Servanda Est Carthago!

"Delenda est Carthago!" Senator Marcus Porcius Cato used to cry in urging Rome to destroy its old enemy. And so it was to be. By 146 B.C., the Romans had driven out Carthage's 500,000 inhabitants, razed the city, and sowed salt in the rubble so that nothing would ever grow there. As recently as 1930, the ancient metropolis was no more than a sleepy Tunisian village of 2,000. Now the place is being ruined in a new way--by developers.

Tunis, only ten miles to the south, has doubled in size (to 700,000) in the past 15 years, so the builders have expanded into Carthage. Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba located his new official residence there, and some 60 high-ranking diplomats live near by. Hundreds of seaside villas have been built on the still unexcavated ruins that lie about 20 feet below the surface. Says Georges Fradier, a Frenchman who heads UNESCO'S "Save Carthage" mission in Tunis: "If the building boom goes on, Carthage will be really destroyed--this time for good. Nobody is going to demolish a new city in order to dig up an old city."

In an effort to prevent that, Fradier hopes to excavate 1,000 acres of ruins. The Punic port at nearby Salambo (from which the Carthaginian navy controlled the Mediterranean) would be returned to its historical appearance and would double as a yacht basin. In Carthage itself, a Roman theater would be refurbished to serve for modern dramas. Statuary would be restored, as would the baths of Antoninus.

Work has already started. A group of Polish archaeologists, using special electronic equipment, has charted 120 acres of ruins in three months, a job that would have taken six years using traditional methods. To encourage other foreign archaeologists to excavate Carthage, the Tunisian government has promised them that they can keep or borrow a portion of their Punic and Roman finds. "With scientific digging," declares UNESCO's Fradier, "Carthage can be completely restored in 15 to 20 years. So far as tourists are concerned, in two or three years we'll have put Carthage back on the map."

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