Destruction of Carthage
The Third Punic War (149-146 BCE) ended with the complete destruction of Carthage, fulfilling the relentless demand of Cato the Elder, who reportedly ended every speech regardless of its subject with 'Carthago delenda est' (Carthage must be destroyed). Rome provoked war by demanding that Carthage disarm and relocate its population inland, away from the coast; when Carthage refused, the Senate dispatched an army. After three years of stubborn siege, Scipio Aemilianus breached the walls, and house-by-house fighting raged through the city for six days before the survivors surrendered. Estimates of the dead range from one hundred fifty thousand to several hundred thousand; the fifty thousand survivors were sold into slavery. Roman sources later claimed the site was ploughed and salted — an act now doubted by historians but that has become a lasting metaphor for total destruction. Carthage was refounded as a Roman colony a century later.
- Category: Military
