Monday, July 19, 2010

Phoenician and Punic news

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA has reached the Azores:
82 days at sea, and Phoenicia reaches the Azores

(dp-news-Sail-world-Arward)

It has been the longest and most challenging leg of their journey, but the Phoenicia, the replica of a 600BC Phoenician vessel which it is believed circumnavigated Africa, has reached the Azores.

The journey covered over 3500miles, with eight crew members, and proved that the sturdy vessel, faithfully recreated according to the mode of its era, could withstand the challenging conditions of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Phoenicia arrived in Flores, the most westerly island in the Azores this week, and is now anchored there.

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Gibraltar is next. The ship has been sailing for nearly two years.

Further background here and follow the many links back.

More Phoenician/Punic news: a review of a book on Hannibal's tactics at the battle of Cannae during the Second Punic War:
The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal defeats mighty Rome

The legendary Hannibal won famously at Cannae with tactics still being discussed today — but in the end, he lost the war


Published On Sat Jul 17 2010 (Toronto Star)

On a sweltering August 2, 216 B.C., Hannibal was facing a Roman army on a plain near the Italian river Po. With the sun behind him, the legendary Carthaginian commander was in a good position. But he also had a plan.

Knowing the Romans always went for the centre, he set his troops up in a backwards C formation. When the Romans took the bait, they failed to notice that the Carthaginian centre was slowly drawing back into a proper C. The jaws of the trap closed when Hannibal’s Libyan troops swooped in on the unprotected Roman flanks.

Meanwhile, Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal, leading the Carthaginian cavalry, took care of the inferior Roman cavalry, first on one flank, then the other. Instead of pursuing, Hasdrubal doubled back behind the Roman troops, cutting off any avenue of retreat.

The Romans lost more men on that single day, 48,000, than the U. S. did during the entire course of the Viet Nam War. Or, as Robert L. O’Connell puts it in The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic, about 6 million pounds of human meat was left to rot in the hot August sun.

This was the famous Battle of Cannae. In O’Connell’s estimation, Cannae remains a lure for the militarily ambitious as long as men dream of killing other groups of men in very large numbers.

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And still more: A new computer game based on the Second Punic War:
Matrix Games Is Ready to Unleash Hannibal

Turn based strategy offering


By Andrei Dumitrescu, Games Editor (Softpedia)

Matrix Games, as the publisher, and Forced March Games, as the developer, have announced that they are collaborating on a new turn based strategy title called Hannibal: Rome and Carthage in the Second Punic War. The game is coming to the PC and does not yet have a clear launch date.

Hannibal: Rome and Carthage in the Second Punic War will allow the player to take control of the entire Carthaginian nation as they try to outfight and outsmart the Romans in a conflict which will define the way the Mediterranean basin develops over the following centuries. The sea, Spain, the North of Africa and Italy are all battlegrounds as the gamers uses their strategic and tactical skills in order to defeat the opposing forces of the Roman Republic.

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