Punic religion

The Punic religion, Carthaginian religion, or Western Phoenician religion in the western Mediterranean was a direct continuation of the Phoenician variety of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion. However, significant local differences developed over the centuries following the foundation of Carthage and other Punic communities elsewhere in North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, western Sicily, and Malta from the ninth century BC onward. After the conquest of these regions by the Roman Republic in the third and second centuries BC, Punic religious practices continued, surviving until the fourth century AD in some cases.

Quotes

In fiction

• The Gods are not of Rome or Italy:
  They dwell in earth's abyss or with the stars,
  Their shrines are where we bring heroic hearts:
  Yet there are spots which to the minds of men
  Seem set apart for converse with the Gods.
  On temples by the sea our fancy roams
  To Hercules the Roamer: on high hills
  Astarte pours her radiance: Tanais bends
  Her bow in tempests, and the thunder hails
  Chrysaor's sword-flash. On this sultry marge
  Of nether night and Hades, let us bow
  Before the Powers of Silence, Death and Dreams;
  Of that chaotic Air that, o'er the deep
  Long brooding, brought forth lightnings in the sky;
  And of the Fires pent up, ere Æon rose,
  Parent of all our world, nor first nor last.
  • John Nichol, Hannibal (1873), III, vii