Hasdrubal the Boetharch

Hasdrubal the Boetharch commanded Carthage in the last three years of its existence and surrendered while the city was still burning. He is a different man from Hasdrubal Barca, Hannibal's brother, who had died at the Metaurus sixty years earlier, and the two are easily confused. His title means something like commander of the field army, and he first appears leading Carthaginian forces against Massinissa of Numidia in the war of 150 BC that gave Rome its pretext: Carthage had taken up arms without Roman permission, in breach of the treaty of 201. He was condemned to death by his own government in the panic that followed, and recalled when the Romans landed anyway and demanded that the city be abandoned and rebuilt ten miles inland. He took charge of the defence in 147 with the population manufacturing weapons in the temples and, by the tradition, women cutting their hair for catapult cord. Polybius, who was present with Scipio Aemilianus, describes him as vain, cruel to Roman prisoners displayed on the walls, and well fed while the city starved - though Polybius was a partisan of the man besieging him. The final assault came in the spring of 146 and the fighting went street by street and roof by roof for six days. Hasdrubal surrendered to Scipio at the end and was spared. His wife, watching from the roof of the temple of Eshmoun, denounced him, killed her children and threw herself into the fire. He lived out his life in Italy as a Roman prisoner.

• Lived: 200 BCE – 146 BCE
• Nationality: Carthaginian
• Roles: military_leader