Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c1207IR // #c1207Synthesis

"Here we can see that military duties were separated from the civic magistracies, which is unlike Rome where military leadership was predicated on holding a civil magistracy." "A military commander could go into the civic magistracies but did not necessarily evolve out of them."

— In our words · Source: Carthage: A New History (Eve MacDonald)

[Use when]

Everyone assumes the person who runs the place should also lead the hard project.

[Why it matters]

In Rome you had to hold civil office before you could command an army. Carthage split the two tracks over time. Its general, the rab mahanet or head of the camp, was chosen for the war in front of him and held the job for that war, whatever his political career looked like.

More from Carthage: A New History

#c1183"they [Carthaginians] come here and unload their cargo; then, having laid it out along the beach, they go back aboard their ships and light…You have to strike a deal with no common language and no trust. #c1184"‘as much land as could be covered by a single hide of an ox’" "Then, she secretly has the oxhide cut into the thinnest possible strips."Someone asks you for 'just one' of something and nobody has said how it is measured. #c1185"Elissa and her group of rebels fled the city by night, taking sacred artefacts that belonged to the god Melqart with them." "The rebels’…You are founding something far from home and it has to outlast the founders.

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