Carthaginians were proud of their purple production, an activity which consisted in dying indelibly wool or flax clothes.
Punics used to wear so rich clothes that we can't imagine it.
The Sybarite Alcistene's purple tunic (from his hands the best and most wonderful clothes were created) was a cloth variously painted and rich of precious stones.
The creator drew beautiful animals that seemed alive.
In the above part there was represented the town of Susa and below there was Persia.
The peplum was exposed inside the temple of June or Hera Lacinia, in which every year for her ceremony many people came.
The way Carthaginians worked purple was the following: molluscs of the kind "trunculus" and "murx brandaris" were collected in order to extract the flesh from the mantle of the shell (which contains a glandulous oblong - shaped body).
After that the product was pressed, mixed to salt or simply sea water and dried under the rays of the sun for three days, in order to separate the juice from the body.
Then the juice was boiled in water for ten days in lead vases skimming the liquid until it was the half of the initial juice.
At the end the linen or wool cloths were immersed and exposed to the rays of the sun.
Just in that moment the colours developped and as they were created by the light of the sun, they were indelible.
the cost of dying purple was very high: we can understand it if only we think that more than 12000 shells were necessary in order to extract few gramms of colour.
The high cost, the beauty of the colour and the magic properties of the colour red (who wore red sclothes was invested by supernatural powers) explain why the priests, the kings and all the dignitaries found in those purple clothes a "status symbol" of their power.