lex_aver Posted March 23, 2008 Report Share Posted March 23, 2008 (edited) I'd appreciate good remarks and criticism. Carthage At the African coast of Mediterranean lies Carthage, a city of great heroes and history. According to a legend, Carthage was founded in 814 BC. The founder of the city, exiled Phoenician princess Elissa, came to the seashore seeking a place for settlement. She asked locals to give her as much land as covered by ox hide. When they agreed, she cut it to stripes and encircled nearby hill with them. There the city of Carthage was founded, and Elissa became known as Queen Dido. Carthage quickly rose to prominence and became center of its region. Its great political influence ensured a conflict with another rising power—Rome. For Carthage this conflict, known as Punic Wars, ended tragically. Despite great effort by Commander Hannibal, who invaded Italy and had been sustaining menacing army there for 15 years, Carthage had lost Second Punic War and was destroyed by Roman forces. However, Romans subsequently rebuilt Carthage and it had been one of Rome’s greatest cities till the fall of the Empire. Now it is in ruins, but its glory lives. Edited March 23, 2008 by lex_aver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devils_Advocate Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 I've always liked Carthage. It wasn't perfect, but it was still a cool country. One of the first commercial ones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softwareNerd Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 I'd appreciate good remarks and criticism.Lex, Are you asking for remarks about grammar, etc.? i.e. as an English essay, rather than as History? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grames Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 I want to how it is that the glory of Carthage lives. Hannibal failed, Carthage was destroyed, what remains of Carthage as distinct from Rome? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidOdden Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 On the coast. Proper names standing in for geographical features require a definite article ("the Mediterranean"). Saying "According to a legend" implies a degree of specificity that you don't mean (i.e. there are a bunch of legends and one of them says....), in contrast to "according to legend" which refers to a vague mass of legend -- we don't have competing myths about Carthage. "As much land as covered by ox hide" is really strange: it implies that there is land already covered by oxhide (it's a short form of "as is (already) covered by oxhide", which would be "none", and that would mess up the story). The oxhide also has a generic interpretation in your text, meaning "covered by any oxhide", whereas you mean "by an oxhide" (the hide of one ox, unlike "oxhide" which could be 'any number of oxhides'). The word "strip" refers to long thin things that you could cut a hide into, and a "stripe" is a pattern like this. You need an article to go with "hill" (the rules for articles are the hardest). Same deal with "center", "Punic Wars" and "Romans". I can't say exactly why "effort" should be plural. You gotta totally reboot the "sustaining menacing army" sentence ("sustain" means roughly "suffer", not "maintain"). For one thing, it is much more direct to say that he occupied Italy (you can "menace" from outside, but you have to occupy from the inside). The simple past is the right tense to be using; the rules for "had been sustaining", "had been" may differ in US and UK English, but generally, you would use that tense only to describe something that is done with at some point in the past when some other event took place (for example "I had cut the tree down by the time John got back" where the tree cutting was done with before John's return in the past). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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