Founding of Carthage
Ancient tradition, recorded by later Greek and Roman writers, held that Carthage was founded around 814 BCE by Tyrian nobles fleeing the tyranny of King Pygmalion of Tyre, led by his sister -- called Elissa in the earliest accounts and later immortalised by Virgil as Dido. The legendary founding story has Dido negotiating with local Berber inhabitants for as much land as an ox-hide could cover, then cutting the hide into thin strips to encircle an entire hilltop -- a folk etymology for the citadel's name, Byrsa ('hide'). Whatever the historical accuracy of the founding legend, Carthage's site -- a defensible peninsula controlling the narrows between Sicily and North Africa, ideal for both trade and naval power -- allowed it to grow into the wealthiest and most powerful of all Phoenician colonial foundations. Carthage maintained close cultural and religious ties to Tyre for centuries (Carthaginians continued sending tribute to the temple of Melqart at Tyre), even as it developed its own distinct political institutions -- an oligarchic republic governed by annually elected suffetes and a Council of Elders, rather than Tyre's hereditary monarchy. By the time Alexander besieged and destroyed Tyre in 332 BCE, effectively ending Phoenicia's independent political existence in the Levant, Carthage had already eclipsed its mother city as the dominant Phoenician-descended power, controlling a trading empire across the western Mediterranean that would bring it into direct, eventually fatal, conflict with an expanding Rome in the Punic Wars.
- Year: 814 BCE
- Category: Cultural
