Cartagena
Remember the movie Romancing the Stone?
The whole point was to get the emerald to Cartagena.
Cartagena, a city in Colombia, has the full name
"Cartagena des Indes" as the original Cartagena lies on the
southern coast of Spain.
* * *
It got put there by Phoenicians from Carthage. The name means
"New Carthage". How imaginative of them.
* * *
Carthage itself had been founded by Phoenicians from Tyre. It means
"New Settlement". Do you get the idea that these guys were more interested
in profits than aesthetics?
* * *
Carthage and Rome, its Italian neighbor to the north, fought a quarter-century war, with
Rome eventually proving victorious. Some years later, the son of Carthage's military
leader, the famous Hannibal, renewed the conflict, touching off another long war.
A number of cities in the American South
are named Carthage, or, alternatively, Hannibal after Carthage's most famous
military leader.
Did the South hope to re-fight the War Between the States?
* * *
Mark Twain was born in Hannibal, Missouri. He later traveled abroad, including
to Italy where he penned a piece deriding the Italian language.
Carthaginian revenge?
122601
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