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Exchange between Rome, Carthage, and the Phoenicians
Sal teaches an introduction to the Carthaginians and their roots as a Phoenician (Punic) colony.
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- Assuming that the Phoenicians had a unique language, what would be the closest modern equivalent to that language?(26 votes)
- Hi KEVIN, thanks for the question! Phoenician was a semitic language, so it was closely related to other extinct languages from the Middle East. The closest surviving language is probably Hebrew.(27 votes)
- They elected the Consul members that would serve a year and couldn't be elected for another 10 years, Right?(8 votes)
- Members serve three year terms and are not eligible for immediate re election after serving ten consecutive terms.(8 votes)
- So the Phoenicians built a strong navy as early as 3000 b.c,
did they play an important role in the Greco-Persian War?(7 votes)- During the Persian War, the Phoenician navy supported the Persians in the Greco-Persian War, as they were a province of Achaemenid Empire during that time.(7 votes)
- When Sal says that "phonetic" looks like "Phoenician" at, is he saying the words are related etymologically or that the just look similar? I thought phonetic was related to "telephone" like sound, not purple. 5:36(3 votes)
- I just "googled" "etymology of Phonecian", and found this: The name Phoenicians, like Latin Poenī (adj. poenicus, later pūnicus), comes from Greek Φοίνικες (Phoínikes). The word φοῖνιξ phoînix meant variably "Phoenician person", "Tyrian purple, crimson" or "date palm" and is attested with all three meanings already in Homer.(9 votes)
- Did Phoenicians have anything to do with the Greeks or the Persians? Did they have connections in culture or were they the same racial group?(5 votes)
- Yes and yes, It is forged in a very distinctive culture in which there are Greeks and Egyptians ,(2 votes)
- At, what is meant by militaristic society? 0:20(2 votes)
- What was the political system of Carthage?(1 vote)
- Qart-hadasht (Carthage) was a monarchy until 483 B.C.E., when it became an oligarchic republic. At the head of the government were two elected shophets, who served in executive and judicial positions. They had a number of junior attendents who oversaw public works, tax-collecting, and administration of the treasury. The shophets, like the Roman consuls, came from the most wealthy and influential families. All the aristocratic families were represented in a supreme council, which oversaw many duties such as the military, treasury, and foreign affairs. There was also the Tribunal of the 104, who tried military officers, as well as appointing panels of special commissioners for various aspects of the state. There was also a Popular Assembly in which the ordinary public could vote for representatives. If the shophets and the supreme council could not reach a decision, the Popular Assembly would have the final decision.(2 votes)
- How King Pyrrhus of Epirus attack on Romans relates to the Punic wars?(1 vote)
- During King Pyrrhos' of Epirus attack on Roma (Rome), he also attacked Qart-hadasht (Carthage). During that time, Roma and Qart-hadasht had an alliance.(2 votes)
- what is
the fantic alphbat(1 vote)- Could you be trying to say "phonetic" alphabet? That is one in which the letters correspond to sounds made with the mouth (as in Greek, Russian, Latin and such) rather than being symbols of meanings (as in Mayan, Egyptian heiroglyphs, Chinese and ancient Mongolian).(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In previous videos how Rome became a Republic in 509 BCE, but it's worth noting, and
I've done this in other videos, that at that point Rome
was not this vast empire. It was really just in
control of Rome itself. But over the next few hundred
years, it starts to expand. Rome is a militaristic society. The Roman legions start
to exert it's influence over more and more of
the surrounding people on the Italian Peninsula. We keep going several hundred years until we enter into the 3rd century BCE. This is a map of what the
Mediterranean, at least, looks like roughly as we enter
into that 3rd century BCE. You see, even though that Rome
has now exerted it's power over most of the Italian
Peninsula right over here, it was not the dominant
power in the Mediterranean. It was really the upstart,
the new and growing empire. There are other significant empires. You see here the remnants of
Alexander the Great's empire, his successors each now with
their own significant empire, and in particular, Ptolemaic
Egypt and Seleucid Persia, which had control over
much of the Middle East. The other empire that you see here in blue was the Carthaginian Empire. As we will see in the 3rd
and 2nd centuries BCE, Rome and Carthage are going
to come at loggerheads, and Rome, eventually,
is going to overthrow Carthage as the dominant
empire in the Mediterranean. But you can see in this
map right over here, entering into the 3rd century BCE, Carthage, that you see in blue, was a significant empire. So the question is, who
were these Carthaginians? The answer is is that
they were Phoenicians. Another answer is, even the Phoenicians did not call
themselves Phoenicians, but to understand where
all of this came from, we have to go back 5,000 years ago. 5,000 years before, roughly
5,000 years before now, around 3,000 BCE, where you have these city-states like Tyre and Sidon. I don't know if you can see those well. Let me rewrite it. That is Tyre, this is Sidon. Now, this map is obviously a
map of the 3rd century BCE, but if you go back to when
these cities were founded, in fact, before they
were, I guess you can say, put under the influence of Nebuchadnezzar and then accumulated Persia, these were independent city-states. They're actually existing
cities in modern day Lebanon. In this region, then, the leading cities were Tyre and Sidon. You had a group of people that would later be known as the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were
famous for many things. They were famous as traders, as really ship builders, and traders. And they colonized much of, or large segments, of the
coastline of the Mediterranean. This is going back thousands
and thousands of years. Carthage was one of those colonies. It was established in the 9th century, this is what modern
day historians believe, sometime between 846 and 813 BCE. It was a Phoenician
colony, it was set up as, really, a trading post for
the Tyrians, right over here. The reason why they're called Phoenicians, they didn't call themselves Phoenicians, these Phoenician people,
they were called that by the Greeks and later the Romans, because they were famous for
trading their purple dye. They had their purple dye, which was derived from mollusk mucous that they were able to get from the sea, as great sea traders and ship builders. They had this purple dye, and
the term for this purple dye, it was related to the word
phoinikes, or pho-ni-cian, and I know I'm not pronouncing it well. The Greeks and the Romans
of the time called them the Phoenician people
for their purple dye. Now, Carthage, as we will see
in probably the next video, Carthage has a series of wars with Rome, which are called the Punic Wars. I've always wondered, where
does that term Punic come from? Why isn't it called the Carthaginian Wars, or the Roman-Carthaginian Wars? And that's because the Carthaginians were referred to their origins
as coming from Phoenicia. The Latin term for that was poenicus, once again, related to the
Greek word for that purple dye. So poenicus became punic,
so the idea of Phoenician, these are all related words to each other. When we're talking about the Punic Wars, these are the Romans, or this is the modern day English. The Romans would have said poenicus. These wars were referring
to the wars with Carthage, who were descendant from the Phoenicians. Now, just as a side note, another thing that you
might be wondering about is, hey, this word, Phoenician,
it looks familiar. It looks like phonetic,
like the phonetic alphabet. That was the other famous
contribution of the Phoenicians, is that our alphabet,
the idea of our alphabet, was derived from the Phoenetic
alphabet of the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians did
many, many, many things. They settled much, they were
one of the real naval powers of the Mediterranean going back thousands, and thousands of years. By the time we get to the
Middle Roman Republic, we're in the 3rd century
BCE, we're in the 200s BCE, the ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon, they're now part of the Seleucid Empire. The Seleucid Empire was one of the successor empires
of Alexander the Great, but their offspring,
so to speak, Carthage, is now a dominant power
in the Mediterranean. With Rome starting to exert it's might, although it has very powerful armies, it does not, at this point,
have a very powerful navy. But as we will see, as we get to 264 BCE, these two great powers
in the Mediterranean start to come into a
little bit of conflict.