The Siege of Carthage: The Final Destruction
The Siege of Carthage in 149–146 BCE was the final battle of the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage, and it was one of the most decisive sieges in the history of the ancient world. The Romans, led by the conservative senator Cato the Elder and his successors, besieged the city of Carthage for three years, killed or enslaved the entire population, burned the city to the ground, and razed the buildings. The destruction of Carthage made Rome the undisputed master of the Mediterranean, ended the long Phoenician presence in the western Mediterranean, and made the Roman province of Africa one of the most important provinces of the empire. The destruction of Carthage has been the subject of literature, history, and political thought for over two thousand years, and it has become a powerful symbol of the ruthlessness of imperial Rome.
This page is a complete guide to the Siege of Carthage. It explains the strategic background, the siege itself, and the legacy. It links back to the Punic Wars cluster, Hannibal Barca, and the Battle of Cannae.
The Strategic Background
The Third Punic War was provoked by the Romans’ determination to destroy Carthage once and for all. The Second Punic War had ended in 201 BCE with the defeat of Hannibal Barca at the Battle of Zama, but the Romans had remained suspicious of Carthage. The conservative senator Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder was famous for ending every speech with the words Carthago delenda est — “Carthage must be destroyed.” The Romans found a pretext for war in 150 BCE, when Carthage, which had been forbidden to wage war without Roman permission, defended itself against the Numidian king Masinissa, a Roman ally. The Romans declared war.
The war was commanded by the consuls of 149 BCE, who sailed to North Africa with a large Roman army. The siege of Carthage was not the first Roman action of the war, but it quickly became the central one. The Carthaginians, who had hoped to negotiate a settlement, were forced to defend their city against the Roman army.
The First Phase: The Roman Defeat (149–148 BCE)
The Romans made several disastrous mistakes in the first two years of the siege. The consuls of 149 BCE, Manius Manilius and L. Marcius Censorinus, were both incompetent commanders. They did not blockade the harbor of Carthage effectively, and they allowed the Carthaginian ships to break out and to resupply the city. The Roman army was also defeated in a series of engagements outside the walls, and the Roman siegeworks were driven back by Carthaginian sallies.
The consuls were replaced in 148 BCE by the more competent P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus (the conqueror of Hannibal). Scipio was elected consul despite being too young to hold the office, and he was given command of the war. Scipio quickly realized that the Romans would have to take Carthage by direct assault, and he began a systematic program of building siegeworks, training the army, and tightening the blockade.
The Second Phase: The Blockade (148–147 BCE)
Scipio spent the first year of his command tightening the Roman blockade. He built a stone wall across the isthmus connecting the peninsula of Carthage to the mainland, blocking the city’s land access. He built a fleet of warships and a series of stone breakwaters to block the harbor. He also trained his army in the kind of street-fighting that would be needed to take the city.
The Carthaginians, meanwhile, prepared for the worst. The population of the city swelled as refugees from the surrounding countryside poured in. The Carthaginian government, led by the general Hasdrubal, prepared a last defense. The city was well-stocked with food and water, and the Carthaginians built new ships in the inner harbor.
The Third Phase: The Final Assault (Spring 146 BCE)
In the spring of 146 BCE, Scipio launched the final assault. The Romans attacked the walls of Carthage from the land side, while the Roman fleet attacked from the sea. The attack was met with fierce resistance, and the Romans suffered heavy losses. According to the Roman historian Appian, the Romans took the walls of Carthage only after a six-day battle, and the fighting in the streets of the city was even more fierce.
The Roman army fought its way through the city street by street, building fortified camps and clearing the houses with axes and torches. The Roman historian Appian describes the defenders throwing stones from the roofs, the Romans burning the houses, and the population fleeing from the fire. After seven days of street-fighting, the Romans reached the citadel of Byrsa, the highest point of the city, and the surviving Carthaginians, perhaps 50,000 in number, surrendered.
The Roman soldiers, who had suffered heavy losses in the siege, were given the city to plunder. According to the Roman sources, the soldiers complained that they had to run risks in the siege and then let the generals carry off the treasures; the Senate, accordingly, allowed the soldiers to keep the plunder, and they found an enormous amount of gold, silver, and other valuables.
The fate of the surviving population is one of the most controversial episodes in Roman history. According to the Roman sources, the survivors — perhaps 50,000 in all — were sold into slavery. The women and children were sent to the slave markets, and the men were forced to march in chains to the ports. The Roman general Scipio is said to have wept as he watched the city burn, and to have quoted the Iliad: “There will come a day when sacred Troy shall perish, and Priam and his people shall be slain.”
The Destruction of the City
After the fall of the city, the Romans systematically destroyed what was left. The walls were torn down, the houses were burned, and the surviving buildings were razed to the ground. The Romans cursed the site, and they attempted to make the ground salt and barren by spreading salt over it. The story that the Romans salted the ground is probably not literally true, but the Romans did leave the site desolate, and the surviving population was dispersed.
The Roman Senate later sent a commission to draw up the borders of the new Roman province of Africa. The city of Carthage was officially declared to be interdicta — forbidden ground, and no one was allowed to live there. Scipio Aemilianus, the conqueror of Carthage, was awarded a triumph at Rome, and he received the title “Africanus” in honor of his victory.
The Aftermath
The destruction of Carthage made Rome the undisputed master of the Mediterranean. The Roman province of Africa, with its capital at Utica (the second city of the former Carthaginian state), became one of the richest agricultural regions of the empire. Carthage itself was eventually rebuilt by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony, and it became the second city of the western Roman Empire, with a population of perhaps 500,000 in the second century CE.
The destruction of Carthage was the end of the long Phoenician presence in the western Mediterranean. The Phoenicians had been the great seafarers, traders, and colonists of the ancient Mediterranean since the Bronze Age. Their greatest colony, Carthage, had fought Rome to a standstill for over a century, but in the end it was destroyed. The legacy of the Phoenicians was carried on in part by the Romans, who had been profoundly influenced by Phoenician alphabet, religion, and culture.
The Legacy of the Siege
The Siege of Carthage has been the subject of intense historical and political study ever since. The Roman senator Cato the Elder, who had famously called for the destruction of Carthage, became the symbol of the ruthlessly determined statesman. The general Scipio Aemilianus, who wept as he watched the city burn, became the symbol of the cultured conqueror, who understood the human cost of victory. The destruction of Carthage became a warning against the dangers of war and empire, and a powerful symbol of the ruthlessness of Roman imperialism.
The destruction of Carthage has also been the subject of religious and political thought. The Christian writer Tertullian, in the second century CE, claimed that “Carthage was destroyed because it was wicked.” The Roman destruction of the city, and the subsequent destruction of the great classical cities, became a model for the Christian conception of the apocalypse. The destruction of Carthage has been the subject of paintings, poems, plays, and films, and it remains one of the most powerful and most controversial events of the ancient world.