**This class will be taught In-Person**
The most civilized people in the Land of Canaan, the Phoenicians taught boat-building to the Egyptians, built Solomon’s Temple (even as the Hebrews worshipped Phoenician gods), and gave everyone the alphabet. The Rape of Europa myth tells how Zeus abducted the Phoenician princess, Europa, across the sea to Crete, giving us an allegory for the spread of civilization to Europe. Another Phoenician princess also sailed westward, this time voluntarily, to found fabled Carthage, and the Carthaginians became dominating merchants and sailors. However, aggressive Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans drove them to war, and the end came in three titanic struggles the Romans called the Punic Wars, when, despite Hannibal’s brilliance, Rome erased Carthage entirely, then promoted its legends.
Week by Week Outline
1. Rise of the Levant City-States (ca. 8800~1000 BCE). Byblos develops as a maritime city, trades cedar with Egypt, invents seaworthy boats. Rise of Sidon and Tyre after collapse of Bronze Age. Development of the famous purple dye and the alphabet.
2. Phoenician Religion. Myths, Ba’al, Astarte, gilded calves, Eshmoun, the cult of Adonis, and evidence of child sacrifice.
3. Phoenician Expansion (ca. 1000~ca. 720 BCE). Sidon, then Tyre grow wealthy on Mediterranean trade, as masters of seafaring. Phoenician colonies extend into the center of the Mediterranean. Increasing pressure and ultimate domination by Assyria.
4. Feeding the Assyrian Beast (ca.720 BCE ~Roman period). Phoenician cities (especially Tyre) expand trade to ends of the Mediterranean and beyond mainly to satisfy Assyrian demands for metal ores. Then Persian rule proves benign and Phoenicians become the Persian navy. Alexander the Great conducts an epic siege of Tyre and, finally, the Phoenician cities become modestly prosperous Roman ports.
5. Carthage rises. (ca. 814~ca. 550 BCE). Founding of Carthage by Tyre and her early development of an independent trading empire. Carthage comes to dominate western Mediterranean, increasingly in entangled with Etruscans and Greeks. Carthaginian variant of Phoenician religion.
6. Sicilian Wars (ca. 550~304 BCE) & the Punic Wars (264~146 BCE). Growing and increasingly aggressive Greek cities of Magna Graecia (the western Greek world) propel Carthage to war over trade domination and ownership of Sicily. Two centuries of conflict between Carthage and the Greek cities of Sicily, especially Syracuse.
As Rome grows in territory and influence, its relations with Carthage and Syracuse worsen. Finally fighting erupts and three wars (Punic Wars”) are fought between Carthage and Rome: one in and around Sicily, one focused on Hannibal’s near invincibility in the Italian peninsula, and the third a brief but final coda. Rome won each time and the end result was the total elimination of
Carthage, with the legacy of Carthage being left to the pens of hostile Greek and Roman historians, most famously the Æneid.