The Cartheginians, like the Aztecs, got what they deserved. Everyone moans about the beatdown that the Spanish Conquistadors dealt the Aztecs but that is only because the modern mind cannot conceive the depravity of the Aztec empire. The cities of Carthage and Tenochtitlan were evil and needed to be destroyed. Western civilization is the heir of the Romans and of the Spanish Conquistadors.
Western Civilization has taken its Judeo-Christian heritage so much for granted that many modern first-worlders think that human nature alone would make such depravity impossible. But understanding its wrongness is LEARNED. It is TAUGHT. You aren't born knowing that you don't kill fellow humans for your own gain if you think that's what you have to do to get what you want. IT'S TAUGHT. An individual has to learn, if by osmosis (which is what's happened in the West) how to respect human life and dignity.
We have a "first world" that's free of slaves specifically because of Christian influence, the "do unto others" ethic. It's taken many many generations and blood and borne fruit -- our "first world" where we take that fundamental moral cornerstone for granted.
Had those self-murdering civilizations remained unknown to the West, they would eventually have gone extinct. They would never thrive, the same as Islamic countries never thrive.
Missionaries in the 1800s who went to primitive cultures had to have been either raving lunatic mad, or to have had cojones of some kind of steel. The practices they must have encountered, but could never discuss in polite society!
The Conquistadors were helped by the smaller tribes who were sick of being the slaves of the Aztecs.
Of course, the torture and fires of the Inquisition were soft and fuzzy. Also, the fact that the Tlaxcallans were Cortez’s allies against the Aztecs, since they were tired of being the “bread” of the Aztecs did not prevent Spaniards from mistreating and robbing them over the centuries.