Sources & context.

Edition: Carthage & Hannibal: The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Greatest Rival — ManyPasts YouTube release published on 18 September 2026 (Z96UF-uGRLQ), the 2026 remake. Earlier uploads of the first cut are no longer available.

Research sources

• Carthage excavation report, 1978–79 ↗

  pp. 54–56: plan, commercial quay and discussion of stone shipshed dating. Partial excavation; do not project final harbour architecture into ninth-century foundation.

• W. Culican, Phoenicia and Phoenician colonization ↗

  Published chapter summary: continuity of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos from Late Bronze Age. Summary consulted; does not establish a single migration or homogeneous ancestry.

• The Phoenicians (1500–300 B.C.) ↗

  City identities, Greek name, material exchange, dye and western settlement. Purple etymology qualified; do not turn a network into one nation.

• Quinn et al., Augustine's Canaanites ↗

  2014 manuscript study; abstract. Challenges evidence used for a collective Canaanite self-name.

• Homer, Iliad XXIII ↗

  23.740–749: Sidonian silver bowl. Greek literary representation; no actual surviving object identified as this bowl.

• Homer, Odyssey XV ↗

  15.415 onward: Eumaeus's narrated childhood. Literary stereotype; not an ethnic characterization by this film.

• Balawat gates: tribute from Tyre and Sidon ↗

  Walters 54.2335A: tribute bearers and inscription naming Tyre and Sidon; upper fragment in the acquired two-fragment photograph. Assyrian royal representation. The lower fragment, 54.2335B, depicts soldiers carrying logs and is not the tribute scene. The specific combined Commons photograph remains CC BY-SA 3.0 despite other museum image downloads being offered as CC0.

• Villa, The Mazarrón II Wreck ↗

  Wreck structure and illustrated archaeological evidence. Small wreck is a construction reference only; our 22m merchant vessel is a generic composite, not a scale reconstruction of Mazarrón II.

• Archaeological Site of Carthage ↗

  Foundation, destruction, subsequent Roman city and surviving site. Modern site includes several periods.

• Western North Africa, 1000 B.C.–1 A.D. ↗

  Chronology: foundation tradition and Numidian/Carthaginian context. Does not imply an empty North Africa before settlement.

• Open University: Houses at Carthage ↗

  Punic house passage and figure 6, early second century BCE. Narrow plots and covered cisterns supported; upper walls, furnishings and our open-cistern maintenance view are interpretive.

• Aristotle, Politics II.11 ↗

  Carthage, political institutions and wealth. Greek analytical perspective, not a complete constitutional archive.

• Polybius, Histories I ↗

  First Punic War; peace; subsequent mercenary conflict. Ancient retrospective narrative; film avoids unsupported exact casualty totals.

• Polybius, Histories II ↗

  2.1 and 2.13: Barcid Iberia. Interpretations of motive remain qualified.

• Polybius, Histories III ↗

  Causes, Saguntum, march, Alps and Roman response. No exact pass claimed; inner thoughts and reported speeches are not invented as direct testimony.

• Polybius, Cannae ↗

  Histories III.107–118. Schematic formation, not exact headcounts or surveyed positions. Existing African proxy is not an exact Iberian/Celtic central contingent.

• Michael P. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage ↗

  Introduction summary: Cannae, defection/reconquest and Italian communities. Published introduction consulted, not a claim of reading full monograph. Political network is an interpretive organizing argument, not a single-cause proof.

• Polybius, Histories X ↗

  Scipio and New Carthage. Lagoon crossing explicitly attributed to Polybius (10.8–15). The hydrological mechanism is disputed; schematic lagoon illustration is not an asserted tidal simulation.

• Polybius, Histories XI ↗

  Iberian campaign, Ilipa. Campaign overview, not exact tactical reconstruction.

• Polybius, Histories XV ↗

  15.9–19: Zama, Masinissa and peace terms. Do not collapse the 202 BCE defeat into 146 BCE destruction.

• Appian, Punic Wars ↗

  96: harbours; 127–135: final siege and aftermath. Later author; vivid siege details not automatically treated as eyewitness certainty.

• Mapzen terrain attribution ↗

  Existing frozen pilot relief, USGS/NOAA/EU-DEM/Copernicus. Modern terrain; existing Alps clip has fourfold vertical exaggeration.

• Polybius, Histories IX ↗

  9.3–7: relief of Capua, forage, cavalry and march towards Rome. Retrospective Greek narrative. Siege perimeter and march arrows are explanatory, not surveyed positions.

• Livy, History of Rome XXVI ↗

  26.7–16: march on Rome and surrender of Capua. Roman literary account, composed later; details differ from Polybius.

• Appian, Punic Wars 80–91 ↗

  Demand to abandon Carthage and settle inland. Later account, not a surviving contemporary ultimatum.

• Appian, Punic Wars 95–101 ↗

  95–96: Carthage topography and harbours. Interpret alongside partial excavation; not evidence for ninth-century architecture.

• Appian, Punic Wars 119–126 ↗

  121: defenders cut another outlet while Roman works close the harbour. New outlet shown only schematically. Precise ancient shore alignment is not established by modern OSM.

• Appian, Punic Wars 127–132 ↗

  Final assault, Byrsa and enslavement. Later literary narrative; no invented eyewitness scenes or exact casualty totals.

• Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus XVIII ↗

  Trans. J. S. Watson (1853). Elissa (Dido) and the foundation of Carthage, including the oxhide legend the film illustrates.

• C. Cooksey, Tyrian Purple: 6,6′-Dibromoindigo and Related Compounds ↗

  Molecules 6 (2001), 736–769. Source for Friedländer’s extraction of about 1.4 g of dye from 12,000 snails.

• Berger, Forstenpointner, Frühauf and Kanz, More than just a color ↗

  PLOS ONE 19(6), e0304340 (2024). Late Bronze Age purple-dye production at Cape Kolonna, Aegina; source of the shell and pigment photographs.

• Appian, Punic Wars 92–94 ↗

  Trans. Horace White. §93, the workshops, is quoted in the film.

• Livy, History of Rome XXX ↗

  Latin text. Scipio’s African campaign and Hannibal’s recall, alongside Polybius XV and Appian.

Reconstruction & interpretation

These notes preserve the research and asset register behind the documentary, published under its YouTube title after development as Purple & Iron. Ancient literary accounts, surviving objects and modern reconstructions provide different kinds of evidence.

Modern landscapes, ports, crops, craft work and animals illustrate places and material subjects. They are not footage of ancient events. Modern coastlines and terrain remain geographical context, not reconstructed ancient shorelines.

Routes, regional influence areas and battle formations are schematic. Their geometry, changing coverage, colours and numbers of figures do not establish surveyed borders, exact troop positions, uniforms or headcounts. No single Alpine pass is claimed; the inherited Alpine terrain illustration uses fourfold vertical exaggeration.

The circular harbour model concerns later Punic Carthage, not its ninth-century foundation. Buildings, streets and elevations remain interpretive. The merchant ship is a generic Mediterranean composite rather than a replica of the much smaller Mazarrón II wreck. The house and open cistern explain domestic water storage without claiming a specific household.

Capua and New Carthage are explanatory landscapes. Polybius is explicitly the source of the lagoon-crossing account; the mechanism remains disputed. Shores, terrain, streets, walls and attack routes are illustrative. The lagoon graphic is not a tidal simulation or a measured depth model.

Later portraits are not contemporary likenesses. The Balawat relief is an Assyrian royal representation; Modern photographs and crops retain their individual attribution and licences; no institutional endorsement is implied.

The oxhide sequence illustrates the foundation legend recorded by Justin; it is not a measured reconstruction of Dido’s land or a claim that the event occurred. The Carthaginian reach overlay shows approximate holdings and influence. Polybius III.22–24 distinguishes treaty claims in Libya and Sardinia from only the Carthaginian parts of Sicily, and no exact frontier is asserted.

The African campaign maps distinguish Scipio’s crossing in 204 BCE from Hannibal’s recall in 203 BCE. Movement curves are geographical explanations, not recovered sailing tracks or exact daily positions.

The harbour siege follows Appian, The Punic Wars 119–125: the land blockade, the attempted mole, the new outlet, the sortie and the naval engagement three days later. The exact outlet, mole, quay, shore defences, ships, deployment and vessel counts are illustrative, and ship colours identify sides editorially.

The three spoken quotations are readings of historical translations, not recordings or reconstructions of the authors’ voices: Aristotle, Politics II.11 (Benjamin Jowett); Polybius, Histories III.85.4 (W. R. Paton, 1922), Hannibal’s appeal as Polybius reports it; and Appian, The Punic Wars §93 (Horace White).

Production & asset credits

• Production, script, maps, animation and editing: ManyPasts. Developed under the working title Purple & Iron.
• Many Pasts created the map explanations, diagrams, city, harbour, house, merchant vessel and battle animations, and the material illustrations (purple pigment, shields and spears). They are interpretive visualisations, not photographs of excavated objects, of an experiment or of recovered scenes.
• Pictures and footage are cropped/reframed, animated and sometimes graded; some carry explanatory overlays. Identified CC BY-SA adaptations retain their source licences. No creator or institutional endorsement is implied. Music selections were supplied for the production.
• Vue aérienne de Salambo et Carthage, 23 April 2010 — T A / Citizen59 ↗ — CC BY-SA 2.0

  Modern Carthage harbour setting. Cropped, graded and animated with explanatory overlays, then dissolved into the interpretive reconstruction (approximate registration, not a surveyed footprint). Modern roads and buildings do not establish the ancient layout.

• Hexaplex trunculus trunculus 01, 6 July 2014 — H. Zell ↗ — CC BY-SA 3.0

  Modern collection shell of a dye-producing species, not an excavated specimen or Friedländer’s experimental species. Cropped and composited.

• Bolinus brandaris 01, 2011 — H. Zell ↗ — CC BY-SA 3.0

  A single modern specimen, cropped and composited; not one of Friedländer’s experimental specimens.

• Port, Tyre, Lebanon — Vyacheslav Argenberg ↗ — CC BY 4.0

  Modern harbour, buildings and vessels; cropped, graded and animated.

• Le site archéologique de Byrsa (Carthage, Tunisie) — Jean-Pierre Dalbéra ↗ — CC BY 2.0

  Modern photograph of the Punic quarter and later Roman remains. Cropped, graded and animated.

• Carthage Punic port, 2021 — Elycoupo² ↗ — CC BY-SA 4.0

  Modern photograph. Cropped, graded and animated.

• Fragments of Bands from a Gate, 859–824 BCE, 54.2335 — Walters Art Museum ↗ — CC BY-SA 3.0

  Assyrian royal representation; the tribute fragment is identified by its Tyre/Sidon inscription. Cropped, colour balanced and reframed across the upper tribute register.

• Silver-gilt bowl, Cypriot, c. 725–675 BCE, 74.51.4554 — The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗ — Public domain / Met Open Access

  Comparative material object, not Homer’s bowl. Cropped/reframed.

• Carthage Tetradrachm Tanit & Horse, with a Serrated Edge. About 200 BC — Berlin-George ↗ — Public domain (creator’s dedication)

  Material comparison, not a coin assigned to an Iberian mine or a specific military payment. Cropped and animated.

• Hannibal, sculpture by Sébastien Slodtz, 1704 — photograph by Jastrow, 2006 ↗ — Public domain

  A later imagined likeness; the sculpture shows Hannibal counting rings after Cannae. Cropped/reframed for the portrait.

• Crushed shells from the pit in Area K10 (Fig. 7) — Lydia Berger, in Berger et al. 2024 ↗ — CC BY 4.0

  Late Bronze Age finds from Cape Kolonna, Aegina, not Tyrian or Carthaginian excavations. Coarse fraction cropped, not recoloured.

• Pottery fragments bearing purple pigment (Fig. 5, panel 1) — Lydia Berger, in Berger et al. 2024 ↗ — CC BY 4.0

  Cape Kolonna, Aegina, Late Bronze Age. Upper-left interior surfaces only; cropped/reframed without recolouring.

• Roman marble, possibly Scipio, late second century BCE, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek — photograph by Carole Raddato ↗ — CC BY-SA 2.0

  Cropped, graded and animated with a mosaic reveal. Identification is uncertain; the film says “possibly Scipio”.

• Numidian bronze half unit, Masinissa or Micipsa, Siga mint — CNG ↗ — Public domain

  Obverse cropped and graded; the uncertain attribution is kept on screen.

• Messina strait and Messina, 2010 — Drtrotsky ↗ — CC BY-SA 3.0

  Modern view from Reggio Calabria towards Sicily. Cropped, reframed and captioned.

• Stretto di Messina da forte San Jachiddu, 2021 — Mariaceleste Arena ↗ — CC BY-SA 4.0

  Modern view from Sicily towards Calabria. Cropped, reframed and captioned; not evidence of an ancient city plan.

• J. M. W. Turner, Dido building Carthage, 1815 — National Gallery, London ↗ — Public domain

  A literary imagining, not a measured ancient city plan.

• Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Aeneas telling Dido of the fall of Troy, 1815 — Louvre ↗ — Public domain

  A later scene from Dido’s legend.

• Henri-Paul Motte, Hannibal crossing the Rhône, 1878 ↗ — Public domain

  Monochrome reproduction of a later history painting.

• J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, 1812 — Tate; photograph by Steven Zucker ↗ — Public domain

  Romantic imagining; not evidence for a specific pass or weather event.

• David Roberts / Louis Haghe, Sur or Tsor, Ancient Tyre from the Isthmus — Cleveland Museum of Art ↗ — CC0

  Nineteenth-century traveller’s view of Tyre.

• Rembrandt van Rijn, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653, 61.198 — The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗ — Public domain

  Aristotle is the living figure and Homer the bust; both are later imagined portraits.

• Aerial View of Mediterranean Sea at Sunset — Oskar Gross ↗ — Pexels License

  Modern Mallorca; sea insert and title sea. Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• Scenic Alpine Mountain Meadow View — Tobi &Chris ↗ — Pexels License

  Modern Swiss Alps; no identified Hannibal pass. Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• A Worker Shaving Wood — K ↗ — Pexels License

  Current craft tools and methods. Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• Close up of Weaving — Roberto Zepeda ↗ — Pexels License

  Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• Close-up of Glowing Embers — Florian Delée ↗ — Pexels License

  Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• Close-up View of a Person Holding Grains — cottonbro studio ↗ — Pexels License

  Modern brewery grain handling. Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• People Picking Olive in Grove — Maison Delia ↗ — Pexels License

  Modern harvest equipment. Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• Hands Planting Seeds — fatiha maarouf ↗ — Pexels License

  Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• Horses Grazing in a Field — Martyn Day ↗ — Pexels License

  Illustrative forage, not ancient breeds or the landscape of Capua. Modern footage, selected, trimmed, muted, cropped or graded; it does not document an ancient event.

• Terrain shading — Mapzen / USGS / NOAA / EU-DEM / Copernicus ↗ — See source attribution; derived shading and colour

  Modern relief and coastline; the Alpine terrain insert exaggerates relief for illustration.

• Land mask — Natural Earth, 1:50m physical land ↗ — Public domain

  A cartographic aid, not reconstructed ancient coastlines.

• Qwantani Sunset (Pure Sky) — Greg Zaal (photography) and Jarod Guest (processing), Poly Haven ↗ — CC0

  Artistic light and reflections only, not evidence for ancient weather. CC0 surface textures are retained with the procedural environments.

For source questions or corrections, contact support@manypasts.com.

How we treat the evidence

We distinguish surviving evidence from interpretation and visual reconstruction. Maps can represent approximate routes or relationships without claiming to trace a surveyed ancient road. Modern landscapes and illustrative models are identified as such.

Map explorations include their own sources and model limitations. These remain separate from the final film’s research and production approvals.