Siege of Carthage

Rome went to war with Carthage again in 149 BC on thin pretexts, after years in which Cato the Elder had closed his speeches by demanding the city's destruction. Carthage had already handed over its weapons when the Romans ordered its people to abandon the city and resettle inland, and it refused, rearming behind its walls. The siege dragged on for nearly three years until Scipio Aemilianus took command, cut off the harbour with a mole and broke in during the spring of 146 BC. Six days of house to house fighting followed up the slopes of the Byrsa, the citadel hill. The survivors were sold into slavery, the city was burned, and its territory became the Roman province of Africa.

The fullest account comes from Appian, writing about three centuries later but drawing on Polybius, who was present at the fall and whose own narrative survives only in fragments. Scipio is reported to have wept over the burning city and quoted Homer on the fall of Troy, a scene historians read variously as real foresight about Rome's own mortality and as a literary set piece. Why Rome chose annihilation is still argued: fear of a recovering rival, Cato's famous figs from Carthage as a symbol of how close it lay, pressure from Numidia, or a Roman political culture that rewarded destructive war. Excavations on the Byrsa, including the international campaign to save Carthage launched under UNESCO in the 1970s, uncovered Punic houses beneath the Roman levels, and the site is now on the World Heritage list.