The city of Carthage and its empire represent one of the few major ancient civilizations for which we lack internal written sources. Everything we read about Carthage is filtered through the lens of its enemies, primarily Rome and Greece, which creates obvious problems of interpretation.

Carthaginian religion, as described by Greco-Roman sources, included the tophet — a sacred precinct where, the sources claim, children were sacrificed to the god Baal Hammon. Archaeological excavations of the Carthaginian tophet did reveal large numbers of child remains. The debate over whether these represent sacrifice or infant burial has been vigorous; most recent scholarship leans toward accepting that at least some child sacrifice occurred, though its frequency and character may have been exaggerated by hostile sources.

Carthagianian military power rested on a mercenary army that was effective but created its own political problems. The Mercenary War (241–238 BC) that followed Carthage's defeat in the First Punic War — when Carthage couldn't pay its mercenaries — was as brutal as anything in ancient history and is narrated by Polybius with unusual vividness. Flaubert's Salammbô, a 19th-century novel based on the Mercenary War, captures the imaginative hold that Carthage's obscurity and violence have had on Western literature.

Hannibal's campaign in Italy (218–203 BC) remains a subject of military history fascination. The audacity of the Alpine crossing, the tactical genius of Cannae (216 BC) where Hannibal destroyed a Roman army of perhaps 70,000 in a double-envelopment, and the ultimate failure of the strategic vision make it one of the great 'what-if' campaigns of history.