PrintNovember 30, 2012
Israel and the Carthaginian Peace
The great Roman historian Livy informs us that during the times of the Third Punic War, Cato the Elder ended every session of the Roman Senate with the phrase, "Carthago Delenda Est:" Carthage must be destroyed. Having suffered bitterly while battling for the supremacy of the Mediterranean with the North African city state, rumors of Hannibal again amassing an army to confront his mortal enemy stirred the hearts of the Roman people, whose armies had been soundly defeated in battle scant leagues from the city gates.
The Carthaginians honored their God Baal with human sacrifice, and it is said that Hamilcar Barca baptized his warrior son in the white hot hatred of Rome, sealing the fates of two distinct worlds that would vie on a multiplicity of battlegrounds for the perpetuation of their disparate visions of the world. And though the Carthaginian general's engineering of the Roman catastrophe at Cannae and fifteen years of fighting and winning battles in a hostile environment could...(Read Full Article)
