Course Syllabus

Hannibal ad Portas! Fact and Fiction on Carthage and the Punic World

'Hannibal stands at the gates' are the words that Roman parents used to scare their kids and to conjure up an image of Hannibal as the Roman bogeyman. It were not just Roman kids, however, who were haunted by Hannibal; many centuries later, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca still fascinates the European imagination and his trek over the Alps with three dozen elephants has been depicted myriad times in paintings and movies as well as novels, operas and theater plays. This course explores fact and fiction about the Carthaginian general and his life world, holding up historical and mythical records against hard archaeological evidence.

The objectives of this course are to explore fact and fiction about the Carthaginian general and his life world: Carthage famously lost the three Punic Wars from Rome and as its history was written by Roman historians, it should not come as a surprise that Carthage and the wider Punic world of the West Mediterranean were depicted in often less than charitable terms. In this course we will compare the historical record against what archaeological research has revealed: we will examine the city of Carthage itself and its foundation, scrutinizing both the myth of Queen Dido and the actual archaeological evidence; we will investigate whether the Punic tophet offers evidence of child sacrifice; and we will consider the city's alleged colonial strategies and economic exploitation - all of this against the background of Hannibal and his world as Europe's bogeyman.

Course Organization

The course is articulated into three parts. The first four weeks examine Hannibal, the Punic world of his time and the Punic Wars. Weeks 5 to 10 then make up the backbone of the course, as we delve deeper into a range of aspects and topics of Carthaginian society and the Phoenician and Punic worlds. Weeks 11 and 12 look at ‘what came after’ the Punic Wars and the destruction of Carthage, that is Roman conquest and occupation and contemporary perceptions in the West.

Each week is dedicated to a single theme as listed on the course outline, with one of the lectures, usually the Friday one, mostly dedicated to discussion of the course readings.

Modules List or overview of lecture topics

Text Books (available from the Brown Book Store)

•  Aubet, M.E. 2001: The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade. (2nd ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Miles, R. 2010: Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Mediterranean Civilisation. London: Allan Lane.

Course Syllabus  |  Guidelines for Writing Essays and Referencing