Roman North Africa: This is the amphitheater in ancient Carthage where Romans killed Christians during the Decian persecution. Carthage controls the Mediterranean By the 300s BC, the North African port of [...]
Ba'al from Ugarit (Louvre Museum, Paris) He who shall not be named? All along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in what's now Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and down into [...]
Iron Age economy: Phoenician glass - a face pendant of an African man. 400-200 BC Traders in the Mediterranean The rise of the Assyrian empire (in modern Iraq) and of the Phoenicians (in modern [...]
Silver mining slaves at Laurion, near Athens Why did people want silver? People first mined silver in the Bronze Age. Like gold, silver is a great way to help people trade. [...]
History of gold - a bust of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamon When did people first use gold? People have been using gold to make jewelry since the Stone Age. You can find it [...]
The death of Dido, Queen of Carthage, from an illustrated copy of Virgil's Aeneid, about 400 AD Who was Virgil? Virgil was a poet who lived during the civil wars in Rome [...]
The ruins of Punic Carthage After the Second Punic War, in 202 BC, Italy was a wreck. Hannibal's army had been marching up and down Italy wrecking things for more than ten years. All [...]
Hamilcar (Hannibal's father) (We know about this mainly from Polybius and Livy) The Carthaginians had a lot of trouble paying the money the Romans demanded from them after the First Punic War. So their general Hamilcar decided to [...]
Sicily seen from space (the tip of Italy is on the right): the First Punic War was fought here. We know the Roman side Most of what we know about [...]
Etruscan tomb sculpture: the Etruscans liked fancy tombs From Villanovans to Etruscans Around 700 BC, the Bronze Age people we call the Villanovans started to get ideas from the Greeks and Phoenicians who were sailing around the [...]
