WI: Persia-Carthage War

Persia-Carthage War

So lets say Cambyses has more success in Libya and begins a long series of wars with Carthage. The succeeding Persian Kings, instead of attacking Greece, focus their efforts against Carthage. What is the result? Could Carthage be conquered?
Another expedition against the Siwa Oasis also failed and the plan of attacking Carthage was frustrated by the refusal of the Phoenicians to operate against their kindred.
According to Herodotus 3.26, Cambyses sent an army to threaten the Oracle of Amun at the Siwa Oasis. The army of 50,000 men was halfway across the desert when a massive sandstorm sprang up, burying them all.[16] Although many Egyptologists regard the story as a myth, people have searched for the remains of the soldiers for many years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II
 
Last edited:
Don't know. How big was Carthage in 490 BC? I mean it was Cartage, but it was still 250 years from being the powerhouse that challenged Rome during the Punic wars. (Just compare the US of today with the thirteen colonies in 1766...) It might well be that the one thing 490BC Carthage has going for it is that in Persian eyes it was a remote backwater Phoenician colony barely worth having an army cross the desert for.
 
Don't know. How big was Carthage in 490 BC? I mean it was Cartage, but it was still 250 years from being the powerhouse that challenged Rome during the Punic wars. (Just compare the US of today with the thirteen colonies in 1766...) It might well be that the one thing 490BC Carthage has going for it is that in Persian eyes it was a remote backwater Phoenician colony barely worth having an army cross the desert for.

I could see that it doesn't have much besides some territory west of Cyrene and part of Sicily. The only incentive the Persians have would be controlling the trade route.
 
Persia-Carthage War

So lets say Cambyses has more success in Libya and begins a long series of wars with Carthage. The succeeding Persian Kings, instead of attacking Greece, focus their efforts against Carthage. What is the result? Could Carthage be conquered?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II

I doubt either side would be able to land a knock-out blow. Carthage was just too far away for an empire based in Persia to feasibly hope to control. Most likely you'd have a few sea battles followed by a return to the status quo ante.
 
There's a reason all evidence for a Persian expedition into Carthage is the very opposite of comprhensive.

In all probability, nothing ever happened and it seems to me unlikely that anything ever could. What's Persia's incentive for conquering Carthage? Carthage isn't a thorn in their side, stirring up disloyalty among the cities of Asia. Carthage is distant and disinterested in those affairs, a trading city very far away. North Africa is at the end of what would be a long and attenuate supply chain, while Greece is right there, an easy target in comparison.

Haxamanishid Iran is already a sprawling empire. I just don't see them trying to conquer North Africa. If a given King of Kings gets it in his head to try, it will be a disaster.
 

ben0628

Banned
There's a reason all evidence for a Persian expedition into Carthage is the very opposite of comprhensive.

In all probability, nothing ever happened and it seems to me unlikely that anything ever could. What's Persia's incentive for conquering Carthage? Carthage isn't a thorn in their side, stirring up disloyalty among the cities of Asia. Carthage is distant and disinterested in those affairs, a trading city very far away. North Africa is at the end of what would be a long and attenuate supply chain, while Greece is right there, an easy target in comparison.

Haxamanishid Iran is already a sprawling empire. I just don't see them trying to conquer North Africa. If a given King of Kings gets it in his head to try, it will be a disaster.

I don't think it would be a disaster. Persia has the resources and strength to conquer Carthage and Carthage at this point isn't even close to being at the peak of its power. All Persia needs is a legitimate reason to do it and they could do it.

There was a similar thread a couple who about Alexander being able to conquer Carthage and most people said he could do it, and this was against a much more powerful Carthage. Not only that but with the exception of Greece and Macedonian territories, the Persians have the same resources and strengths as Alexander's empire.
 
Very, very different situations. Politics and war is not so simple as all that.

The Iranian regime is a very decentralized monarchy whose record of expeditionary conquests into the West is, to put it plainly, rather poor. By contrast Alexandros has a strong loyal army of veterans and a personal cult of personality. Where Alexandros Megas could cast himself as the defender of Megale Hellas and Syracuse in particular, and in doing so gain allies, what allies would Iran have in the region? An overland march across Arabia seems to me to be foolish in the extreme. You're asking a huge army to march across a vast distance with every possibility that supply could be disrupted.

A naval invasion meanwhile would lack any nearby sources of resupply and would come with all of the various problems typically associated with premodern naval invasions.

The only way I see this working is in a world rather like Daeres' Achaemenid Hellas story, where Greece itself has been subdued.
 
Top