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African History 2: Carthage 44 Views
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Description:
Stop everything and check this video out. This guy from Carthage named Hannibal used battle elephants. Battle. Elephants. Carthage has a pretty rich history otherwise, too. Though there do seem to be a lot of deaths by funeral pyre...
Transcript
- 00:04
When studying African history, a lot of people study Egypt and…then call it quits. [Man studying egyptian history]
- 00:09
Like pyramids and pharaohs were the only things of note on an entire continent for several
- 00:13
thousand years.
- 00:14
It probably won't surprise you to hear that there were one or two other things happening [Parts of Africa waving]
- 00:18
in ancient Africa.
Full Transcript
- 00:20
Like how about the ancient city of Carthage?
- 00:23
Now, Carthage actually gets mentioned pretty often in classical history, but a lot of people
- 00:27
don’t think of it as part of Africa. [Carthage highlighted on a map]
- 00:29
It's treated like a piece of southern Europe that just happened to accidentally land in
- 00:33
North Africa.
- 00:35
Oopsies. [Southern Europe falls into North Africa]
- 00:36
Most large ancient cities had elaborate foundation myths, and Carthage was no exception.
- 00:41
Greek and Roman writers claimed that Carthage was founded by a Phoenician Queen named Elissa, [Dido on stage at a concert]
- 00:47
or Dido.
- 00:48
She was from a Phoenician city called Tyre, which is in modern-day Lebanon.
- 00:53
When her dad died, Dido and her brother, Pygmalion, both ascended to the throne. [Dido's dad dies on a throne]
- 00:57
Pygmalion wasn’t so good at sharing.
- 01:00
By that we mean that he killed Dido’s husband and exiled her and some of her followers. [Pygmalion kills Dido's husband with a sword]
- 01:05
But Dido showed the world what she was made of and carved the great city of Carthage out
- 01:09
of a hunk of Northern Africa.
- 01:12
Legend says that the local king, Iarbas, told Dido and friends that they could build [Iarbas with an ox]
- 01:17
a settlement as large as an ox-hide.
- 01:19
Doesn’t sound that big, right?
- 01:21
Well, the future Carthaginians got around it by slicing the ox-hide super thin and pulling
- 01:28
it to a city-sized amount of area. [Dido and carthaginian pulling an ox-hide]
- 01:31
Like almost every story of ancient heroes and heroines, Dido’s tale ends tragically.
- 01:35
Some say that King Iarbas tried to force her to marry him, and she killed herself with
- 01:39
a sword on top of a funeral pyre. [Dido killing herself on a funeral pyre]
- 01:42
Others say that she got super depressed when the hero Aeneus dumped her.
- 01:46
And then she… killed herself on a funeral pyre.
- 01:49
They really like the funeral pyre bit. [Dido jumps in a funeral pyre and people cry]
- 01:52
Don’t be too sad though.
- 01:54
Nobody is sure if the legend of Dido is true.
- 01:56
In fact, nobody’s even sure if ancient Carthagenians believed in it, since the legends come down
- 02:01
to us through Greek and Roman writers.
- 02:03
One thing that nobody disputes, though, is that there was an ancient city called Carthage, [People asking for a ticket to Carthage]
- 02:07
founded in modern day Tunisia.
- 02:09
It’s also agreed that Carthage was founded by Phoenicians, who were a seafaring people
- 02:14
with settlements all around the Mediterranean. Phoenician man steering a boat]
- 02:17
The Phoenicians were great sailors and loved to explore and trade.
- 02:20
…which made Carthage rich and powerful.
- 02:22
That is… until they got into it with Rome.
- 02:28
What started as a little dust-up in Sicily turned into years of conflict called the Punic [Carthage man and Roman man fighting with swords]
- 02:33
Wars.
- 02:34
These wars didn’t work out too well for Carthage.
- 02:36
After the first one, Carthage was forced to give up a bunch of land to Rome.
- 02:39
The Second Punic War saw the rise of one of the most famous Phoenicians ever, the great [Hannibal appears in a field]
- 02:44
general Hannibal.
- 02:45
This is the guy who’s famous for marching an army, complete with battle elephants, over
- 02:50
the Alps.
- 02:51
You heard that right. [Hannibal riding an elephant]
- 02:52
Battle.
- 02:53
Elephants.
- 02:54
Hannibal won a bunch of impressive victories, but could never take Rome itself.
- 02:57
Eventually, he was defeated, and Carthage once again had to eat humble pie. [Carthage man eating humble pie]
- 03:02
In the Third Punic War, the Romans sieged Carthage and eventually burned it to the ground.
- 03:07
Not very neighborly, we guess.
- 03:08
But neither is using battle elephants. [Battle elephants drinking tea]
- 03:10
A hundred years later, Julius Caesar ended up building a new settlement on the site of
- 03:15
Carthage, and it became one of the biggest cities in Northern Africa.
- 03:18
These days, the modern city of Tunis sits on all that history. [Tunis sitting on rubble]
- 03:21
We hope it has a cushion.
- 03:23
History’s full of lumps.
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