Traditional founding of Carthage

The story

The princess who fled from Tyre

The ancients told this story. In Tyre, the great Phoenician city, there reigned a king named Pygmalion. His sister was called Elissa, and the Romans later called her Dido. Elissa was married to a very rich man, called Acerbas in the account of the historian Justin and Sychaeus in the verses of the poet Virgil. Pygmalion, greedy, had his brother-in-law killed to seize his gold. Elissa understood the danger and decided to flee, taking with her some nobles who followed her.

To trick her brother, says the story, Elissa had sacks full of sand put on board, saying they held her husband's treasure, and had them thrown into the sea, as if offering them to the dead. Pygmalion, convinced that the gold was lost, did not pursue her. Elissa and her companions landed on the coast of North Africa, in the place where Tunisia now lies.

An ox hide

There the princess asked the local king for a piece of land on which to build a city. He, as a joke or out of meanness, granted her as much ground as an ox hide could cover. Elissa cut the hide into very thin strips and with them surrounded a whole hill. The hill was called Byrsa. The Greeks, who loved playing with words, linked the name to their word byrsa, “hide”. Modern scholars think instead that it comes from a Semitic word meaning a fortified place.

The city she founded was named Qart-hadasht, which means “new city”: a new Tyre on African soil. We call it Carthage. The story ends in tragedy: a neighbouring king, Iarbas, wanted to marry the queen, but she, faithful to her murdered husband, climbed onto a pyre and took her own life. In another version, in Virgil's Aeneid, Dido falls in love with the Trojan hero Aeneas and, when he leaves to found Rome, stabs herself with his sword.

History or legend?

The sources that tell of Elissa are Greek and Roman and were written many centuries after the events, so we do not know whether she really existed. Some scholars regard her as a historical figure, because her name and her brother's appear in lists of the kings of Tyre. Others think she was originally a goddess. One thing is certain: the meeting of Dido and Aeneas is impossible, because the Trojan War would have happened centuries earlier. Virgil invented it, around 19 BC, to explain in a poetic way the origin of the rivalry between Rome and Carthage.

The traditional date, 814 BC, comes from the Greek historian Timaeus. The writer Justin places it seventy-two years before the foundation of Rome. Today some scholars think that Elissa's flight took place more or less in 825 BC and that the city was founded shortly afterwards. Archaeologists have found on the site remains of murex shells of the 8th century BC, a sign of purple dye-works, and a first urban core of about ten hectares dating to the 7th century.

A great city

Carthage stood on a peninsula near the Lake of Tunis, about fifteen kilometres north-east of present-day Tunis. Its fortified centre was the hill of Byrsa. It had two artificial inner harbours, the cothon, one military and one commercial. Near the harbours there was a sacred enclosure, the tophet, where many urns with the remains of children and animals were buried. Scholars debate whether there were child sacrifices or whether it was simply a cemetery for newborns: the question is open.

How many inhabitants did it have? The historian Strabo spoke of 700,000 people before its fall, in 146 BC, but the figure is considered hardly credible. Little written material about Carthage survives, because the city was destroyed. We know of an author, Mago, who around 300 BC wrote a treatise on agriculture in 28 volumes: the original text is lost, but we keep fragments quoted in Latin.

The end

Carthage fought three wars with Rome, called the Punic Wars. In the third, in 146 BC, the general Scipio Aemilianus besieged and destroyed the city. About 50,000 inhabitants were sold as slaves. It is often said that the Romans sprinkled the ground with salt so that nothing would grow again, but there is no proof of this: it is a story born in the 19th century. In 122 BC Gaius Gracchus founded a Roman colony, which did not last long; then Julius Caesar, between 49 and 44 BC, had a new city built on the same spot.