大象传媒

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Destruction of Carthage. The North African city of Carthage was rich and powerful, but in the second century BC it suffered a terrible fate. The Greek historian Appian wrote about it: 鈥淭hen came new scenes of horror. As the fire spread and carried everything down, the soldiers did not wait to destroy the buildings little by little, but all in a heap. So the crashing grew louder, and many corpses fell with the stones into the midst. Others were seen still living, especially old men, women, and young children who had hidden in the inmost nooks of the houses, some of them wounded, some more or less burned, and uttering piteous cries.鈥漌hen the Romans finally conquered their great enemy in 146 BC, they razed it to the ground, sold off its library and tried to destroy not merely the city but the civilisation based upon it. Carthage was removed from history with such effect that it鈥檚 hard to know the city save through Roman eyes.It was a pivotal moment in world history that left Rome as the supreme power in the Mediterranean but after it was gone the ghosts of Carthage haunted Rome and seemed to hint at Rome鈥檚 own fate. With Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge; Jo聽Quinn, Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Oxford and Ellen O鈥橤orman, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol