Third Punic War

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Third Punic War ended on the 5th of February 1985, when the mayors of Rome and modern Carthage signed a symbolic peace treaty, 2,131 years after the fighting stopped. That single detail tells you something strange and lasting about what happened between 149 and 146 BC. This was not merely a war; it was the deliberate erasure of a civilization. How did Rome turn a city of tens of thousands into rubble in six days? Why did a man who had already been condemned to death lead the final defence? And what happened to the 50,000 survivors who were marched out in chains? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. The Trap of the Peace

  ›

  When the Second Punic War ended in 201 BC, Carthage paid a steep price. The Roman general Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama, 160 kilometres south-west of Carthage, and imposed terms that stripped Carthage of its overseas territories and much of its African land. An indemnity of 10,000 silver talents was to be paid over 50 years. Crucially, Carthage was forbidden from waging war anywhere outside Africa, and even inside Africa it could only fight with Rome's express permission. Many senior Carthaginians wanted to reject these terms outright. Hannibal, the very general who had nearly broken Rome, spoke strongly in favour of acceptance, and the treaty was ratified in spring 201 BC.

  The clause about Rome's permission became the pivot on which the Third Punic War would later turn. King Masinissa of Numidia, Rome's most powerful ally in North Africa, understood the clause perfectly. Over the following half-century he repeatedly raided and seized Carthaginian land, knowing Carthage could not legally fight back. Whenever Carthage appealed to Rome for help or permission to defend itself, Rome sided with Masinissa and refused. By 151 BC Carthage had paid off its entire indemnity and was economically prosperous, yet militarily helpless. In that same year, pushed past its limit, Carthage raised a large army under a general named Hasdrubal and struck back at the Numidians. The campaign ended in disaster at the Battle of Oroscopa. The army surrendered, many Carthaginians were massacred by the Numidians, and Hasdrubal fled home to Carthage, where his own government condemned him to death in an attempt to appease Rome.

• 3. The Senator and the Slogan

  ›

  Cato, one of Rome's most senior senators, is said to have ended every speech he gave, regardless of the subject, with the same declaration: Carthago delenda est, meaning "Carthage must be destroyed." This habit has been attached to his name since at least the 18th century AD, and it captures the mood of a powerful faction within the Roman Senate that had long wanted a final reckoning with Carthage.

  Not everyone in Rome agreed. Scipio Nasica, who likely visited Carthage on the same embassy as Cato around 153 BC, made the opposite argument: a strong rival kept the Roman common people disciplined and prevented social division. Both men saw the same prospering city; they drew opposite conclusions. Modern scholars have proposed several reasons why Rome ultimately chose war: fear of Carthaginian commercial competition, a desire to forestall instability after the death of Masinissa, who was 89 years old at the time, factionalism that used Carthage as a political threat regardless of its real strength, appetite for plunder and military glory, and hostility toward Carthage's form of government. No consensus has been reached among historians about which motive was decisive.

  The immediate trigger was Carthage's unlawful military strike against Masinissa's Numidians. Rome treated this as the pretext it needed. The large North African port city of Utica, roughly 55 kilometres north of Carthage, went over to Rome in 149 BC, giving the Senate a ready harbour for an invasion fleet. The Senate and the People's Assembly of Rome declared war.

• 4. Disarmament and Betrayal

  ›

  A large Roman army landed at Utica in 149 BC under both consuls for the year: Manius Manilius, who commanded the land forces, and Lucius Marcius Censorinus, who led the fleet. Carthage sent an embassy and tried to negotiate. The consuls demanded the surrender of all weapons. Reluctantly, Carthage complied. Surviving records show the scale of what was handed over: 200,000 sets of armour and 2,000 catapults, conveyed in large convoys to Utica. Carthage's warships sailed to Utica and were burned in the harbour.

  Once the city was stripped bare, Censorinus delivered a second demand that the Carthaginians had never anticipated. They were to abandon their city entirely and relocate to a site at least 16 kilometres from the sea. Carthage would then be destroyed. The Carthaginians had surrendered their weapons trusting that Rome would protect them; instead they found themselves defenceless and facing the demolition of their home. Negotiations ended. The city would fight.

  Raising a defence from scratch, Carthage freed all enslaved people willing to bear arms and conscripted its citizens into a garrison force. Hasdrubal, the condemned general, was released from his cell and placed in charge of a field army at least 20,000 strong, based at Nepheris, 25 kilometres south of Carthage. Behind the city's walls, which stretched more than 35 kilometres in circumference, a brick-built inner wall stood 9 metres wide and between 15 and 20 metres tall, with a 20-metre ditch in front of it. That wall also contained a barracks capable of holding more than 24,000 soldiers.

• 5. Scipio's Rise

  ›

  Through 149 BC and into 148 BC, the Roman siege went badly. The camp commanded by Censorinus was so pestilential by early summer that it had to be moved. Carthaginian fireships damaged the Roman fleet. A Roman assault on Hasdrubal's fortified camp at Nepheris was launched against the advice of a middle-ranking tribune named Scipio Aemilianus; it advanced into an untenable position, and when the Romans tried to pull back, the Carthaginians counterattacked and inflicted heavy casualties. Scipio led 300 cavalrymen in a series of controlled charges that held the Carthaginians long enough for most of the Roman infantry to retreat. That same night, he led his cavalry back out to rescue a group of Romans who had been cut off.

  Scipio Aemilianus was the adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus, the general who had beaten Hannibal. A senatorial committee sent from Rome to evaluate the campaign noted his performance prominently in their report. By 148 BC the new consul sent to Africa, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, fared no better than his predecessors. A Carthaginian sortie destroyed Roman siege engines at Hippo. Carthage even allied itself with Andriscus, a pretender to the Macedonian throne who had defeated a Roman army and sparked what became known as the Fourth Macedonian War.

  In the spring of 147 BC, Scipio stood for election as aedile, a routine step for a man of his position. He was 36 or 37 years old, too young by law to seek the consulship. The minimum age under the Lex Villia was 41. Public pressure to appoint him as African commander was so intense that the Senate suspended the age requirement for all posts that year. Scipio was elected consul and given sole command in Africa, an unusual arrangement in a system designed to give power to two men simultaneously.

• 6. The Siege Tightened

  ›

  Scipio began his command by dismissing soldiers he considered undisciplined or poorly motivated. He then led a night attack with 4,000 men that broke into the city itself. Panic spread in the darkness and the Carthaginian defenders fled after an initial resistance. Recognising that daylight would allow the Carthaginians to reorganise and overwhelm his exposed force, Scipio withdrew.

  Hasdrubal's response to the near-breach was extreme. He had Roman prisoners tortured to death on the walls, in full view of the besieging army. The historian Polybius, who was present in the Roman camp as the companion of Scipio Aemilianus, recorded these events, though his account is coloured by his personal loyalty to Scipio. Members of the Carthaginian city council who objected to Hasdrubal's actions were put to death as well. Negotiation or surrender was no longer possible.

  Scipio pressed the siege from the harbour side. The Carthaginians had secretly rebuilt part of their fleet and cut a new channel from their harbour to the sea. When the fleet sailed out, the Romans were caught off guard. In the Battle of the Port of Carthage, the Carthaginians held their own during the fighting, but when they withdrew at day's end, many ships became trapped against the city's sea wall and were sunk or captured. The Romans then spent several months constructing a brick structure in the harbour area as tall as the city wall itself, allowing up to 4,000 Roman soldiers to fire down onto the Carthaginian ramparts at close range.

  Scipio turned next to Nepheris, where the Carthaginian field army under a Greek commander named Diogenes had set up fortified winter quarters. Late in 147 BC Scipio attacked from multiple directions simultaneously and overran the camp. Rome's Numidian cavalry pursued the survivors and few escaped. The town of Nepheris surrendered three weeks later, and most of the fortified positions still loyal to Carthage in the surrounding region opened their gates.

• 7. Six Days

  ›

  In the spring of 146 BC Scipio launched the final assault from the harbour area, breaching the walls. What followed was not a battle but a systematic destruction carried out over six days. Roman soldiers worked through the residential districts block by block, killing everyone they encountered and burning the buildings behind them as they advanced.

  On the last day Scipio agreed to accept prisoners, with one exception: the 900 Roman deserters who had been fighting for Carthage. They retreated to the Temple of Eshmoun and set fire to it with themselves inside when they understood no quarter would be given. At that moment Hasdrubal came forward and surrendered to Scipio, having been promised his life and freedom, reputedly the right to retire to an estate in Italy. His wife, watching from the city walls, cursed him for surrendering, blessed Scipio, and then walked into the burning temple with her children. 50,000 Carthaginian prisoners were taken on that last day and sold into slavery.

  The story that Roman forces later sowed the ruins with salt is almost certainly a 19th-century invention; it does not appear in ancient sources. What is attested is a ten-man Senate commission that arrived to oversee further demolitions. A curse was formally placed on anyone who might attempt to resettle the site. Religious objects and cult statues that Carthage had taken from Sicilian cities and temples over the centuries were returned with formal ceremony. The site itself was classified as ager publicus, public land, forbidden to private settlement.

• 8. What Followed

  ›

  Utica, which had handed its harbour to Rome at the start of the war, became the capital of Rome's new province of Africa. The province quickly grew into a major supplier of grain and food for the Roman world. Scipio took the same honorary surname his adoptive grandfather had carried, Africanus, and celebrated a triumph in Rome. Hasdrubal's actual fate after his surrender is not recorded.

  The Punic cities that had supported Carthage to the end were confiscated as public land or, as in the case of Bizerte, destroyed outright. Cities that had not resisted Roman authority were permitted to keep elements of their traditional government and culture. Rome did not interfere in local private life, and the result was a lasting cultural survival. The Punic language continued to be spoken in North Africa until the 7th century AD. Scholars refer to the culture that persisted after the war as Neo-Punic civilization.

  Attempts to rebuild on the site of Carthage became politically charged. In 123 BC the reformist politician Gaius Gracchus pushed through legislation to establish a new colony at the site, to be called Junonia; conservative opponents spread rumours that boundary markers had been dug up by wolves, an ill omen, and the plan collapsed. In 111 BC fresh legislation reaffirmed the ban on resettlement. Julius Caesar planned a Roman city there but little was built. It was Augustus who in 29 BC revived the project and saw it through. By the time of the Empire, Roman Carthage had become one of the leading cities of Roman Africa, nearly a century after the original was reduced to ash.