“Salambo” of Gustave Flaubert. I read this book a few years ago in French
Posted on: February 17, 2026
In the year 1858, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert arrived in North Africa hoping to find inspiration for his latest book.
Flaubert was a seasoned traveler, and a decade or so earlier had embarked on a grand tour of Cairo, Constantinople, Greece, and Italy.
Now the writer who departed on this new set of travels, was like a different man. Although only 37 years old, he was plagued by sickness and prone to fits of depression, and the novel he had been working on for the last year was threatening to drive him mad.
The publication of his most famous work two years before, the novel Madame Bovary, had brought him fame and wealth.
But now he was attempting to write a piece of fiction quite unlike anything he had ever attempted. It would be a story from classical history that took place in an empire that had once flourished in the north of Africa,
This empire had become the most powerful society in the ancient world and then had vanished in its entirety more than 2,000 years ago, by its arch enemy Rome around 130 BC.
An empire that had been largely forgotten beside the more well-studied societies of Classical Greece and Rome.
This was the empire of Carthage.
Note: Carthage was dominating the western Mediterranean Sea in trade and settlements around north Africa, Spain, France, England and the various islands like Sicily, Sardinia, Malta.
The city-state of Tyr of Lebanon, during the Phoenician period, dominated as a sea empire to all of this Sea for 2 thousand years. Tyr had settlements from Greece, Turkey, Syria, Cyprus, Italy, north Africa and all the islands all the way to England before the Macedonian Alexander destroyed the city in around 330 BC
Now Tyr dominated the eastern shores of this sea during the Seleucid Greek empire and was the main ship builder for this empire.
The nascent Roman empire had no fleet and just extended its territory to north Italy of Etruscan and south Italy.
Two kings in Sicily got embroidered in a fight. Carthage sided with one and Rome with the other. In a naval battle, mighty Cartage lost to Rome. Rome had concocted extension brides to board ships and overcame Cartage mariners. And Rome got Sicily.
Cartage was in terrible debt from losing a prosperous Island and could not pay its mercenaries who occupied the city of Carthage demanding to be paid.
In order to remove this threat of the mercenaries, Carthage dangled to them the bait of transferring them to faraway lands for them to occupy and cultivate..
This is basically the story of the fiction novel.
Cartage relied on land mercenaries during battles, and they were many from Greece, Spain, France, Libia, Sudan… Each group of mercenaries was specialized in one aspect of warfare like sling shot, archery, spikes, spears, elephant riders…
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