The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean (Oxford Handbooks)

THE PHOENICIANS created the Mediterranean as we know it. They are the
constantly underrated, even marginalized “third party” in a story written as a
tale of Greek and Roman success. But it is no exaggeration to say that the
world that the Greeks and Romans experienced, and to some extent the world
we live in today, would have been quite different had the Phoenicians not
existed. Greeks and Romans, and many others throughout the Mediterranean,
may not have started using alphabetic writing when they did; hence, literacy
and even the development of genres such as history or philosophy might have
been delayed—even for centuries. Moreover, the Phoenician commercial and
colonial expansion starting in the late ninth century BCE laid out pan-
Mediterranean networks and models on which the Greek’s own colonial
expansion thrived. And were it not for Carthage’s grip on the central and
western Mediterranean after 500 BCE, Rome might not have engaged in the
wars that led to its own expansion into Sicily, Sardinia, and Iberia, which
proved to be the foundation of its empire outside of Italy. It was the
Phoenicians who first explored the Atlantic shores of Africa and northern
Europe (key sources of tin, codfish, and other goods) and integrated them
into Mediterranean trade networks.