The Fall of Carthage

The Punic Wars 265-146BC

By: Adrian Goldsworthy

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

The struggle between Rome and Carthage in the Punic Wars was arguably the greatest and most desperate conflict of antiquity. The forces involved and the casualties suffered by both sides were far greater than in any wars fought before the modern era, while the eventual outcome had far-reaching consequences for the history of the Western World, namely the ascendancy of Rome.

An epic of war and battle, this is also the story of famous generals and leaders: Hannibal, Fabius Maximus, Scipio Africanus, and his grandson Scipio Aemilianus, who would finally bring down the walls of Carthage.

©2000 Adrian Goldsworthy (P)2018 Tantor

A nice general summary of the three Punic Wars

A straightforward (and sometimes dry) overview of the wars between Rome and Carthage. This book does not go into as much detail as others (especially dealing with the second war), but provides a continuous narrative across the entire conflict.
I would recommend this a good starting point for anybody interested in the Punch Wars and the fall of Carthage.

Awesome

This was an awesome book! it definitely kept you interested all the way to the end.

Informative, thorough, educational, and entertaining

I will read any book by Adrian Goldsworthy. Always leave feeling richer and understanding of the past and I appreciate his touching upon parallels of our current times.

Great review of what happened

Stayed interesting throughout the book, I learned a lot of new information. Not sure what else to say.

A turning point in western history

The struggle between Rome and Carthage is glossed over in most popular history except for the intriguing tale of Hannibal’s army crossing the Alps with war elephants. That gets every kid’s attention and I wonder if it isn’t the inspiration for the battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings. But, these wars lasted for more than a century and the total casualties were far greater than any modern wars. And then there is the biggest thing. In the beginning, Carthage was dominant. It was a naval power and ruled all of the coast of North Africa, the islands of Sicily and Corsica and most of Sardinia and various other islands west of Italy,  and much of modern Spain when Rome didn’t even control all of the Italian peninsula. Without the defeat of Carthage, Rome could not have become the ascendant power that it became, Europe and Britain would not have had the influence of Roman culture, government, and Latin, and there would have been no Pax Romana in the east. Possibly America’s democratic experiment, modeled as it was on the Roman Senate and Legislative Assembly making laws and Magistrates acting as executives with a military that was separate and non-political, may not have come into being. It’s impossible to know what influence that Carthage would have had in Rome’s absence. 

Goldsworthy covers all three Punic wars in detail and notes how the cultural differences between Rome and Carthage greatly affected the outcome of the wars. Rome fought to utterly defeat the enemy while Carthage tended to fight to remove an imminent threat. Rome pursued victory while Carthage pursued peace. However, the Roman armies tended to also be more homogeneous and with less turnover, allowing them to work together better as a unit and build on past experience. He also makes note that all of our sources are very limited and are all from the Roman perspective and those are limited to only two, the most reliable of which is only fragmentary. Carthage’s complete destruction in the final war meant that there are no accounts from their perspective and thus Goldsworthy takes pains to judge carefully from the accounts written by the victors.  

For those who like history, who want to understand more about Roman history, who also are interested in the period as the Roman Republic was beginning to deteriorate, this is a very good book.