The ruins of ancient Carthage, February 18, 2k8

Walking amongst the ruins of ancient Carthage one has a sense of that great Phoenician empire which rose and fell on these dusty plains of Northern Africa. Only a thirty minute train ride away from the center of modern Tunis, the ruins of Carthage belong to a time over 2,500 years ago, when mighty empires rose and fell, and the entire Mediterranean world trembled with the clashing between Carthage and her arch-rival, Rome. Over the course of the three Punic wars lasting from 263-146 BCE, Carthage saw her overseas domains taken away from her, her trade fleet and navy reduced to insignificance, and finally the very city of Carthage itself reduced to rubble and strewn with salt so nothing would grow there for 1,000 years. The victorious Romans stopped at nothing in their quest to humble and humiliate their once fearsome foes in the Mediterranean, for in doing so they intimidated the Mesopotamian empires to the east, and the barbarian Gauls and Germans to the west, into submission and fear of what Rome was capable of when pushed to her full fury.



A feeling of peace stole over me as I explored the ruins of this once great city and the heart of an ancient empire. For what do our trials and tribulations mean when compared to the hardships faced by those in the past? How could we ever comprehend the feeling of utter loss the Carthaginians surely felt at the utter destruction of their city, the dissolution of their empire, and the enslavement of their entire population by the Romans? We can take solace in history because it provides for us a new perspective from which to view our own lives from.




The defaced statues and broken columns remaining at the ruins of Carthage tell a story of 2,500 years of plunder by Romans, Vandals, Berbers, Muslims, and French. Even the little that remains is a testament to the superb craftsmanship of the Carthaginian buildings, and to luck that a few statues remain intact to today. And the mosaics which remain show the beautiful craftsmanship Carthaginian artisans were capable of. But even if there were nothing tangible left of ancient Carthage, would I still get a feeling of timelessness when I stood on the ground where so many decisions had been made so long ago? Would I still know it was there, buried deep in the Earth underneath me? The quest for that answer drives me to travel and keep on visiting these ancient places in search of the truth.




- XNM