Punics
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Punics (from Latin pūnicus, pl. pūnici) were a group of western Semitic-speaking peoples from Carthage in North Africa who traced their origins to a group of Phoenician settlers, but also to North African Berbers. Unlike other Phoenicians, Punics had a landowning aristocracy who established a rule of the hinterland in Northern Africa and trans-Sahara traderoutes. In later times one of these clans conquered a Hellenistic-inspired empire in Iberia, possibly having a foothold in western Gaul. Like other Phoenician people their urbanized culture and economy was strongly linked to the sea. Overseas they established control over some coastal regions of Berber North Africa like modern-day Tunisia and Tripolitania (modern-day Libya), Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, the Balearics, Malta, other small islands of the western Mediterranean and possibly along the Atlantic coast of Iberia, although this is disputed. In the Baleares, Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily they had strong economic and political ties to the independent natives in the hinterland. Their naval presence and trade extended throughout the Mediterranean to the British Isles, the Canaries, and West Africa.
Noted Punics
- Septimius Severus (Roman emperor from Punic ethnicity from the mainly Punic Libyan city of Lepcis Magna, founded by Phoenicians)
- Caracalla, his son
- Tertullian, an early Christian theologian (born in the highly multiethnic, Phoenician-founded city of Carthage)
- Vibia Perpetua (early Christian martyr, also born in Carthage)
- Cyprian (also born in Carthage)
- Hannibal, Carthaginian general
- Saint Augustine, Church Father
- Saint Monica,his mother
See also
- Phoenician languages
- Carthage
- History of Tunisia
- Poenulus ("The Puny Punic"), a comedy by Plautus, shows the vision the Romans had of Punics. A number of lines are in the Punic language.
- Punica, the genus of pomegranates, known to Romans as mala punica ("the Punic apple").
