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0 pointsinglor_cz29d ago0 comments

In practice, social groups (from tribes to big nations) tend to treat murder very differently from killing in war.

Sufficiently long term, everyone is dead, and I am not sure if we can tell those long-term effects that you foretell from random chance.

The Roman Empire is very dead, but so is the Carthaginian one. Nevertheless, a lot survives from the Roman Empire: basics of law, their alphabet, descendant languages and a certain fame. Quite a lot for famously war-like people.

In comparison, the Carthaginians are gone completely, only fans of history know anything about them. And they are gone because they lost a series of wars all too decisively.

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hunterpayne29d ago

Plenty of people know who Hannibal Barca was. But sure, they probably don't know anything else about Carthage.

Fun fact, the main lesson from that war on the Carthaginian side was that you never let the merchants control the state in a time of war. There was a point where Hannibal was one siege away from erasing Rome from the history books and the leaders in Carthage called him back because sieges are expensive. This decision cost those leaders everything. Most of western history ever since swung on this lone bad decision. Its one of the few true inflection points in history.

inglor_czOP29d ago

I think most people associate the name Hannibal with Silence of the Lambs, maybe 10-15 per cent will know that it was some ancient warrior, perhaps 5 per cent know that it was a Carthaginian general and 2 per cent will know that his surname was Barca. Let's not kid ourselves about actual knowledge of history...

My point wasn't about Hannibal, though. Carthage died in a very different way from Rome: none of its institutions or cultural developments survived, while we still encounter plenty of obviously Roman things in everyday life, starting with the letters we use and names of the months and ending with Latin names for diseases and animals. Pretty much the only thing that survives from Carthage is the faint memory of Hannibal and, for military history buffs, Cannae. Otherwise, the culture has been erased from this world.

The story of the callback is interesting and reminds me of the Mongols suddenly withdrawing from Europe in order to elect the new Khan.