Realistic shape of Carthage after she annexes Rome?

This is not a WI Carthage won its wars with Rome, it is what shape would she had at the apex of her glory as an alternative mediterranean hegemon.

So we have a state that has just annexed Rome, its center is on the coastline of North Africa, more trade oriented and less militaristic by nature than her RL counterpart. Entire Iberia would probably be their colony with given time, and the wish of connecting it with their new italian dominion would lead to southern Gallia coming to fold as well.

But what about Greece, Egypt or anatolian states - are wars of conquest of those areas that inevitable or is there a place for it in the very trade like nature of the Carthaginians at all ? In the end, what do you think, what would for the development of a civilized Europe have the fact that the state she came out of had her heartland on the african coastline and not Italy?
 

Germaniac

Donor
I dont really see the Carthaginians expanding much farther than Iberia and the southern coast of Gaul. Their military was mainly built on foreign Mercenaries and was not really conducive to expansion. I dont think they would even be able to hold onto Italy and would likely have to set up puppet states to control it.
 
Carthage ruled a maratime-based empire whose incentives for expansion were for the sake of commerce. Unlike Rome, it did not have a fast-growing citizen body which needed more land to support them. They weren't in the habit of granting citizenship to allies and auxiliaries either. Citizenship was hereditary and restricted to those who could trace their ancestry back to the original colonists of Carthage, so not even every Phoenician was considered a citzen of Carthage, nevermind Libyans or most Liby-Phoenicians. Not only were the bulk of Carthage's armies were made up of foreign mercenaries and native Libyan or Iberian conscripts, but it's only full-time military force was it's navy. Carthage is simply not geared for all out territorial expansion like Rome was.
 
Germaniac said it, Italy would likely be just too much.

Even if they held onto it for some reason, and began shifting to a Roman-style settler/assimilation population in some form, their origins and the Mediterranean Sea -especially those two factors combined - means they'll never give up their mercantile or nautical character. They'll focus on trade enough still to be content with the western Mediterranean and leave everything to the east of Italy to Greeks.
 
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