Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization Kindle Edition

The problem with writing about the ancient history is that very little written material has survived and what was written was written by the "winners". That is absolutely the case with Rome's three wars with Carthage and the history of Carthage in general. The problem for the popular historian is how to address that "absence" of material What Miles does in this book is to sort of invent a Carthage of his own imagination and to argue with Roman historians (Livy, Polybius, etc) based on the Carthage of his own creation.Its a valid approach, but it has its limits. It especially depends on the author not going too far with their imagination or bringing in an agenda. Its a readable and well-written book which at its best tells the story of the wars with Carthage in a far more readable way than the primary sources. But at its worst, Miles is seeing things that may not be there in history and he is bringing in an agenda.

He brings a contrarian agenda to the book. Greeks and Romans are bad. Everyone else is not only good, but represents a wonder-filled tapestry of cultural diversity. He calls Carthage a "Mediterranean Melting Pot". Searching for support for this idea, he uses as an example a building in Libya built in a mix of styles (Egyptian, Greek and other). But rather than seeing it as a very derivative "kitsch" mess which suggests the absence of style, he sees it as "extraordinary eclecticism and openness to new influences and ideas". Worse yet, it never dawns on him that this sort of thing has never really gone away. You can find this sort of throwing together of style elements lifted out of context in American commercial construction today.

The author goes off the deep end trying to make his point: "However, the bold interplay between shadow and light created by the concave lines and the height of the structure combined with the elegant vertical flow of the colonnades and the kouroi mean the moment stands as a graceful but unmistakable Punic view of the world". But contrary to that view, sometimes a garishly painted assembly of Greek columns crowned by Egyptian pyramids represents derivative bad taste rather than any view of the world.

Where this is all leading is the author's view that the Greeks and Romans, rather than building western civilization, stole most everything that made up that civilization from a diverse utopian world that existed before they destroyed it and whose existence was covered up after they had destroyed it. Richard Miles at times seems to be close to channeling the ideas of "Black Athena" and certain well-known fringe political groups who push ideas of lost civilizations crushed by the evil Greeks and Romans.

"Carthage stands not only as an eloquent testament to the cultural diversity that once exemplified the ancient mediterranean, but also a stark reminder of just how ruthlessly that past has been selected for us". (p.23)'

There are also points in the book where the author uses loaded modern words such as describing Barcid Spain as an "a form of apartheid". Strong words to be using. His backing example is that military troops in spain were issued different currency than the local tribes in Spain.

As to Child sacrifice in Carthage, he is forced to admit the evidence for it, But concludes his discussion of it with the suggestion that the practice showed the importance of the "Levantine heritage" in Carthage and that it was a symbol of "vibrancy and coherency of the western phoencian world rather than a reflection of "conservative" politics being practiced in "immigrant communities". That the word "conservative" appears here is more than a slight sign of the author's attempts to put Carthage into a modern political context.

The book spends alot of time making arguments with Greek and Roman historians. But rather than do it in a balanced way, he tends to assume the worst about them and the best about Carthage. Most dangerously, he makes those assumptions based on the Carthage that he has imagined rather than basing it on facts.

The book doesn't do a good job with the most complicated questions concerning Carthage. Questions about what exactly was the nature of the political system. Is it fair to call it an empire similar to Rome or was it in reality simply something more like a commercial guild of merchants and traders with a mostly common religion.

He closes the book by pushing the idea that Carthage "won" in the long run. He accomplishes that by basically making Roman Africa equal to Carthage which is a kind of questionable concept.

The book presents a very neoliberal/neoconservative view of the world. Free trade, unrestrained capitalism and a rejection of nationalism in favor of an internationalist business mindset are what it believes in. Corporations without borders are held to be superior to the Roman Republic or Greek democracy.

The book goes on far too long on certain subjects ("Heracles" in particular). Some of them could simply be skipped over. The book is at its best when describing well-known bits of the history and at its worst when it spends pages pushing the pet causes of the author and his vision of Carthage. But the writing saves the book. A think a better editor could have helped him produce a far better book.

Miles gets so caught up in arguing with classical Greek and Roman historians that it almost becomes a more important thesis of the book than the actual history. Every classical historian I've read discusses the possible biases inherent in their source material, but it really doesn't merit the level of iteration that Miles gives it here. At a certain point, this book does more to point out the things we don't know about Carthage than the things we do. Furthermore, Miles' fascination with minutiae of archaeological digs, offhanded references to historical examples the reader may have no familiarity with, and asides about anti-Carthage historians combine to completely offset any chance of crafting an actual narrative about the history of Carthage. The book is less like a professor delivering a great entry-level lecture and more like one having a discussion with colleagues.

The problem may not be so much with the author as with his choice in subject. Like with the ancient Persians and Parthians, the only surviving examples of written Carthaginian history is told by its enemies. As a result, it is probably impossible to paint a full picture of Carthage. That being said, other authors have approached similarly difficult subjects with a more even-handed and engaging voice (I recently finished Tom Holland's Persian Fire and much preferred that admittedly less ambitious work).

On the plus side, the work is meticulously researched. The bibliography and index account for nearly 150 pages of the book. I just wish that Miles had used all of that research to paint a better picture of Carthage (even if told through the eyes of their enemies).

Carthage Must Be Destroyed is a nearly perfect book for the history buff. I am no scholar and although I have a fairly recent master’s degree in history I haven’t taken a course in ancient history since my undergraduate days 45 years ago. I rarely read about ancient history but I was curious to learn about Carthage after reading a review of this book. Although I normally read ten to fifteen history books a year, since becoming bogged down in The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 last year I’ve been concentrating on historical novels. Carthage has renewed my confidence that serious historical scholarship can be fun to read. Richard Miles has done a masterful job in writing an eminently readable account in which his sources are summarized, analyzed and sometimes criticized in a most helpful way. This is a scholarly work – the voluminous notes testify to that. His account of Carthage, which naturally is highly dependent on Roman sources, also refreshed my recollection of the rise of Rome. My only criticism is that I did not understand the economic underpinnings of Carthage prior to the end of the second Punic War. Miles describes the economy of Carthage in its final years rather well at the close of the book, but it only underlined the need to explain it more fully at earlier stages. Miles is careful to not use analogies, but I gather, for lack of clear alternatives, that Carthage’s economy was similar to medieval Venice’s. But Venice had things to export as well as being master traders, so perhaps Carthage did as well? Nevertheless, the other elements of Carthage’s growth and destruction are well explained, including the religious and military aspects of its history. It’s a great book.

This is a serious, scholarly book and it delves into details with a thoroughness missing from most popular accounts of Carthage. The author's major contribution is to show evidence that religion played a major role in the conduct of the wars between Rome and Carthage, and that Hannibal in particular used religion as a part of his diplomacy with the Greeks of southern Italy. The book is, however, very readable. Highly recommended.