people
Carthaginians
also: Poeni, the Carthaginians
The people of Carthage (Latin Poeni). Lucretius recalls the terror of their onset in the Punic Wars, when Rome's survival hung in doubt, to show how that dread is nothing to those not yet born.
Reading notes
- On the Nature of Things §5.64 Carthaginians
The people of Carthage, credited here with first loosing war-elephants ('Lucanian oxen') in battle.