Before there was Rome, there was Carthage. Situated on a Tunisian peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean, Carthage began as a Phoenician trading center. Even a cursory glance at the map reveals that Carthage was the perfect place from which to control trade throughout the Mediterranean. The Carthaginian Empire expanded so rapidly that by the seventh century it spanned the African coast from Gibraltar to the Egyptian border and included the islands of Sardinia, Malta, and Sicily.