Carthage

[markdienekes]

I wonder how Christianity would have taken under Carthage instead of Rome...

 

[madviking]

Baalsus?

 

[Louis XXIV]

I wonder how Christianity would have taken under Carthage instead of Rome...

It's hard to imagine a scenario where that could happen. Carthage would have to conquer the Seleucids at a minimum.

 

[Lord Baal]

The argument of Saguntum is a red herring, I don't believe Carthage or Hannibal were planning on starting a war with Rome, certainly not at that point - Hannibal had barely consolidated his recent conquests, which were alarming to particularly the city of Marseille, who called upon the Romans to intervene. Regardless, that's assuming he had a choice, and believe what has been transmitted through a Roman filter which bears the marks of innate sociocentrism. With no Carthaginian sources available, it is highly questionable to apportion blame, raise allegations, or make accusations of treaty breaches. (Beck, The Reasons for the War in Hoyos (ed) Companion to the Punic Wars, p.225)

You should purchase, borrow or somehow get your hands on the latest book on the wars A Companion to the Punic Wars (ed Hoyos) which discuss this problem a lot...

Honestly I believe it was unplanned by both, and spiralled out of control (you should read Unplanned Wars here for more on this

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...CEoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Unplanned wars&f=false

I would love to read that book, and might see if I can snag it after I've moved; no point ordering it to an address that I may not be in by the time it arrives. I'm also well-aware of the problems which arise from using only Roman sources, since they are obviously biased, but considering no other sources exist - that I know of - besides Livy and Polybius, we are left with little choice but to extrapolate from the known evidence. And that evidence certainly suggests that Hannibal was planning a war with Rome, considering his attack on Saguntum, which we know to be a Roman ally. Saguntum itself doesn't seem to have threatened him, and any attack on Saguntum was also aimed at Saguntum's protector. Massilia doesn't seem to have cared about Hannibal's actions in Spain until he crossed the Pyrenees and started heading straight for them.

It's hard to imagine a scenario where that could happen. Carthage would have to conquer the Seleucids at a minimum.

Why? Christianity spread quite peacefully throughout both the Roman and Parthian Empires, and Judeah was still nominally independent of Rome during Jesus's lifetime. Parthia certainly never controlled it, negating the idea that early Christianity could only spread in an empire which controlled its birthplace.

 

[markdienekes]

Saguntum itself doesn't seem to have threatened him, and any attack on Saguntum was also aimed at Saguntum's protector. Massilia doesn't seem to have cared about Hannibal's actions in Spain until he crossed the Pyrenees and started heading straight for them.

Saguntum was supposedly attacking Hannibal's allies, and he chose to protect them. Rome didn't care one whit about Saguntum and Hannibal even offered to relocate the Saguntines (letting Hannibal sit outside its walls for eight months) and were more interested in attacking the Illyrians pretty much in an unprovoked manner (and were very disappointed by the loot they won from the campaign) and it was a great pretext for war, and they didn't, not for one minute believe it would be brought to Italy. Had the Barcids been planning on war with Rome, why didn't they build a sufficient fleet to defend Spanish coasts, they had the resources and sixteen years to do it? Why did Hannibal only begin to sound out the route into Italy in 219 BC? He could have been doing that years earlier, gaining favour with the tribes with the great resources they had available? They didn't, Hannibal's choice to march into Italy appears perhaps as a carefully planned reaction to a declaration of war by the Romans... he may have well hoped to consolidate his Spanish conquests (perhaps to aim for a war with Rome many years in the future) but who knows, he could well have started it. I honestly don't believe the blame falls at Hannibal's door alone.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Even Polybius suggests that Rome's heart never really was in defending Saguntum, but it certainly made a good pretext. Rome hated going to war without a pretext and the Punic Wars are full of dubious "allies" that give them an excuse.

Why? Christianity spread quite peacefully throughout both the Roman and Parthian Empires, and Judeah was still nominally independent of Rome during Jesus's lifetime. Parthia certainly never controlled it, negating the idea that early Christianity could only spread in an empire which controlled its birthplace.

Sorry, I thought you meant exclusively under Carthage. Carthaginian Christianity would probably just be one branch among many - just like Gnostic and Aryan Christianity were inside and outside the Empire. I think the biggest thing would be the loss of church structure that the late Roman Empire provided.

 

[Absolution]

Latin culture certainly had a long-lasting influence, but that doesn't suggest that it became "the main culture of the world". It's not reasonably possible to describe contemporary French, Chilean or even Italian culture as "Latin" in the sense meant here, at least not without resorting to some exceptionally sweeping primordialism.

In the years 100BC - 300AD you can say that it was the most "poppular" and influental culture in the world.
This is what I meant from the beginning
The Punic Wars started Rome's momentum. I see the Second Punic War as the start of Rome's massive conquests.
If you ask me to choose a specific point in the Roman history which made the change from an Italian Republic to one of the greatest empires ever and a world wide culture for centuries, I would say it was the defeat of Hannibal.
Being more specific, the

 

[Traitorfish]

In the years 100BC - 300AD you can say that it was the most "poppular" and influental culture in the world.
This is what I meant from the beginning

There were more people in Han China than in the Roman Empire, and its immediate influence was spread over a much wider area. Latin culture wasn't even the dominant culture within the Roman Empire, being equal to and at times surpassed in "popularity" and influence by Hellenistic culture. (Arguably, one could attribute this "leading" status to a broader Greco-Roman culture, but that can't really be attributed to the rise of the Roman state.)

 

[History_Buff]

But their influence went on to shape western Europe, and from there to the Americas and (in a lesser degree) even to Africa and Oceania. Beside the alphabet and the languages derived from Latin, consider law, for example:

Spoiler :

all the continents of the world received that influence.

That picture is Civil Law vs. Common law though. Civil Law as a concept is not exclusive to Rome.

 

[Glassfan]

In the years 100BC - 300AD you can say that it was the most "poppular" and influental culture in the world...

There were more people in Han China than in the Roman Empire, and its immediate influence was spread over a much wider area...

As in our "greatest general" type of threads, we never define our terms - seldom explicitly say exactly what we mean by greatest or most influential. Furthermore, modern Western historians certainly are more cognizant of the larger world than those of just a generation or two ago. We ought to be careful to qualify our superlatives.

Rome was certainly "great" in any objective sense. So was China, India, Islam, Egypt and others in their heyday. Who's the "greatest"? I don't know.

Spoiler :

America, 1945, IMHO

 

[Tee Kay]

In terms of absolute or even relative economic, political, military and cultural, power, it's hard to beat contemporary United States.

Anyway, generally speaking, these arguments on who or what is the "greatest" or "most influential" can lead to only a dubious and unsatisfactory conclusion at best, especially if we're being anachronistic about it, which is almost always the case in these parts.