Third Punic War: Carthage Disarmed, Then Destroyed by Scipio Aemilianus

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After Zama, Carthage owed Rome 10,000 silver talents over 50 years and could not wage war even in Africa without Roman permission. For half a century the Numidian king Masinissa seized Carthaginian land while Rome backed him. In 151 BC Carthage paid its last installment, and soon after it raised an army of at least 20,000 under Hasdrubal and fought the Numidians without leave, losing at Oroscopa. In Rome, Cato the Elder, who had seen Carthage booming around 153 BC, insisted that Carthage must be destroyed, while Scipio Nasica argued Rome needed a feared rival to stay united. In 149 BC an army of 40,000 to 50,000 landed at Utica.

Carthage handed over 200,000 sets of armor and 2,000 catapults and watched its warships burn, only to be told to abandon the city and move 16 kilometers inland. It refused, freed slaves willing to fight and forged new weapons day and night behind walls up to 70 feet high. Two years of Roman blundering ended when the 36 or 37 year old Scipio Aemilianus was made consul below the legal age. He blocked the harbor with a mole, met a secretly built fleet sailing from a newly dug channel, and broke in during spring 146 BC for six days of street fighting.

• Our main source, Polybius, was an eyewitness and a close friend of Scipio, which shapes how the siege is told.
• Hasdrubal tortured Roman prisoners to death on the walls in full view of the besieging army.
• About 50,000 survivors were sold into slavery, and 900 Roman deserters burned the Temple of Eshmun around themselves.
• Hasdrubal begged Scipio for his life while his wife cursed him and walked into the flames with their children.
• The story that Rome salted the earth is a later invention; the land became the province of Africa, and the Punic language survived into the 7th century AD.