A question about Carthage

[soup_alex]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Carthage, situated in Africa on the southern shore of the Mediterranean about midway between its two extremes, grew rapidly in wealth and fame. As the cities of native Phoenicia crumbled beneath the repeated assaults of Assyrians, Babylonians, and Greeks, Carthage, secure in her distance and solitude, rose to be the chief trading-city of the world. By deg, though the details are lost to us, she became mistress of all north Africa west of Egypt. The other Phoenician colonies became her subjects; their walls were torn down and they were made incapable of resistance. The merchant princes of Carthage were as cruel, as merciless, as they were powerful. Their fields were tilled by slaves in chains, sometimes one merchant held twenty thousand of the joyless wretches in this miserable bondage.

From:

http://www.publicbookshelf.com/publi...storya_ji.html

Maybe this will help :-/

Thanks for posting this, Jebivjetar; I somehow missed it before :S

I agree with Ludens, it sounds a wee bit "propagandist"; the bias is so thick you can almost taste it. Also, the italicised clause need not suggest that, as has been queried, Qart-Hadast denied her neighbours permanent defences—it can be taken to be a fruity sort of way of saying: "Carthage ferociously seized upon the other Phoenician colonies".