Editing Carthage (section)

===Overview===
Carthage was built on a [[promontory]] with sea inlets to the north and the south. The city's location made it master of the Mediterranean's maritime trade. All ships crossing the sea had to pass between [[Sicily]] and the coast of Tunisia, where Carthage was built, affording it great power and influence. Two large, artificial harbors were built within the city, one for harboring the city's prodigious navy of 220 warships and the other for mercantile trade. A walled tower overlooked both harbors. The city had massive walls, {{convert|23|mi|0|order=flip|abbr=on}} long, which was longer than the walls of comparable cities. Most of the walls were on the shore and so could be less impressive, as Carthaginian control of the sea made attack from that direction difficult. The {{convert|2.5|to|3|mi|1|order=flip|abbr=on}} of wall on the [[isthmus]] to the west were truly massive and were never penetrated.

Carthage was one of the largest cities of the [[Hellenistic period]] and was among the largest cities in preindustrial history. Whereas by AD 14, [[Rome]] had at least 750,000 inhabitants and in the following century may have reached 1&nbsp;million, the cities of [[Alexandria]] and [[Antioch]] numbered only a few hundred thousand or less.<ref name="CharlesworthEdwards2000">{{cite book|author1=Martin Percival Charlesworth|author2=Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards|author3=John Boardman|author4=Frank William Walbank|title=The Cambridge Ancient History: The fourth century B.C., 2nd ed., 1994|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WgHhAAAAMAAJ&q="Rome+was+larger"|year=2000|publisher=University Press|page=813|isbn=978-0521263351 }}</ref> According to the history of [[Herodian]], Carthage rivaled Alexandria for second place in the Roman empire.<ref name="Grant2004">{{cite book|author=Robert McQueen Grant|title=Augustus to Constantine: The Rise and Triumph of Christianity in the Roman World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d_vxEB7nT_QC&pg=PP54|year=2004|publisher=Westminster: John Knox Press|isbn=978-0-664-22772-2|pages=54–}}</ref>