The Punic Wars and Carthage

The famous romance of Diodo in Aeneas was often used by early modern and modern writers to chide the ruthless ambition of Rome. The great Roman poet Virgil, long after the destruction of Carthage, invented a much older enmity founded on their doomed love affair. In one of the poem's most powerful scenes, the jilted Diodo issued a curse that explained the Punic Wars in terms of Carthage's appetite to extract revenge for their founder. Such was the Roman commitment to the rebirth of their age-old enemy that Rome's first emperor built a new city of Carthage - Colonia Yulia Concordia Cartago. This dramatic reshaping of