Third Punic War (149-146 BC): The Destruction of Carthage

The Third Punic War (149–146 BC) was the last conflict between Rome and Carthage, ending with the capture and destruction of the Carthaginian capital in North Africa. After a siege of nearly three years, Roman troops under Scipio Aemilianus stormed the city in the spring of 146 BC, burned it and sold its survivors into slavery. The war ended a rivalry of more than a century and gave Rome its first province in Africa.

Background

Carthage had fought Rome twice before. The First Punic War (264–241 BC) cost it Sicily, and the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), despite Hannibal’s invasion of Italy, ended in defeat at Zama. The peace of 201 BC stripped Carthage of its overseas possessions and its fleet and imposed an indemnity of 10,000 talents to be paid over 50 years.

The treaty also forbade Carthage to wage war without Rome’s permission. This clause left it almost defenceless against its neighbour, King Masinissa of Numidia, a Roman ally who steadily seized Carthaginian territory over the following decades. When Carthage appealed to Rome, Roman commissions generally favoured Masinissa.

Despite these losses, Carthage recovered economically. It finished paying the indemnity in 151 BC and its agriculture and trade flourished. To some Romans, this prosperity looked like a threat.

Causes of the war

The most famous advocate of war was Marcus Porcius Cato, known as Cato the Elder. After visiting Carthage on an embassy in the 150s BC, he became convinced it was still dangerous. Plutarch relates that he showed the Senate fresh figs grown near Carthage, to show how close the enemy was, and that he ended every speech by saying Carthage must be destroyed.

Not everyone agreed. Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum argued that Rome needed a rival to keep its citizens disciplined. Historians still debate whether fear, greed for land, or a wish to remove a potential ally of Rome’s enemies was the deciding motive.

The pretext came in 151–150 BC. Provoked by Masinissa, Carthage raised an army and fought him without Roman permission. The Carthaginian army was defeated and many soldiers were massacred. Rome declared war in 149 BC.

The Roman ultimatum

Carthage tried desperately to avoid war. It surrendered itself to Rome’s discretion, a formal act called deditio, and the important city of Utica had already defected to Rome. A Roman army of around 80,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, according to Appian, landed at Utica under the consuls Manius Manilius and Lucius Marcius Censorinus.

The consuls made a series of demands. Carthage handed over 300 children of leading families as hostages. It then surrendered its weapons; Appian reports 200,000 sets of armour and 2,000 catapults. Finally, the consuls ordered the Carthaginians to abandon their city and resettle at least 80 stadia, about 15 kilometres, from the sea.

This last demand meant the end of Carthage as a trading city. The Carthaginians refused. They freed slaves to fight, worked day and night to make new weapons, and, in a story told by Appian, the women cut their hair to make ropes for catapults.

The siege, 149–146 BC

Carthage was one of the best-defended cities in the Mediterranean. It stood on a peninsula protected by massive walls, with the citadel of the Byrsa hill at its heart and a famous double harbour: an outer rectangular commercial port and an inner circular naval harbour, the Cothon.

The first Roman attacks in 149 BC failed. The consuls were defeated by Carthaginian sorties, and a field army under Hasdrubal, sometimes called the Boeotarch to distinguish him from others of the same name, harassed the Romans from the hinterland. The campaign of 148 BC was no more successful.

One officer stood out: Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, a military tribune. He was the son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, victor at Pydna in 168 BC, and the adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus. His bravery and good judgement made him popular with the soldiers and the Roman people.

In 147 BC the Roman assembly elected Scipio consul, although at about 37 he was below the legal minimum age. He restored discipline in the army and cut Carthage off by land with a fortified line across the isthmus.

He then built a great stone mole to block the harbour entrance from the sea. In response, the Carthaginians secretly dug a new channel from the Cothon to the open sea and launched a newly built fleet. The naval battle that followed was indecisive, and the Romans eventually took a quay outside the city wall. Over the winter of 147–146 BC Scipio destroyed the Carthaginian field army at Nepheris.

The fall of Carthage, 146 BC

In the spring of 146 BC the Romans broke into the area of the harbours. Over six days and nights they fought their way from house to house up the streets leading to the Byrsa. Appian describes buildings several storeys high being taken one by one and then burned, with soldiers clearing the rubble as they advanced.

On the seventh day, about 50,000 men, women and children came down from the Byrsa and surrendered. Some 900 Roman deserters, who could expect no mercy, held out in the temple of Eshmun with Hasdrubal and his family. Hasdrubal then gave himself up to Scipio. According to the ancient accounts, his wife, after reproaching him, threw herself and their children into the burning temple.

Polybius, who was present as Scipio’s friend and adviser, reported that Scipio wept as he watched the city burn. He recited lines from Homer’s Iliad about the fall of Troy and reflected that Rome itself might one day suffer the same fate.

The Senate sent a commission of ten men to settle Africa. Carthage was razed, and the ground on which it had stood was formally cursed so that no one should live there. The survivors were sold into slavery.

Cities that had remained loyal to Carthage were destroyed or punished, while Utica and other allies of Rome were rewarded. The former Carthaginian territory became the Roman province of Africa, governed from Utica. In the same year, a Roman army under Lucius Mummius destroyed Corinth in Greece.

Myths and facts

The best-known myth is that the Romans ploughed the site of Carthage and sowed it with salt so that nothing would grow. No ancient source says this. The historian R. T. Ridley showed in 1986 that the story appears only in modern works, perhaps first in the 19th or early 20th century. The religious cursing of the site is attested; the salt is not.

Another popular belief is that Cato said exactly “Carthago delenda est” (“Carthage must be destroyed”). Ancient writers report the sentiment, but the well-known Latin wording is a later version. Cato himself did not live to see the war’s end; he died in 149 BC.

Reports of the city’s population are also unreliable. Strabo gives a figure of 700,000 inhabitants, which modern historians regard as much too high. Estimates for the city at the time of the siege vary widely.

By the numbers

Legacy

The site lay largely empty for a century. In 122 BC Gaius Gracchus attempted to found a colony called Junonia nearby, but it failed. Julius Caesar planned a new colony, which was established under Augustus. Roman Carthage grew into one of the greatest cities of the western empire and later a major centre of early Christianity.

Archaeology has confirmed the scale of the destruction. Excavations on the Byrsa hill have revealed houses of the 2nd century BC buried under a thick layer of burnt debris, and the outlines of the Punic harbours can still be seen today.

Timeline

• 201 BC: Peace ends the Second Punic War; Carthage loses its fleet and empire.
• 151 BC: Carthage pays the final instalment of its indemnity.
• 150 BC: Carthage fights Masinissa of Numidia without Roman permission and is defeated.
• 149 BC: Rome declares war; Carthage refuses to abandon its city and the siege begins.
• 149 BC: Cato the Elder dies.
• 147 BC: Scipio Aemilianus is elected consul and blockades the harbour.
• Winter 147–146 BC: The Carthaginian field army is destroyed at Nepheris.
• Spring 146 BC: Roman troops storm Carthage; the city is burned and its people enslaved.
• 146 BC: Carthaginian territory becomes the Roman province of Africa.
• 122 BC: Gaius Gracchus attempts a colony near the ruins.

Why it matters

The destruction of Carthage removed Rome’s greatest rival in the western Mediterranean and marked the arrival of Rome as an imperial power in Africa. It has remained a powerful symbol of total war and of the fate of a defeated city, and historians continue to debate whether it was an act of security, ambition or ruthless calculation.