place
Phoenicia
the Phoenicians
also: Phoenicum
The Levantine homeland of the Phoenicians, ancestors of the Carthaginians. Cicero invokes their proverbial reputation for deceit to taint the Sardinian witnesses, who descend from Phoenician-Carthaginian colonists.
Reading notes
- For Marcus Aemilius Scaurus §42 the Phoenicians are the most deceitful of races
Cicero deploys the stock Roman charge of "Punic faith" (fides Punica = treachery): the Sardinians descend from Carthaginian colonists, themselves sprung from the Phoenicians, and so inherit a reputation for lying he turns against the witnesses.