Which Side Would You have Supported During the Three Punic Wars?

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Carthage was a Pirate empire, and the thing with basing an economy on piracy is that it is an inherently parasitic way to run a society that that relies on the surplus created by other polities (similar to the model of the Steppe Empires that feasted on the Romans and Persians in late antiquity).

The other big issue with carthage is they were very big into child sacrifice.

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Carthage was a Pirate empire, and the thing with basing an economy on piracy is that it is an inherently parasitic way to run a society that that relies on the surplus created by other polities (similar to the model of the Steppe Empires that feasted on the Romans and Persians in late antiquity).

The other big issue with carthage is they were very big into child sacrifice.

According the Romans, at least, unless there is a scholarly consensus I wasn’t aware of (which could very well be the case since this isn’t my area of expertise) which has determined this was indeed a frequent practice.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-23-ancient-carthaginians-really-did-sacrifice-their-children

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The other big issue with Carthage is their total reliance on mercenaries and client states for their military almost always led them to bad results: even in their best of times the civilian leadership was almost always at loggerheads with their generals, like the Spartan that they hired during the First Punic War or even Hannibal himself, who basically acted completely autonomously from Carthage as much as he could. So when the Carthagianians were beaten in battle, there was less "rallying round the flag" and more "desperately trying to stiff your hired goons". The Roman success at flipping Numidia to their side is this in action.