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David Neckar: Carthage
I was diasppointed with the Carthage program where the contributors too frequently fell back on facile contemporary comparisons (e.g."Blue Peter", which even MB couldn't take). It felt very superficial to me and not up to the usual standards of IOT.
Ezra Davies. Was Carthage salted?
Dear Melvin Bragg (and John Butler below)John Butler wrote about Carthage being salted to render infertile. Salt is very abundant in the soil anyway, that's why dirt under your fingernails tastes salty. It also dissolves and washes away readily. In those days it was very expensive and too pricy to spread over a large area of land. I have also experimented myself using salt to kill plants, and found it didn't work.
John Butler - Carthage
I thought the Romans were suppoosed to have made the land infertile by salting it & levelled the hill. Is this so, or complete fiction? Also the remains of the Carthaginian harbour which concealed its ships very cleverly are still to be seen. Pity the winners always write up the story. Archeology is often the better source of truth.
Elizabeth Key- Latin quotations- get them right!
'Carthago delenda' cropped up in Melvyn's introduction & the 8.30 a.m. trail-but Cato the Elder wrote 'Delenda est Carthargo'- which gives a much stronger emphasis and rhythm- an error which the classistists were too polite to correct. Another splendid programme, thank you.
Sandy Hall - Rome v Carthage 13.02.09
This had the promise of being an excellent programme, as one expects, but the elephant in the room which forced me to switch off before the end was the incessant "umm-ing" and "err-ing" of at least one contributor. To a retired lecturer in public speaking and presentation, this was not good radio. Sorry. Still received a lot of new information and clarification, though. Wish I'd had a more inspiring history teacher at school. Best wishes.
michael stafford carthage
I admired the way Melvyn steered the ladies back to seriousness when they got too donnishly frivolous.
Paulpic Mediterranean as pondWhat was the panel implying by their comparsion of London to Rome and New York to Carthage? Has the banking crisis shown there should only be one financial capital?
Jane - Carthage
Don't know whether lack of sleep doth render me stupid or whether these are valid questions. The gained wealth created a 'feminising' - what exactly does that mean in such a context? Also, "we need to keep this enemy here or we will collapse into moral decline". Was this because either the discipline and focus imposed by potential conflict or a general focus of hatred 'honed' the people, strengthening their solidarity and moral level? I'm not very clear on how Scipio Nasica deduced this (predictively) - or is it a common theme? It's probably obvious, but can anybody possibly enlighten me? A choice between targeted hatred or moral decline....and all that carnage - I can get quite depressed listening to history -'though the hugely creative elements of Carthage must have been fabulous, even if destruction was the subsequent fate. Once sang Belinda in a performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas conducted by the lovely Robert Tear but only got to 'hold Dido's hand' whilst she mournfully rendered forth one of the best, if saddest tunes ever written - Dido's Lament "When I am laid in earth may my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast, remember me but a..ah, forget my fate." I'm even more depressed now. Best wishes and thanks as always.
Carthage
Good programme.The three commentatorsbrought out the themes very well.The name 'Carthage'has a mystic resonance in studies of the early rise of Rome.The myths play a part with the Tyrianprincess Dido and the laying on of the curse after the love affair with Aenias.The downfall of Carthage echoed Rome's own fate in mirroring that of Troy.The figure of the austere Cato andthe story of the fig: destroying Carthage was like overcoming louchenessluxury and effeminacy and gaining total control of the Mediterranean.Butthere are countervailing voices who think this would be a bad thing,one ofwhom is the prophetic voice of Polybius-eyewitness historian to the destruction of Carthage-who provides the sting in the tail.This probably is the foundation of the new Roman Empirebut with it the loss of that famousMediterranean equilibrium and balance.Then follows the beginning of the end:civil wars,loss of the Republic,the line of Emperors,the gross taxationsand corruptions,the excessive crueltyand the self-destruction.In other wordsthe loss of soul and the loss of necessity. The whole battleground wasSicily,an arena of great importance forthe rise of Rome and the loss of which proved fatal to the Carthaginians.It makes you realize how much we've lostwith the loss of Latin and Greek.
Elizabeth Roberts Carthage
ps I thought the usual tag was 'Carthago delenda est' (Carthage must be destroyed) This form would also allow more dramatic emphasis if spoken in the senate.
Laurence Hallewell, Carthage
'Twas a pity Melvyn Bragg did not mention the final irony: that the New Rome, Constantinople (and presumably all Christendom), was in the 7th century saved from a new Persian conquest by a general from Carthage, Heraclius. He ended up destroying another empire, Persia, and so weakening the Roman Empire in the process as to leave both open to the Arab jihad that islamised Persia and halved the Roman Empire by taking over the Holy Land, Egypt, and eventually North Africa and Spain, including Carthage itself. Which in turn, albeit some 800 years later, caused the fall of Constantinople itself to Islam.
Elizabeth Roberts - Sicily as grain producer
Re: the importance to Rome of Sicily as a producer of grain. Surely there must be an example here of radical climate change before the combustion engine and other 20th century CO2 emissions? Ditto the desertification of Egypt, also once a rich grain-producer?
Andrew Amesbury
Very interesting topic this morning on Rome vs Carthage, especially the idea that Rome began to decline after the defeat of Carthage. It made me wonder whether the United Kingdom met the end of a moral purpose after the defeat of Germany in 1945 (and possibly America began to decline morally once it no longer had the Soviet Union to struggle against).
Cato citation
Btw it's "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.", not "Delendam esse Carthago."
Ian Foreman Carthage
Fascinating programme,learnt so much but surely today should have been Abraham Lincoln?
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