The Founding of Carthage © N.S. Gill
Tyre was a Canaanite city in what is now Lebanon or Syria whose inhabitants the Greeks called "Phoenicia" for the color of the dye they applied to their garments. Tyre became very wealthy through trade in these garments, whose deep hues made them fit for kings, precious glass, and wooden objects, as well as through the establishment of colonies throughout the Mediterranean, the sea that linked Spain, Greece, Italy, and northern Africa with the western edge of Asia. One such colony was Carthage, which eventually took over as leader of the loose Phoenician trading empire when Tyre fell to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, in 575 B.C.
We don't really know when or how Carthage was founded, but we do have guesses and some legends that make glamorous a land that the Greeks and Romans did much to defame. One example of this is that Roman and later, Christian writers described with horror a supposed Carthaginian custom of sacrificing infants to the gods in times of trouble. Whether or not they actually did so is a matter of scholarly dispute even today, but no matter whether they actually engaged in this appalling practice, the Carthaginians were used by their enemies as examples of most undesirable traits.