Rome Destroys Carthage

In 146 BCE, Roman forces under Scipio Aemilianus captured and razed the North African city of Carthage, ending the Third Punic War. The city, once the capital of a great Mediterranean trading empire, was burned and its surviving population enslaved. Its fall removed Rome's last major rival in the western Mediterranean and marked a turning point in Rome's transformation from an Italian power into a imperial one.

The roots of the conflict lay in more than a century of rivalry. Rome and Carthage had fought two earlier wars, the First Punic War (264-241 BCE) over Sicily and the Second (218-201 BCE), in which Hannibal famously crossed the Alps and inflicted devastating defeats on Rome before being beaten at Zama. The peace that followed stripped Carthage of its overseas territory and its fleet, and required it to pay a heavy indemnity and seek Roman permission before going to war. Carthage nonetheless recovered economically, which unsettled many Romans.

The immediate cause of the third war came when Carthage, provoked by raids from the neighboring Numidian king Masinissa, an ally of Rome, responded militarily in about 150 BCE. Rome treated this as a breach of the treaty. The senator Cato the Elder is traditionally said to have ended his speeches by demanding that Carthage be destroyed, though the exact wording is a later tradition. Rome declared war in 149 BCE and demanded that the Carthaginians abandon their city and relocate inland, a condition they refused.

The siege lasted about three years. Carthage's fortifications were formidable, and the city held out until Scipio Aemilianus, adopted grandson of the Scipio who had defeated Hannibal, led a final assault in 146 BCE. Street-by-street fighting reportedly lasted about a week before the city fell. Most of its inhabitants had died in the siege or were sold into slavery, and the buildings were burned.

The popular claim that Romans sowed the fields with salt to make the land barren is probably a later embellishment. Ancient sources do not clearly record it, and modern historians generally regard it as a legend, although the Romans did formally curse the site. Carthage's territory became the Roman province of Africa.

In the same year, Rome also destroyed Corinth in Greece, underscoring its growing willingness to impose control by force. Carthage itself was later refounded as a Roman colony, first under Julius Caesar's plans and then Augustus, and it grew into one of the most important cities in Roman Africa.