stylistic:tone, structural:scholar_edition, structural:expansion
Sources

Compared to contemporaneous civilizations such as Rome and Greece, far less is known about Carthage, as most indigenous records were lost in the wholesale destruction of the city after the Third Punic War. Sources of knowledge are limited to ancient translations of Punic into Greek and Latin, Punic inscriptions on monuments and buildings, and archaeological findings of Carthage's material culture. The majority of available primary sources about Carthage were written by Greek and Roman historians, most notably Livy, Polybius, Appian, Cornelius Nepos, Silius Italicus, Plutarch, Dio Cassius, and Herodotus. These authors came from cultures that were nearly always in competition with Carthage; the Greeks with respect to Sicily, and the Romans over dominance of the western Mediterranean. Inevitably, foreign accounts of Carthage usually reflect significant bias, especially those written during or after the Punic Wars, when the interpretatio Romana perpetuated a "malicious and distorted view". Excavations of ancient Carthaginian sites since the late 19th century has brought to light more material evidence that either contradict or confirm aspects of the traditional picture of Carthage; however, many of these findings remain ambiguous.