Carthage

Carthage was an ancient city on the coast of northern Africa near modern day Tunis, in Tunisia. It began as a colony of the Phoenicians and eventually became a great naval power that exerted influence across the Mediterranean Sea.

Roman Domination

The emerging power of Rome brought the two into conflict starting in Sicily in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Carthage was eventually destroyed by Rome after the course of three wars, the Punic Wars which were monumental for their time period. Carthage was an independent power, until its lands were taken by Rome following the Third Punic War. During its time as a Roman principality, it developed a thriving Christian community. St. Augustine of Hippo hailed from what was once Carthaginian land, as did the Donatists, a Christian sect which Augustine succeeded in branding as heretical.

After Rome

Carthage stayed in Roman hands until the fall of the Empire. By 500 A.D., with the fall of the western Empire, Carthaginian lands passed to the Visigoths. Under Justinian the Byzantine Empire (also called the Eastern Roman Empire) in an effort to reconquer all of the lands lost when the Western Roman Empire fell, invaded Africa a mere 50 years later. Justinian's general Belisarius liberated the lands that been Carthage in the ancient equivalent of a blitzkrieg, and integrated the territory into Byzantium.

This tenure proved brief indeed. While Belisarius' armies went on to fight - and eventually win - a Pyrrhic victory in Italy, the resulting loss of life, decimation of the Italian peninsula, and loss of Byzantine treasury, left the empire an easy target for the Islamic armies which would emerge in just 100 years. After the initial onslaught of Mohammed's armies, Carthaginian lands fell from Roman hands for the rest of history.