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A review by liroa15
The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC by Adrian Goldsworthy
3.0
I say this with every Goldsworthy book (I looked at previous reviews), but goddamn is his writing complicated. Since I'm not a visual person, Goldsworthy's descriptions did little but confuse me, but they may be useful for people who can visualize what Goldsworthy is describing. (Also, people who know more about ships because I didn't understand half of what was described about the ships.)
Overall, the information in this is very comprehensive, especially when it comes to the First and Second Punic wars. It's always interesting to me to see what take an author has on Hannibal Barca because they all have them and it's a pretty reliable gauge of how they feel about the mid- to late Republic. In this, Goldsworthy seems to admire Hannibal's individual genius, but he comes heavily down on the side of the Republic and Scipio Africanus, doing everything he can to minimize his fumbling in the Senate after Zama.
I honestly can't remember if Goldsworthy made mention of the Punic habit of human sacrifice, but I feel like he must have because it is inevitably included in books like this as a sort of talisman to indicate how strange and bad the people of Carthage were. To be fair to Goldsworthy, he is upfront about our general lack of sources about Punic life and culture, especially unbiased sources, and he doesn't harp on the human sacrifice thing the way some authors have in the past. (I'm not saying human sacrifice is good because it's obviously not, but I find it interesting that it's inevitably trotted out in every explanation of the Punic Wars in a vain attempt to make Carthage into the Other and Rome into a savior.)
Overall, serviceable if a bit scholarly for a popular history. You need a bit of skill in visualization to get the most of out Goldsworthy's descriptions of the battles especially.
Overall, the information in this is very comprehensive, especially when it comes to the First and Second Punic wars. It's always interesting to me to see what take an author has on Hannibal Barca because they all have them and it's a pretty reliable gauge of how they feel about the mid- to late Republic. In this, Goldsworthy seems to admire Hannibal's individual genius, but he comes heavily down on the side of the Republic and Scipio Africanus, doing everything he can to minimize his fumbling in the Senate after Zama.
I honestly can't remember if Goldsworthy made mention of the Punic habit of human sacrifice, but I feel like he must have because it is inevitably included in books like this as a sort of talisman to indicate how strange and bad the people of Carthage were. To be fair to Goldsworthy, he is upfront about our general lack of sources about Punic life and culture, especially unbiased sources, and he doesn't harp on the human sacrifice thing the way some authors have in the past. (I'm not saying human sacrifice is good because it's obviously not, but I find it interesting that it's inevitably trotted out in every explanation of the Punic Wars in a vain attempt to make Carthage into the Other and Rome into a savior.)
Overall, serviceable if a bit scholarly for a popular history. You need a bit of skill in visualization to get the most of out Goldsworthy's descriptions of the battles especially.