Carthage Blog 12 - Fall of Carthage
- Scot Stoddard
- Jul 12
- 13 min read
Updated: Jul 20
The Fall of Carthage and Aftermath
We left off on the last Blog, Blog 11, with the destruction of the City of Carthage by the Roman Republic. In this blog, I'd like to talk about the aftermath of this tragic event, and give some overall further background on the achievements and accomplishments of Carthage and the Phoenicians that have impacted modern society and culture.
We're in the year 146 BC, and Carthage has just been sacked, looted and destroyed by the Roman Republic. 50,000 Carthaginians were sold into slavery. The Romans were determined that Carthage would remain in ruins. The Roman Senate dispatched a ten-man commission to make sure Carthage was completely ruined, and further demolition took place under the guidance of Scipio. A curse was then placed on anyone who may try to settle on the site in the future. The former Carthaginian territories were annexed by Rome and molded to form the Roman Province of Africa. Most artifacts, book, ledgers or whatever was left from Carthage was redistributed by the Romans to local tribes and forever lost. Therefore, any written accounts of the history I've visited in these blogs has come from Greek or Roman historians and scholars.
The Punic cities who had stood by Carthage until the end were forfeit to Rome under "ager publicus", a term meaning "state land", usually acquired by conquest over enemies of Rome. Or they, too, were destroyed. What cities were left were able to retain at least some elements of their government and culture. This is what scholars call "Neo-Punic" civilization. The Punic language survived and was spoken in North Africa until the seventh century AD.
In 123 BC a reformist faction in Rome was eager to redistribute land, including publicly-held land, including the site of Carthage. A controversial law was passed ordering the establishment of a new settlement there called Junonia. It is significant in that it was the first transmarine Roman colony, but it held widespread unpopularity among Romans. It is believed that the land was still cursed, and those superstitions about the land spread reports of ill omens, including a claim that wolves had carried off the boundary stakes. Shortly after inception, the plan was scrapped. In 111 BC legislation repeated the injunction against any resettlement. A century after the end of the Third Punic War, Julius Caesar planned to rebuild Carthage, but little work was ever done. Augustus revived the concept in 29 BC and completed the project, making Roman Carthage one of the main cities in Northern Africa by the beginning of the Roman Empire.
A symbolic peace treaty was signed in 1985 by the Mayor of Rome, Ugo Vetere, and the Mayor of Modern Carthage, Chedli Klibi, 2,131 years after the end of the war. As of today, Modern Carthage remains as a district of the City of Tunis, Tunisia, and contains a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Phoenician and Carthaginian accomplishments and contributions to modern culture
Phoenicians are amongst the most influential people of the ancient world. The Phoenicians shaped the culture and economy of the Levant and greatly influenced the Greeks, Etruscans, Hebrews and others. Sadly, we only know of these accomplishment through writings by other cultures. Among their contributions to civilization was the development of a phonetic alphabet (from the very name Phoenician) and a pan-Mediterranean culture. They pioneered new political systems that highly influenced other civilizations in the Middle East, and their neighbors adopted many of their cultural practices. They helped create the Classical World that centered on the Mediterranean, which gave birth to the Western World. We would not be where were are today if not for the Phoenicians.
The Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet was one of the biggest contributions to civilization, and it started as early at 1000 BC. The Canaanites had developed the first phonetic alphabet. Based on the evidence, it appears that the Phoenicians contributed greatly to the development of this alphabet and used it in their commercial enterprises. They helped to popularize this alphabet, and many cultures adopted it, including the Greeks and Hebrews. The alphabet was one of the most important innovations in all of human history. It differed greatly from hieroglyphics, which used pictures or signs, whereas this alphabet was based off of the sound of spoken words. The consonants were combined with vowels to form words and sentences, allowing for much more complex communication to take place. This allowed government officials to keep more effective records. Ordinary people could learn the alphabet and become literate, which revolutionized many aspects of life. Today, this alphabet, developed and transmitted by the people of such cities as Tyre, Sidon and Byblos, forms the basis of most of the world's alphabets.
An early form of democracy
Over time, Phoenicia developed an advanced political system. The Phoenician city states initially organized their governments around kings, the priesthood and a council of elders. These became increasingly oligarchic over time, and a system other than monarchy began to develop. Some scholars believe they developed an early form of democracy centuries before the Greeks. There is evidence that the citizens of Sidon would vote for candidates for the assembly at religious events. This was transmitted to outlying colonies, such as Carthage. Carthage even had a constitution which called for the election by the citizens of two presidents. It also had an assembly and trade unions. These practices influenced the Greek city states such as Athens, and it's possible that that influence carried on to the Etruscans, who passed it on to the Romans.
Art and culture
The Phoenicians were famous artists and artisans. Their works were widely distributed throughout the Phoenician Empire of all of the Mediterranean. In "The Odyssey", Homer praised these artists and craftsmen. There was no single style of Phoenician artists, but they developed new skills and transmitted their art throughout the Levant. The Phoenicians played a crucial role in developing the First Jewish Temple built by King Solomon as artisans were sent by the King of Tyre to help in its construction.
Mediterranean trade and navigation
The Phoenicians were renowned traders, sailor and navigators. They travelled all over the Mediterranean, and were the first to venture beyond, into the Atlantic and the coast of Africa, even the Black Sea. They traded luxury and high-value goods, such as fabrics with the dye Tyrian Purple, which became one of their biggest commodities and was highly sought after over a widespread area. They traded in tin, bronze and other metals. They established a huge trade network that greatly helped the Mediterranean to recover from lost civilization due to the Sea Peoples. City States such as Tyre made a large contribution to the development of international trade, which also allowed for the transmission and exchange of ideas and knowledge.
I can't stop here without mentioning Hanno The Navigator one more time. We talked about him in Blog 7, Pillars of Heracles. Hanno was a Carthaginian navigator from the sixth century BC who led a naval expedition past the Pillars of Heracles and along the coast of Africa, becoming the first to navigate past the Mediterranean. However, the only source of said voyage is a periplus in his name translated into Greek. You can see the English translation here. I suggest reading it; it's fascinating. And you can read more about Hanno here. His accomplishments revolutionized navigation and led other Europeans to later be able to leave the Mediterranean and discover new territories and the New World.
In conclusion for this section, the Phoenicians, even though they vastly contributed to the region and the development of Western civilization, are much less highly regarded and less well known than the Greeks and Romans. Phoenicia's place in history has been mostly erased due to the destruction of its Carthaginian libraries, works and records by the Romans, as well as the destruction of Tyrian records, works and libraries by the Persians. Ask yourself: Have I ever even heard of these guys before some dude from Kentucky started ranting about them?
Philosophy
Thales of Miletus was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and one of the Seven Sages, founding fathers of Ancient Greece. Thales predated Socrates by about a hundred years. His philosophy was quite interesting, and he was one of the first to break from the tradition of using mythology to explain the world and the first to have engaged in science, mathematics and deductive reasoning. Thales believed that all of nature was based on a single unifying substance: Water. Thales is described by Herodotus as "a Phoenician by remote descent", suggesting that he may have had Phoenician ancestry, although he was primarily associated with Miletus, a Greek city located in Ionia, which was a Greek region in Anatolia (what we call Turkey today). His family was most likely of mixed heritage, with connections to both Greek and Phoenician backgrounds.
I hope I have been able to bring to you some awareness of this great culture, their contributions to the world, their stories, their heroes, their victories and defeats, their great military leaders and their way of life. If you walk away from reading these blogs and listening to the music in their honor with a bit more awareness and respect for the Phoenicians, I have done my job here and hit the mark. Thank you for sticking with me on this long series of blogs. Enjoy the music! Long live the memory of Carthage!
Let's talk about music!
Fall of Carthage is another longer track with diverse sections and repeating themes, such as Hannibal and Third Punic War; in fact, the three songs work together as a unit, as does the history behind these three tracks. It could have been one massive very long track, such as an early Rush track or perhaps Dream Theater, but I decided to break it down into three tracks.
"Today we have a lot of very interesting updates, so let's start".
We're in drop A, the lowest and heaviest key possible with my standard gear; the bpm is 120, medium fast. There's no samples at the beginning, no kind of intro. I wanted this to jump right in. If you listen to the last three tracks, you get it, especially the last two. The Third Punic War led right directly into the Fall of Carthage. As it is.
We jump right in with a heavy drop A riff in 7/4. I like the odd meter here to give a feeling of uneasiness, with strange accents in the rhythm section; two rhythm guitars and bass in unison, usual type thing. There's some pattern going on in the lead synth, and the lead guitar plays part of that, mimicking the synth. On the second pass, the guitar jumps up an octave.
Then we're abruptly into Section 2 with a much more laid back feeling, and it's in 4/4. I could have made the whole track extremely heavy, but didn't want to go there. If you start all-out and there's no changes, how can you build up to a climactic finish? So we're going to get there gradually. It took Rome six days to destroy Carthage, so we're going to go through several moods, genres and sections, as I like to do.
Again we have a bass/rhythm guitar unison riff in A minor, but this one's a lot lighter, an overdrive (or two) on the guitars, Mosky Golden Horse stacked with a Boss SD-1. Pad synth is playing the chords up above. Drums are steady now, with lots of work on the kick drums. This section moves along nicely, I like the flow of it. It feels likes troops marching into battle, and that's what it's meant to show.
There's an intro to this section with bits of lead from the section proper, just enough to set it up and give a taste. The lead is fairly clean with just a bit of the Mosky Golden Horse for some overdrive and a good helping of reverb. I've been looking for this tone for years, and the Golden Horse brings it to perfection. At :39 the main melody starts, played by the lead guitar and doubled in the piano for a really nice effect.
At 1:03 we hit the Section 1 bridge, and I'll give you this chord progression:
F+7, e-7, F+7, e-7
a-7, G, F, G#dim7 to lead us back to the verse nicely.
Then back to the verse, only this time the solo violin (remember him from Third Punic War?) jumps in with a harmony to the melody still being played on the piano and lead guitar.
And at 1:51 we jump, again, abruptly, into Section 3. The Romans were really pressing here on Day 3, there's no time for fancy transitions or modulations; just BAM, right into the next part of our story.
Now it's a bit heavier of a riff with the 7-string rhythm guitars getting some moderately-heavy distortion, again still playing unison riffs with the bass all the way through this section. There's also two more rhythm guitars (6-strings) playing some slashing chords on the downbeats, which moves then into a descending pattern at the end of each phrase. These guitars just have some overdrive on them, and they're panned to a lesser degree inside the heavier guitars to kind of sit in the mix and blend with the heavier guitars which are panned hard left and right. This gives a really full, big flavor here. There's still the chords in the pad, and the piano is doing a counterpoint WAY up high. We're still in 4/4 meter here, but it's heavily syncopated in the guitars and bass while the drums hold a steady beat. Go twice through the riff, and a guitar lead starts at 2:04. And this lead is interesting tonally and composition wise. This is the Golden Horse stacked with the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone for tone; and it's harmonically rich. The lead is very melodic here, there's some nice bends, and a particularly cool whammy bar flutter at 2:19.
At 2:29, we hit the bridge, with some more whammy bar bends and flutters on the lead. The rhythm changes up with some unison runs in between the phrases now. The chord progression goes:
Bb+7, a-7, F+7, e-7
Bb+7, a-7, C+7, G#dim7 (there's that guy again -- I love diminished chords).
Then back to the main verse riff again and two more passes of lead, and we're out of this section.
Now at 3:17 we enter Section 4, the tempo drops to 100 bpm. This is the most tragic theme ever, and I'll explain why the chords sound that way. The second chord is the one that brings all the tension and pathos. So the progression goes a-7, then this thing:
As you can see, the chord identifier was even stumped. I came up with this chord rather by accident when I played a different chord incorrectly, but when I heard it, I said: Wait a second. THAT chord. I had no idea what to name it, but wrote the notes out on a piece of paper and went to the local music theory expert, Cat Corelli. Cat asked me what the root of the chord was, and I said D. The Low E string is not played here. So 5th fret on the A string plays a D. Then Cat tells me, if the root is D, then you don't have a G# there, you have Ab. I'm like, okay, that's what the chord finder gave me. I didn't stop to think you can't have G# in this chord, it's correctly named Ab. Okay, we got past that part. So the best we could come up with is d minor b5 +2. There it is. The +2 because of the E there, open High E string. The Ab is the flatted 5th step of D; it would normally be A Natural. So play this chord starting on the A string, 5th fret, the D, and pick each note once ascending to the highest string, an arpeggio, but it's slow. Then there's a picking pattern on this chord, and it goes back to the a-7. It's a whole bunch of notes packed tightly together, and the tension it brings is incredible. And we go back and forth.
I love this chord, the emotion it brings of total and complete sadness, which is exactly what I needed here. Other chords may have worked, but this put it over the top. This turned into the most tragic of themes because of one chord, and I love it. This should grab you right by the heart; it does to me.
So on top of this chord progression, the piano takes the melody, which is just the arpeggios of these two chords. The rhythm guitars are playing little sequences on the three top strings, part of the piano arpeggios. The bass is doing some skipping around between low notes and really high two-note chords. There's some sword fighting and lance blows going on in the background, and the former Roman soldiers who defected and are now fighting for Carthage are going to their deaths at the synagogue, which will burn in the next section, taking Hasdrubal's wife, as well.
After the introduction to this sections, there's a full stop. Then we continue as follows:
At first, the same two chords, a-7, dm b5 +2. Then F+7, b-7 to G#dim 7 (yes, again)
Repeat twice. Then the bridge:
d-7, G7, E7, a-7 (notice the bit brighter feeling here with those major chords?)
F-7, G, G#dim7 (yep, again) to E7, then back to the verse, a V-i cadence.
Now we're at 5:05, there's another tempo change further down to 80 bpm. And now it gets heavy. The remaining Carthaginians are in big trouble, the Roman ex-patriots are at the synagogue along with Hasdrubal's wife (Refer to Blog 11, Third Punic War if you didn't read it), and Carthage is burning. So it's a heavy riff section. Steady, heavy riffage going on here after a brief drum intro. The Romans are pounding Carthage into dust and killing everybody. There's nothing pretty here, just raw aggression. There's a really nasty lead with tons of gain and my Steve Vai Bad Horsie wah pedal, 7-string guitars doing this heavy riff, and its chaos. At 5:41 there sort of a bridge, and it almost gets melodic for a minute, but a fragment of the heavy riff comes back between phrases. Then a couple more repeats of the main riff for this section again, more lead, this time climbing, climbing, then falling.
And then at 6:29, immediately into Section 6, again, no transition, and this is a repeat of Section 1, only this time it's straighter, in 4/4, but basically the same thing. Go through that passage twice, double kick drums on the second pass to make it more intense. The end is near here for Carthage.
And finally, at 7:01 a four-chord transition back to our main tragic theme. This is almost the exact same thing as before. It's just heavier. The rhythm guitars are heavily distorted, and this time the lead guitar is going to double up the piano for the melody, with the pad synth still up top with the chords. Same chord progression as before, same bridge, same bass part. A slight addition of a little chord sequence at the end, and that's it. The final chord rings out, and Carthage is no more, never to be heard from again under Punic rule.
The end, the bitter defeat, and total destruction
I've taken you through each track now, from the founding of Tyre in 1100 BC, to Dido founding Carthage in 814 BC, the expedition of Hanno the Navigator in the 6th century BC, to the Fall of Carthage in 146 BC, and I've touched on everything in between, all the victories, all the conflicts, all the conquests, Hannibal, Battle Elephants, Tyrian Purple, Sicilian and Punic Wars, and brought you to the Fall of Carthage and the Carthaginian Empire. I hope you've gained some appreciation of not only the Phoenicians as a race and culture who contributed heavily to modern society, but also of the effort I put into all this. It's been a huge 15-month project, and I couldn't be happier with how it came out. I really tried very hard to convert the immense amount of research that went into this project into making it come out as a fascinating historical and musical journey. I enjoy both very much. Thank you for being a part of this.
Hannibal ad portas. Hannibal is at the Gates. Long live the memory of Carthage.
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