The newest addition to Routledge's Cities of the Ancient World series is H.'s book on Carthage, one of the Mediterranean capitals during the Iron Age and the ruler of the western Mediterranean sea before Rome. Considering its importance in Mediterranean history, it is not surprising that this series includes a volume on this centre, nor that its author is H., one of the leading scholars working on the North African metropolis and its history, particularly the period of the conflict between Carthage and Rome. At the same time, this book can be considered as another fruit of the recent academic interest in the Phoenicians, which has already generated a steady flow of English-language publications, including a variety of works and exhibitions on Carthage itself.

What is certainly unusual, though not unique, in this book is the chronological spectrum considered, which goes from the city's foundation around the end of the ninth century bce, according to some textual sources and increasingly supported by radiocarbon dates, while a short gap still exists following the pottery evidence, to its conquest by the Arabs at the end of the seventh century ce. On the contrary, most previous monographs on Carthage have focused only on the Phoenician–Punic period or on the centuries of the clash with Rome.

About 1,500 years in less than 200 pages inevitably means that H. is forced to treat this period very synthetically, although the different phases of the city receive unequal attention. The volume, divided into thirteen chapters, plus an appendix on the archaeological and textual sources and a list of references, combines diachronic and thematic perspectives on the history of the city. Accordingly, the first four chapters are mostly dedicated to the earliest phases, but they also tackle the city's urban features, religion and society beyond these chronological limits. The following pages focus on the politics of Carthage in North Africa (Chapter 5), its relation with the Greeks (Chapter 6) and Rome (Chapters 7–8), turning later to its re-foundation as the Colonia Iulia Concordia Carthago (Chapter 9), and finally dealing with its Christian (Chapter 10), Vandal (Chapter 11) and Byzantine periods (Chapter 12) before presenting a short conclusion (Chapter 13).

The period considered in the book roughly corresponds to the one that was on display in the exhibition ‘Carthago. The immortal myth’ held at the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum in Rome during 2019/2020. Its catalogue can certainly provide a useful supplement of images and archaeological data to the book under review. This observation raises some of the principal shortcomings of H.'s volume. There are very few images, and the selected ones, while beautiful, are small, sometimes dark and not always useful to readers who are not familiar with the topics presented. As the book is also intended for general readers and students (p. i), this is not a minor concern. Examples are a photo chosen for the Tophet of Salammbô (p. 18), where only some Roman and later structures attesting a different use of this area are visible, or the lack of images for the few artefacts described in the book, such as the gold medallion of Yadaʿmilk, which is mentioned several times (pp. 3, 24, 148). Likewise, the maps (pp. x–xiv), which have been prepared in a rather old-fashioned way, do not include a plan of early Carthage, which would have been useful for understanding the original urban layout of the city and its changes over time. Various scholars have recently elaborated such a type of plan; those in the volume by I. Fumadó Ortega (Cartago fenicio-púnica: arqueología de la forma urbana [2013]) are particularly well made.

Furthermore, H. adopts a traditional and primarily text-based approach. The analysis of the archaeological evidence is limited, particularly that of the data from the most recent fieldwork activities. This issue especially affects the chapters dealing with the early history of Carthage, for which there are very few texts and inscriptions, while archaeology represents the main source for this period. Accordingly, the scenario depicted by H. does not do justice to the work of archaeologists in recent years, the complexity of the archaeological evidence and its multiple interpretations. So, for instance, when H. attempts to outline the topography of the city, textual sources are acritically used to describe temples and other buildings that have not yet been archaeologically identified (pp. 5–6, 19). In some cases, H. argues positions that have recently undergone a revision, repeats stereotypes or makes rather blunt statements, where more nuance would have been preferable. To name just a couple of examples, it is not possible today to support the thesis of Phoenician ‘colonies in Cyprus’ (p. 4) or that ‘the first Carthaginians may all have been Tyrians and Cypriots’ (p. 6). The latter stems from Elissa's account, but it does not consider current data and perspectives on mobility during this period, the interregional connections between Carthage and other western Mediterranean territories or the results from the Tunisian-Spanish investigations at Althiburos in the El Kef region, which – given the similarities between its handmade ware and the ceramic corpora from Carthage and Utica – support the contribution of local peoples to the newly established communities in North Africa. At the same time, when dealing with archaeological sources, the book contains a number of factual mistakes: for instance, Sulky, and not Nora, currently represents the earliest Phoenician settlement in Sardinia (p. 4); there is no evidence of a monarchy in newly founded Carthage (pp. 7, 32) or of a Tophet at Utica (p. 17). In this regard, H. dedicates a few pages to the issue of child sacrifice at Carthage and the understanding of Tophets (pp. 16–19, 25, 146). While the nature of the main rites performed in these areas remains highly debated, there is now a growing consensus among scholars in defining Tophets as sanctuaries, based on their architectectural features and, mostly, the votive nature of the inscriptions on the stone markers. Accordingly, characterising the Tophet as a ‘children's cemetery’ is certainly questionable; in any case the inscriptions cannot be defined as ‘epitaphs’, as H. does (p. 146).

In recent years a trend has emerged, well illustrated in the book by J. Quinn (In Search of the Phoenicians [2018]), towards the deconstruction of some stereotypes, often promulgated by ancient literary sources, with which the Phoenicians continue to be identified. For this reason, a monolithic characterisation of the Phoenicians has come under scrutiny, from both a cultural and an ethnic point of view. Against this theoretical and methodological background, H. adopts a more conventional approach, as is also suggested by the use of expressions such as the ‘Tyrian-Phoenician civilization’ (p. 143).

Despite these problems, possibly also depending on the long gestation of this book, which H. sincerely mentions at the beginning (p. xv), general readers will find a wealth of information. However, students and scholars, especially archaeologists, interested in an updated and synthetic account of Carthage, will probably have to turn to other publications.