FillyofDelphi
Banned
Lots of people start with the idea that Carthage was a city of merchants, and then extrapolate all kinds of conclusions about what this means without basing them in the evidence. Carthage was almost constantly at war, and war had a direct effect on the city's trading. Archaeologists theorize based on amphorae finds that Carthage began a long period of expansionism to conquer agricultural land in the Tunisian sahel, Sicily, and Sardinia to feed growing demands for cereal grains in the eastern Mediterranean, especially Athens.
I'm hardly going to dispute this. Though, as you bring up Athens I will also point out that like that state many of their wars ended in the pursuit of trade concessions rather than territorial ones (at least as far as I recall,correct me if I'm wrong). What I'm pointing out is that an increase in militerization to the point it becomes a more defining feature to the Carthginians than merchantile activity is hardly going to come to the benefit of the commercial classes relative to their elite rivals. If nothing else, sucking your landowning farmers off into the military would decrease the retention of and development on Carthage's historical acheivements in agricultural innovations.