Carthage v Rome

Just been watching a documentary on Hannibal Barca, and had a thought.

It said that Rome was a burgeoning city-state then, nowhere near as big as she later became, and that that expansion was due in large part to the Punic Wars: Rome had to reorganise pdq to meet and defeat Hannibal – and from there we got the Roman Empire and history as we know it.

Now comes my thought: what if Carthage had defeated Rome? Rome would have been destroyed, its power broken forever, or for the foreseeable future, at least. Presumably the Carthaginians would have gone home again, having won control of the Mediterranean Sea, which was their original aim.

Which would mean that there would have been no Roman Empire to “civilise” the rest of Europe – the Germanic and Celtic countries would have stayed Germanic and Celtic; there would have been no Roman invasion and subjugation of Britain.

Would Carthage have been content just to gain control of the Mediterranean and be its only superpower? Or would there have been a European empire nonetheless? Even if so, its capital would have been in north Africa, not south Europe; how much difference would that have made? Would the Carthaginians have needed to subdue troublesome tribes in Europe?

Would public schools now be teaching Classical Carthaginian? Would there now be a Carthaginian Catholic church? Would The Life of Brian have asked “What have the Carthaginians ever done for us?”

A comment on even more cuts in educational spending

(to the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn)


My daughter came home from school last night;
she'd just started learning to read and write:
it's the saddest thing I've ever seen –
because my daughter is seventeen.

chorus
But it's a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
the future's gone away.

Sixteen kids share a tattered book,
all of them trying to get a look;
around the kids the books all pass,
even though there's forty in a class.

Tomorrow's people will be in a state –
a world to which they can't relate;
in a sea of national apathy –
it could never happen to you and me.

One day all people will be the same,
unable to read, or write their name,
totally unfitted for
anything but manual labour.

The bosses, of course, will be the few
who've got more money than me and you;
and, being well-off financially,
can send their kids to university.

A two-class system is evolving now,
but this thing we must not allow;
a national of menials, working at low wage,
a technological Dark Age.

A people who can't read or write
won't put up much of a fight;
the ruling class can steal them blind ...
Could this be what they've got in mind?

Cos it's a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
the future's gone away.



1989 – sadly still as relevant these days