Battle of Carthage
- Date:
- 146 BCE
- Participants:
- Carthage
- ancient Rome
The Battle of Carthage in 146 bce ended generations of war between the Phoenician-founded city and Rome, both vying for control of the Mediterranean Sea. It ended with the destruction of the city and can be viewed an act of Roman aggression prompted as much by motives of revenge for earlier wars as by greed for the rich farming lands around the city. The Carthaginian defeat was total and absolute, instilling fear and horror into Rome’s enemies and allies and opening the path for the formation of the Roman Empire.
Under the treaty ending the Second Punic War, signed after the Battle of Zama, Carthage had to seek Roman permission before waging war. That treaty expired in 151 bce, so when Rome’s ally Numidia annexed land from Carthage, much of whose empire had already been stripped away, a Carthaginian army marched to defend it. Spurred on by Cato the Elder, who customarily ended his senatorial speeches with the exhortation Delenda est Carthago (Carthage must be destroyed), Rome declared this event to be an act of war and laid siege to Carthage.
The Roman army, led by Manius Manlius, made little impact as the Carthaginians raised an army, converted the city into an arms factory, and held out. About 140,000 of Carthage’s women and children were evacuated by sea to seek refuge in friendly states. In 147 bce, the Roman senate sent a new commander, Scipio Aemilianus, with orders to take the city by storm. He defeated the Carthaginian field army and built a mole to block the city’s harbor. The end of the three-year siege came in the spring of 146 bce after the besiegers made a breach in the city walls. The Roman soldiers poured in, only to find that each street had been barricaded and every house fortified. The Romans had to clear the houses one by one.
By the eighth day, the last pockets of Carthaginian resistance collapsed, with so many dead in the streets that the Romans had to stop to clear them before continuing their advance to the Byrsa, or citadel. Last to fall was the Temple of Eshmun, where the wife of the Carthaginian commander, Hasdrubal, sacrificed her sons in front of the Romans, then killed herself. Hasdrubal himself, having negotiated surrender with Scipio, was taken to Rome and paraded in Scipio’s triumph, but was then allowed to retire in the countryside.
Scipio ordered the city to be burned, then demolished. Legend holds that Scipio also demanded that the surrounding fields be plowed up and sown with salt, but there is no contemporary attestation to this, and most historians believe that it was a later invention. In fact, Julius Caesar settled Roman military veterans there a century later, founding a colony that would become one of the largest and most important cities in the Roman Empire.
Losses: Carthaginian, 62,000 dead and 50,000 enslaved of an estimated 112,000 present in the city; Roman, 17,000 of 40,000.