page_title: History of Tunisia
section_title: Sovereignty
hierarchical_section_title: History of Tunisia / Carthage / Sovereignty
caption_attribution_description: Coin showing Hasdrubal Barca, Hannibal's younger brother.
context_page_description: The present day Republic of Tunisia, al-Jumhuriyyah at-Tunisiyyah, is situated in Northern Africa. Geographically situated between Libya to the east, Algeria to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. Tunis is the capital and the largest city; it is near the ancient site of the city of Carthage.
  Throughout its recorded history, the physical features and environment of the land of Tunisia have remained fairly constant, although during ancient times more abundant forests grew in the north, and earlier in prehistory the Sahara to the south was not an arid desert.
  The weather is temperate in the north, which enjoys a Mediterranean climate with mild rainy winters and hot dry summers, the terrain being wooded and fertile. The Medjerda river valley is currently valuable farmland. Along the eastern coast the central plains enjoy a moderate climate with less rainfall but significant precipitation in the form of heavy dews; these coastlands are currently used for orchards and grazing. Near the mountainous Algerian border rises Jebel ech Chambi, the highest point in the country at 1544 meters. In the near south, a belt of salt lakes running east–west cuts across the country.
context_section_description: By the middle of the sixth century B.C., Carthage had grown into a fully independent thalassocracy. Under Mago (r., c.550–530) and later his Magonid family, Carthage became preeminent among the Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean, which included nearby Utica.
  Trading partnerships were established among the Numidian Berbers to the west along the African coast as well as to the east in Libya; other stations were located in southern Sardinia and western Sicily, Ibiza in the Balearics, Lixus south of the straits, and Gades north of the straits, with additional trading stations in the south and east of Iberia. Also, Carthage enjoyed an able ally in the Etruscans, who then ruled a powerful state to the north of the infant city of Rome.
  A merchant sailor of Carthage, Himilco, explored in the Atlantic to the north of the straits, along the coast of the Lusitanians and perhaps as far as Oestrymnis (modern Brittany), circa 500 B.C. Carthage would soon supplant the Iberian city of Tartessus in carrying the tin trade from Oestrymnis. Another, Hanno the Navigator explored the Atlantic to the south, along the African coast well past the River Gambia. The traders of Carthage were known to be secretive about business and particularly about trade routes; it was their practice to keep the straits to the Atlantic closed to the Greeks.
  In the 530s there had been a three sided naval struggle between the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Etrusco-Punic allies; the Greeks lost Corsica to the Etruscans and Sardinia to Carthage. Then the Etruscans attacked Greek colonies in the Campania south of Rome, but unsuccessfully.  As an eventual result, Rome threw off their Etruscan kings of the Tarquin dynasty.  The Roman Republic and Carthage in 509 entered into a treaty which set out to define their commercial zones.
caption: Hasdrubal of Carthage, younger brother of Hannibal Barca (247–c.182).
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