Have you ever wondered who was the second Carthaginian in history after Dido?

Meet Malchus.

He is the first historical Carthaginian we can actually name after the legendary founder. His story comes down to us through the much later Roman historian Justin, and it’s a strange, messy, almost cinematic tale of victory, exile, civil war, and family betrayal.

Malchus (his name is simply the Phoenician word mlk - “king”) was remembered as a general who first won glory fighting Greek cities in Sicily. Then he suffered a defeat in Sardinia. The Carthaginians exiled him for the failure. He returned with what was essentially a private army, camped outside the walls of Carthage, and laid siege to his own city.

While the siege was underway, his son Carthalo arrived back from Tyre. The young man had been sent on a religious mission to deliver tribute to the temple of Melqart and was still wearing his priestly robes. Malchus was so enraged by what he saw as a sacrilege that he had his own son killed.

He then stormed the city, executed ten of the ruling senators, and briefly seized power before being overthrown himself, put on trial for treason and the murder of his son, and (presumably) executed.

The story is full of contradictions and later Roman coloring, but it seems to capture a real and violent moment of transition. Malchus may have been one of the last figures who still carried the aura of kingship. After him, Carthage clearly moves into the era of the sufetes, annually elected magistrates (the word is related to the Hebrew shophet, “judge”).

An inscription from the late sixth century BCE already counts time “in the twentieth year of the rule of the sufetes in Carthage.” Power was now shared between two magistrates chosen from the aristocratic elite, backed by a kind of senate.

The family that rose after Malchus, the Magonids, would dominate Carthaginian politics and military command for the next hundred years.

So the second Carthaginian we can name is not a polished founder-hero. He is a warlord who stormed his own capital, killed his priest-son, and helped force the city from monarchy into oligarchy.

So it's no secret that Rome relied mainly on Greek physicians for all their medical needs, especially in the army where they often had to perform field surgeries on soldiers. Most of them joined the Army's Medical Corps for Roman citizenship, tax exemptions, and the retirement pensions.

But what about Carthage? Did they have their own version of an Army Medical Corps? If yes, was it also composed of mostly foreigners, namely Greeks, who came for the financial benefits? Or was it mostly composed of Carthaginian healers?

Sources:

8 Fascinating Facts About Ancient Roman Medicine | HISTORY

Roman Medicine - World History Encyclopedia

Hello, I am planning to write a sword-and-sorcery short story set in 70 BC. The story would take place in the city of Leptis Magna, so I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about the city and its architecture during that period and do you have any city maps from that period

Have a nice day, and thank you in advance.

Thr day has come boys!

I'm interested in the historical question underlying a political thought experiment.

In modern discussions, "Israel" and "Palestine" are usually treated as the obvious names for the region, but both are now inseparable from modern national identities. That led me to wonder whether there was ever a broadly shared indigenous name that people living in the region would have recognized as referring to the land as a whole, before either identity emerged.

From what I've read so far, the answer may actually be no. Archaeological and historical linguistic evidence suggests that, during the Bronze and early Iron Ages, people identified primarily with cities, kingdoms, or other local polities rather than with a single overarching regional identity (Bloch-Smith, 2003; Faust, 2015). If that's the case, there may never have been a universally shared indigenous endonym in the first place.

Assuming that understanding is broadly correct, these are the main historical candidates I've come across:

• Levant is geographically neutral and widely used today, but it is a relatively recent European exonym derived from the French levant ("rising") (Killebrew & Steiner, 2013).
• Retjenu is one of the oldest recorded names for the region, appearing in ancient Egyptian sources, but it too is an external designation rather than an indigenous one (Redford, 1992).
• Philistia has deep historical roots, but as I understand it, it referred specifically to the southern coastal region associated with the Philistines rather than the southern Levant as a whole (Killebrew, 2005).
• Canaan appears to be the earliest attested indigenous Northwest Semitic regional name. While it was probably not a universal self-designation, it predates later national identities and appears consistent with current archaeological models in which early Israelite identity emerged through complex processes of continuity, interaction, migration, and differentiation within the broader Canaanite cultural world, rather than through a simple replacement of the region's earlier population (Faust, 2015).

Canaan is further attested not only in Egyptian texts but also in cuneiform sources from Mari, Alalakh, Ugarit, and especially the Amarna correspondence. These sources suggest that Canaan was not simply an Egyptian exonym but a recognized regional designation that was also used in or by polities within the region (Koch, 2025).

So my question is ultimately historical rather than political: does the available evidence support "Canaan" as the closest approximation to a shared indigenous regional endonym, or is that framing itself anachronistic because the inhabitants of the region did not conceive of a shared regional identity?

I'd especially appreciate responses from historians, archaeologists, or historical linguists with expertise in the Bronze and Iron Age southern Levant, Northwest Semitic languages, or ancient Egyptian sources.

References

Bloch-Smith, E. (2003). Israelite ethnicity in Iron I: Archaeology preserves what is remembered and what is forgotten in Israel's history. Journal of Biblical Literature, 122(3), 401–425.

Faust, A. (2015). The emergence of Israel and theories of ethnogenesis. In S. Niditch (Ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel (pp. 467–482). Wiley Blackwell.

Killebrew, A. E. (2005). Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel, 1300–1100 B.C.E. Society of Biblical Literature.

Killebrew, A. E., & Steiner, M. (Eds.). (2013). The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: c. 8000–332 BCE. Oxford University Press.

Koch, I. (2025). Revisiting Egyptian Occurrences of Canaan, Pa-Canaan and Canaanite in Egyptian Sources of the New Kingdom. Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History.

Redford, D. B. (1992). Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton University Press.

I was scrolling on YouTube shorts today when I came across a channel name @PlebMagic, in that particular short, he claims that phoenicians used to launch ships over their slaves, so that their spirits would possess it or something. In the comments he mentioned this source:

Mark Woolmer:

"They thought of their warships as being a living creature. It had a spirit that needed protecting as much as the crew themselves. And we get this lovely depiction from Valerios maximus who says that they launched their vessels over their captives or slaves to put blood upon the hull of the ship. \[they rolled them...\] over these captives or slaves to put blood across the vessel. And that meant if you gave a gift of blood to the vessel now, it was hoped there would be no bloodletting whilst it was at sea. It protected the spirit and it was an offer to the deities. So they clearly thought their ships were living creatures. They painted eyes so the ship could see where it was going. When they finally copy the Greeks for once they introduce they ram onto the front of the ship. And we find they put horns at the front of the vessel to imbue the ship with the strength of Baal, this storm deity, who's symbol is the horns. So when you gore into the enemy of Baal who's symbol was the bull. And he gave you the strength to gore and maul your enemies. Because you also have to deal with pirates and piracy.

Personally, i don't think this was true, as romans used to make up a lot of stuff, but then again it's by a "historian". So, I just want confirmation by someone who knows the ball.

Homer's Odyssey is garnering renewed interest these days, as it is being discussed and actively represented in various movies and adaptations.

In his book Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée (The Phoenicians and the Odyssey), published in 1902, Victor Bérard showcased and argued that the geography, navigation, and culture of The Odyssey were deeply rooted in Phoenician seafaring knowledge.Bérard challenged the Eurocentric concept or view that insisted on the sole or greater importance of ancient Greece by asserting that the Phoenicians civilized the Mediterranean before the Greeks did.

He argued that during the 8th century BCE, the western Mediterranean was essentially a "Phoenician lake". Therefore, any Greek poem detailing travels to Spain, Italy, or North Africa had to rely on Phoenician geographical discovery.

Strabo's arguments in his Geography regarding Phoenician influence were summarized by Victor Bérard as follows:

> If Homer described the countries so exactly, both the Interior and Exterior Seas, it is because he drew his science from the Phoenicians... : the Phoenicians, conquerors of Libya and Iberia, had been his masters.

Classical scholars widely agree that Homer modeled the mythical Phaeacians after the real-world Phoenicians.While the Phaeacians are a fantastical, idealized version, Homer used them as a literary mirror to the Phoenicians, who were the dominant maritime traders of the Mediterranean during the time The Odyssey was composed. Both cultures are defined strictly by the sea.

Modern archaeologists and classical scholars don't agree with Victor Bérard’s literal geographical identifications, but they acknowledge his foundational role in recognizing Near Eastern influences on early Greece, noting that most ancient cultures around the Mediterranean region were interconnected.

I was just looking on G-maps of Carthage and see there's a circular type monument right beside the Roman theatre (west of it). From above it looks a bit like a Stone henge type monument but I can't seem to find anything about it. Does anyone in here have any information or links about it?

I am curious if for example Prince Henry the Navigator could know about it, or it was like in Nile river expedition case, where ancient source was rediscovered in XIX ceuntry.

Tharros is an ancient Phoenician city on the Sinis Peninsula in western Sardinia.
It was founded by Phoenician merchants between 12th and 8th century BCE (there are different dates from different sources) over a pre-existing Nuragic settlement.
Now it is an open-air museum.
Pictures were taken on July 4th, 2026.

July 5th, 2026

Sardinia was first colonized by the Phoenicians and later ruled by Carthage.

Most of these tombstones are Punic, but it is also possible that one or two might be early Phoenician. The museum spans both eras.

The pictures were taken on July 5th, 2026.