Enough to feed an army. Carthaginian rural exploitation during the late third century BC

ended

Between 237 and 202 BC, the Carthaginian Empire due to both its territorial ambitions and, above all, its conflicts with Rome and several indigenous peoples of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, was forced to keep large numbers of troops permanently mobilized. This military-political circumstance led to a series of major changes in many areas of the Carthaginian economic, political and social system. Through this project we will analyze in detail the extent to which the military mobilization affected agriculture, the very basis of the ancient economy, and the related politics adopted by the ruling elites of the Carthaginian Empire. This project, therefore, includes a quantitative study of the productive capacity of the Carthaginian empire in the late third century BC; an analysis of the logistics during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC); an appreciation of the relationship of war veterans with agricultural production at this chronological context; and a comparison of these results with those obtained in a specific casus: a survey of part of the territory under the rule of the Phoenician city of Utica, a North-African city under the Carthaginian rule.