by Maurice Sznycer, Chargé de Recherches at the National Centre for Scientific Research (France)

"... there was a great deal of virtue and wisdom in the Punic books" St. Augustine

In a recent book on Carthage the English historian Warmington did not hesitate to affirm that there is no Punic literature. Indeed, at first sight, to talk of literature in connection with the few surviving Punic writings might seem like, tempting Providence. First of all we must establish our definition of the word "literature". The Oxford Dictionary gives a vague definition: "the writings of a country or period or of the world in general", but this was controverted long ago by Voltaire in his Dictionnaire Philosophique ("literature: this is one of those meaningless terms which are so common in all languages"). It is plain that the concept is still in the process of evolving, as it has done throughout the course of every culture, period, taste and fashion. For a long time, an aura of immense prestige surrounded the word, but this was already beginning to dissipate with the famous saying of Verlaine: "all the rest is literature and now it often signifies everything artificial and hollow in an overall pejorative sense.

Today above all the definition of literature is always under review, but nevertheless the criterion most frequently applied to a literary work is the information it conveys. Looking at the question from this point of view, if we accept, for example, the definition of American poet Ezra Pound: Literature is news that stays news", it can be stated without reservation that there is a considerable body of Punic literature. Indeed, several thousand inscriptions are known which, in spite of their comparative uniformity and aridity of style, constituted a priceless source of information, and their value as so much direct evidence is replaceable. These, it must be emphasized are no more than the vestigial re remains of all the literature which the Punic civilisation created during the thousand years of its blossoming.

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