ABSTRACT
Carthage was probably founded at some point in the late ninth century BC,2 as a trading colony established by the Phoenician city of Tyre. She maintained close links with her mother-city, but eventually outgrew her, and by 264, more than half a century after Tyre’s destruction at the hands of Alexander the Great, Carthage was the greatest power in the western Mediterranean. Her wealth was proverbial, with Polybius claiming that Carthage was the richest city in the Mediterranean world even when she fell in 146, despite the fact that this was long after she was deprived of her overseas territories (Polyb. 18.35.9).
