Carthage

Africa Proconsularis

Carthage, beside the Lake of Tunis near modern Tunis in Tunisia, was founded by Phoenician settlers (tradition names Queen Dido as founder). It grew into a Mediterranean power until Rome destroyed it in 146 BCE at the end of the Third Punic War, a sack the historian Polybius witnessed. Julius Caesar refounded it, and it became the centre of the Roman province of Africa, where Apuleius studied. Carthage was a major centre of Latin Christianity: Tertullian wrote there, Cyprian was its bishop until his martyrdom in 258, its councils such as that of 397 shaped the Western church, and the Donatist controversy divided it. Vandals, Byzantines and finally, in 698, Umayyad forces took the city.

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