Few cities, perhaps, have enjoyed two periods of prosperous existence, each lasting some seven hundred years but separated by the gulf of a century when the city lay in utter ruin and desolation. Yet such was the history of Carthage: Punic Carthage which had dominated the western Mediterranean for centuries was wiped off the map by Rome in 146 B.c., only to be revived a century later as a Roman creation and to become one of the most flourishing cities of the Empire, surviving until its destruction by the Arabs at the end of the seventh century A.d. A centenary of the end of Punic Carthage, as of independent Corinth, falls this year and thus calls for a brief remembrance. This the Romans would doubtless have welcomed, not only as recalling their elimination of a secular, though weakened, enemy, but also because they liked celebrating anniversaries. It has indeed recently been suggested (by M. Grant, Roman Anniversary Issues, pp. 4, 120) that Julius Caesar deliberately planned the colonization of Carthage in 46 B.c., just one hundred years after its destruction, while Septimius Severus, himself an African, records on his coinage his favour to the city (INDVLGENTIA AVGG. IN CARTH.) in the quarter-millennary of the foundation plan. Whether or not such precise dating can be established, it is certain that the Romans enjoyed celebrating anniversaries and that the anniversary of the fall of Carthage marks an event of far-reaching significance: if Carthage had in fact succeeded in conquering Rome, the history of Western Europe would certainly have taken a very different turn.
