Re: Propoganada of the Punic Wars
Well not really. At best scholarly opinion is divided. The problem with suggesting the Romans mistook funerary cremation is that other people like the Greeks also practiced cremation, yet the Romans never seem to have made the mistake of claiming the Greeks sacrificed infants…The Romans claimed that the Carthaginians sacrificed human infants to their god Baal Ammon. There is no evidence of this actually occuring but as the Carthaginian funary practice was to cremate dead infants, its easy to see where they might have got the idea.
More broadly I think the tendency to write off Roman era claims about Carthage as Roman propaganda ring (to me at least) a bit hollow (modern sensibilities rather than Classical ones). Conquest and empire were not ‘bad’ things, why exactly did Rome need this huge propaganda effort to justify any of the Punic wars or even the final destruction of Carthage. Rome wiped Corinth of the map without any recourse to accusations of child murder. The subjects of Rome in places like Macedonia, Athens and Sparta had fought their own long and bitter wars for empire without such accusations, why would they expect them of Rome?
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Originally Posted by tsyed
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