10¼ M. Dermèche, station for El-Kheraïb (‘the ruins’), supposed to have been once the market-place of Carthage (p. [345]), on the S. side of the Kothon, and also for the Palais de Dermèche, once the palace of the minister Mustapha ben-Ismaïl, and now the property of the bey.
10½ M. Carthage (hotels, see p. [343]), station for the road to the castle-hill and abbey-hill of Carthage (pp. [346], 349). 11¼ M. Ste. Monique, between the convent of that name on the right and Damous el-Karita (p. [349]) on the left.
Passing Briqueterie, we ascend to (13 M.) Sidi Bou-Saïd (p. [351]).
13¾ M. Arrêt de l’Archevêché, for the archiepiscopal palace; Arrêt de la Corniche, the last halt. We then descend to the N.W. to (14½ M.) La Marsa-Plage (p. [351]).
Carthage, once the proud queen of the seas, lay 10 M. to the E. of Tunis on a low range of hills culminating in Cape Carthage (p. [351]). The cape was originally an island, but was probably united with the mainland by the deposits of the Medjerda before the foundation of the city (comp. p. [129]). The neck of land between Lake Bahira on the S. and the Sebkha er-Riana on the N., where the army of Regulus was annihilated in 255 and where Scipio encamped in 146, was, according to Polybius, only 3000 paces (ca. 1½ M.) wide, but is now 3 M. at the narrowest part. In the middle ages Douar ech-Chott (p. [344]; ‘village on the salt-lake’) lay on Lake Bahira. Carthage possessed two harbours. The outer or commercial harbour lay between the Baie du Kram (p. [344]) and Bordj el-Djedid (p. [350]), where considerable remains of its quays are preserved for a distance of nearly a mile. The inner or naval harbour (Kothon) was an artificial inland basin, probably on the same site as the two modern lagoons, with a rectangular entrance-basin and a circular main harbour. On an islet in the latter lay the naval arsenal.
Between the two harbours ran the triple town-wall, which on one side extended from the Bordj el-Djedid to the plateau between the Odeon and Damous el-Karita (p. [349]), and on the other side enclosed the castle-hill (see below) on the S. and W. sides. The market-place (p. [344]), on the N. side of the naval harbour, was connected with the castle-hill by three narrow streets, the chief scene of contest during the storming by Scipio. To the N.W. of the city-wall, as early as the Punic period, lay the villa-suburb of Megara or Magalia (now La Malga).
History. Carthage was founded about 880 B. C. by Phœnicians from Tyre, under the leadership, according to tradition, of Dido, adjacent to Kambe, a colony from Sidon. Under the name of Kart-hadasht (‘new town’) it extended gradually from the dale on the N.E. side of the Bordj el-Djedid up to the castle-hill. Thanks to its most advantageous site near the Sicilian straits and on the sea-route between Egypt and Spain, and to its proximity to the valleys of the Medjerda and the Oued Miliane (p. [363]), the richest in the land, it soon surpassed Utica (p. [353]) and the smaller Phœnician seaports in wealth and power. From the 6th cent. onwards Carthaginian fleets contended with the Greeks and with the Etruscans, from whom they wrested Corsica and Sardinia, for the mastery of the W. Mediterranean, and in 480 their army of mercenaries, in alliance with Xerxes, even attacked the Greeks of Sicily. After a great struggle of more than two centuries for the possession of Sicily, during which Agathocles (p. [163]) carried the war into his enemies’ country (310–307), the intervention of Rome led to the three Punic wars (264–241, 218–201, and 149–146), to the occupation of Spain by the Carthaginians, and to the capture and destruction of Carthage, after a heroic resistance, by Scipio in 146 B. C. On its ruins, in 122, C. Gracchus attempted to found a Roman colony, but it was not till the year 44 that the far-seeing policy of Cæsar led to the firm establishment of the Colonia Julia Carthago. The despatch by Augustus of a colony of veterans and the erection of the city into the capital of the province in place of Utica (29 B. C.) paved the way for the renewed glory of Carthage, which soon became the greatest Mediterranean seaport next to Alexandria and the third-greatest city in the Roman empire. Far and wide its schools of rhetoric and philosophy were famous. Passionate champions of Christianity, like Tertullian (160 to about 245), founder of the sect called after him, and Cyprian (d. 258), who protested against the claim of Rome to precedence in the church, were residents in Carthage, the chief bishopric in N. Africa. In numerous councils (from 393 onwards) the dogmas of the Catholic church were here discussed and settled, and at the synod of the Gargilian Thermæ in 411 St. Augustine with fiery eloquence combated the doctrines of the Donatists (p. [322]) and the Tertullianists.
Genseric (p. [322]) converted the old palace of the proconsuls into his royal residence and made Carthage the capital of the Vandal empire, and a little later the city became the residence of the Byzantine governors. After Hassan ibn en-Nôman (p. [322]) had destroyed the city in 698, almost as completely as Scipio had done, and after he had even caused the harbours to be filled up, the ruins were used for centuries as a quarry for the building of Kairwan (p. [372]), Tunis, Goletta, and the small towns around, while many of the Roman and Byzantine columns were carried off by the Moors to Cordova and by the Italians to Palermo, Amalfi, Pisa, and Genoa. The attempts of the Hafsides (p. [323]) to resuscitate Carthage met with little success. To that dynasty belonged El-Mostanser-Billah, against whom Louis IX., the Saint, directed his last crusade. It was on the castle-hill of Carthage that Louis died of the plague in 1270, and it was from Carthage that Emp. Charles V. led his expedition against Tunis in 1535. Modern builders have again been busy, at the cost of the ancient ruins, since the time of Card. Lavigerie (1825–92), who made the Missions d’Afrique (see below) the centre of the catholic missions in N. Africa and succeeded in 1884 in obtaining the restoration of the old archbishopric.
After all this endless havoc, and owing to constant alterations in the earth’s surface, it is now very difficult to trace the plan either of the Punic or of the Roman Carthage, which seems to have been laid out in chessboard fashion. Yet the beauty of the scenery and the wealth of historical memories amply compensates for the deplorable state of the ruins. The valuable yield of recent excavations is now preserved in the Musée Lavigerie (see below), in the Bardo Museum (p. [340]), and in the Louvre.