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?”