ancient city of North Africa, from Phoenician quart khadash "new town." Related: Carthaginian.
An ancient city in north Africa, established by traders from Phoenicia. Carthage was a commercial and political rival of Rome for much of the third and second centuries b.c. The Carthaginian general Hannibal attempted to capture Rome by moving an army from Spain through the Alps, but he was prevented and finally defeated in his own country. At the end of the Punic Wars, the Romans destroyed Carthage, as the senator Cato had long urged. The character Dido, lover of Aeneas in the Aeneid, was a queen of Carthage.