Punic was a Roman contraction of Phoenician, and was used by the Romans after the Punic wars as an adjective meaning "treacherous".
In archaeological and linguistic usage, it refers to the later culture and dialect of Carthage and its empire, as distinct from their Phoenician originals. See Phoenician languages.
The adjective Punic (Latin Punicus) is derived from Poeni, the name by which the Carthaginians, being of Phoenician descent, were known to the Romans.
The First Punic War (264-241 bc) was the outcome of growing political and economic rivalry between the two nations.
A minor Carthaginian breach of treaty gave the pretext for the Third Punic War (149-146 bc), in which the Romans, led by Scipio the Younger, captured the city of Carthage, razed it to the ground, and sold the surviving inhabitants into slavery.
Phoenician is a Semitic language of the Canaanite subgroup, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic.
Perhaps the most interesting case of Punic influence is that of the name of Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula, comprising Portugal and Spain), derived from the Punic אי שפן "I-Shaphan" meaning "coast of hyraxes", in turn a misidentification on the part of Phoenician explorers of its numerous rabbits as hyraxes.
One of the earliest essays in Phoenicianlanguage studies was Wilhelm Gesenius (1786-1842), Scripturae linguaeque phoeniciae monumenta, 1837, analyzing texts from coins and monumental inscriptions.
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