preferred by scholars to "Carthaginian(s)" then a case can be made for moving redirects, but a case has to be made, and the fact remains that "Punics" remains a rare usage in English. Of course Pheonicians should be treated separately, but even that distinction is hardly clear-cut (the USA UK analogy doesn't really work because of modern ideas of nationhood). "Carthaginan empire" is perhaps an imprecise term, but it is a familiar usage. Paul B

So the deal is if the term Punic and not Carthaginian is prefered for the culture, while Carthaginian for the hegemony and the location, we move this stuff to Punic culture and link there from a description of the tombs and buildings in the article on the city of Carthage? Does everyone agree? Wandalstouring 17:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The deal is Wikipedia policy about most common usage. There are a lot of grey areas. For example there has been on-off dispute about whether the Zoroaster article should be renamed Zarathustra or even Zarathushtra. The last is the preferred scholarly version; the second is probably the best known version (but only because of Nietzsche and Strauss), but the first is the traditional version in English (still used by the EB). At the moment we stick with Zoroaster. Anyway your "if" remains just that. Please provide evidence for its widespread use in preference to Carthaginian. 15:06, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in on your "debate", however until we can come to some sort of agreement on what the Punics or Carthogianians (don't think I spelled that right) should be called and what their culture should be called, and how the two (city and culture) should be separated article-wise, can we at least reorder the section in some way so that it sounds less like an episode of cross fire? Seriousely, I'm reading it and it's like "...oh we don't know if they really sacrificed kids...but actually they did...but really they didn't..." and it makes the whole section sound unintelligent and inconclusive. I say, let's rearrange the section into two parts, one reflecting the view that they didn't sacrifice kids, and the other that they did. Then, lets add that there has not come foreward enough conclusive evidence and that the situation is still under investigation by archeologist an historians alike. I really like the part where it says,

"...The correlation could be because bad times inspired the Carthaginians to
pray for divine intervention (via child sacrifice), or because bad times 

increased child mortality, leading to more child burials (via cremation)."

This really sums up the arguement nicely, clearly, and effectively. 67.170.180.215 06:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)Ralis

State question

Was Carthage merely a colony of a greater Phoenician maritime empire or an independent state with Phoenician roots. I need to know before i link this baby within the States of Ancient African category. That category covers all African states regardless of origin, but it should only include independent civs. Somebody please give me a shout. Scott Free 15:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It was an independent city-state/empire. Paul B 15:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

a problematic claim

After the battle of Himera

"The loss severely weakened Carthage, and the old government of entrenched nobility was ousted, replaced by the Carthaginian Republic."

Aristotle says the Carthaginian constitution has never suffered a revolution. Herodotus mentions no revolution in his account of the First Sicilian War. Finally, a "government of entrenched nobility" is not the opposite of a "Republic"; indeed, a pre-modern republic will often be precisely that. --91.148.159.4 15:57, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

There were some changes since Carthage was originally a monarchy and some people wanted to make themselves monarchs, like Magon. Wandalstouring 20:37, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

"The Punic Wars" section

Very bad, I just don't have the nerve and patience to reorganize it. First - tons of absurdly detailed info on the circumstances surrounding the Mamertine incident that served as a pretext for the First Punic War; then - just a few brief sentences on the Punic Wars themselves, which on top of it all include a lot of debatable lofty generalizations about "determining the course of Western civilization" and "nearly preventing the rise of the Roman Empire". Finally - some info about what happened between the First and the Second Punic War: extremely confusing from a chronological point of view, because the Second Punic War itself has been treated before that paragraph. As so often elsewhere on Wikipedia, people seem to forget that the purpose of the articles is actually to be read by someone, not just to be written by Wikipedia editors.--91.148.159.4 18:11, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it is bad and the reason is that few wikipedia editors can't keep all articles in shape. Wandalstouring 20:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be worth moving the whole section to Carthaginian empire or hegemony and making this article focus on the city. Wandalstouring 20:39, 8 July 2007 (UTC)