Carthage in 218 B.C.

Carthage — Spring 218 BC · Eve of the Second Punic War.

In 218 BC Carthage is not a territorial state but a commercial-military hegemony: a sovereign African metropolis ruling a tributary Libyan hinterland, ringed by a network of self-governing Phoenician (Libyphoenician) cities, and joined since 237 to a vast new war-empire in Spain built by the Barcid family. Stripped of Sicily and Sardinia by Rome, Carthage has found in Iberian silver and Iberian manpower the means to renew the struggle — and in Hannibal the man to lead it.

Twenty years after the disaster of the First Punic War, Carthage has remade her power in the west. Hamilcar Barca, then Hasdrubal the Fair, then Hannibal forged in Spain a dominion richer and more populous than anything Carthage lost — its capital the new Qart Hadasht (Carthago Nova), its treasury the silver mines, its army Iberian, Libyan and Numidian. In 219 Hannibal stormed Saguntum, a city under the protection of Rome, which has demanded his surrender and been refused. The war is declared, and Hannibal is already mustering for the march on Italy itself.