"Until the last generation, much western scholarship about Carthage has been infected by three insidious prejudices. First, Rome never had much good to say about the Punic people, and it was Roman literary works that survived to influence western thinking, not Punic. Second and third, because the Phoenicians were a Semitic people and because North Africa fell under Moslem influence in the Middle Ages, western anti-semitic and anti-islamic prejudices strongly influenced the view European and American scholars have had of Carthage and its culture. It is not uncommon to read handbook accounts that speak of the "shallow, mercantile, religiously fanatical" culture of Carthage. We should, like Cicero, remember, however, that Carthage was an empire that successfully dominated the western Mediterranean for more than half a millenium, and it is unlikely, given its continuity and material resources, that its cultural life was was not as compelling and successful as that of its neighbors."

http://www.bates.edu/~mimber/Rciv/Carthage.htm