Salammbo

Name: Salammbo
Rating: 4.1 (68 reviews)

by Gustave Flaubert

Amazon

3.9(68)

After Carthage’s defeat in the First Punic War, unpaid mercenary soldiers turn against the city and the conflict becomes a brutal struggle for survival. Mathos, one of the rebel leaders, becomes obsessed with Salammbô, the daughter of Hamilcar Barca, while the theft of a sacred veil draws her into the political and religious crisis around Carthage. The novel follows the siege, negotiation, ritual violence and military counterattack of the Mercenary War, presenting Carthage as a world of wealth, fear, ceremony and extreme punishment.

Flaubert builds the novel from ancient sources but deliberately intensifies colour, ritual and violence to create an imagined Carthage very different from contemporary Europe. The historical Mercenary War gives him a society under pressure from soldiers it cannot pay, while Salammbô's sacred role links political survival with religious spectacle. The result is both historical reconstruction and nineteenth-century fascination with antiquity's perceived strangeness.