Tom Holland

They don't have an empire to run.

They don't have wars to fight.

And so the Carthaginians have been able to focus all their energies on getting rich.

So again, I mean, to pursue another analogy, it's a bit like West Germany after the Second World War.

They're not allowed to have an army or anything.

So they can just focus on kind of inventing televisions and stuff.

That old Carthage-Bonn parallel.

So the Carthaginians are actually doing very well.

And despite the attempts of the Romans to kneecap its economy, the economy is booming.

They have this hinterland.

The Numidians may be snipping bits off, but Carthage still controls most of it.

It's very fertile, very rich.

Carthage has massive grain silos.

It's essentially become the breadbasket of the Western Mediterranean, which is a role that it will play throughout the history, subsequent history of the Roman Empire.

They have upgraded their harbors and they have this inner dockyard, which has berths for 170 ships.

And Cato is obviously very suspicious of this.

Why do they need berths for 170 ships?

And he also notices storehouses in which there are piled great mounds of timber.

And so he's thinking, you know, is this timber for the construction of merchant shipping or are the Carthaginians planning to reactivate

a war fleet and Cato being Cato he obviously assumes the worst and he returns to Rome convinced that the Carthaginians are preparing for vengeance and he stands before the senate and he shakes out the folds of his toga and from his toga there drops a fig.