It was the middle of the year 157 B.C. when a legation of the Senate of Rome went to Carthage to mediate one of its continuing disputes with the neighboring and cumbersome kingdom of Numidia, the main beneficiary of the draconian treaty that Hannibal had to sign to end the Second Punic War. The negotiation was not very successful; the old king Masinissa he always wanted more, but what struck him the most was the leader of those noble emissaries, the old Marco Porcio Cato , was the commercial splendor that once again emanated from the eternal enemy. Half a century had passed since the Punics had been defeated in the wasteland of Zama and the war indemnity had already been paid. Business was going so well that even Carthage could have liquidated such a large payment years ago, but the Senate did not want to accept the early cancellation so that the Sufetes would continue to remember bitterly why they paid it. That sumptuousness had its logic:the Council destined all the fruits of trade not to an eternal and expensive war, as in the past with the Barca, but to build an emporium that rivaled Rome itself in magnificence. Since that official trip, the austere Cato he always concluded all his speeches in and out of the Senate with the immortal phrase:
“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem ese delendam”
(For the rest, I think that Carthage should be destroyed)
Zama
According to Appiano, the old censor thought that allowing Carthage to re-flourish represented a latent danger for Rome, against her great political adversaries, the Scipios , who chose to keep Carthage alive, because her mere presence would prevent Rome from running out of her secular enemy and that lack of encouragement would become counterproductive for Roman virtue and morality.
Predictably, the final disaster came propitiated from demanding Numidia. Masinisa, resentful and eager for more and more territories and privileges at the expense of his ill-fated neighbor, entered Punic territory at the head of his army in 150 BC. That outrage, consented by the Senate, led to the fall of the pro-Roman Council of Carthage and the delivery of military command to a certain Hasdrubal the Beotarch , who went out to meet the aggressors in the Bagradas valley , near the current city of Tunis. The Carthaginian army was defeated and the Council had no choice but to pay a new astronomical compensation to the ladino Masinisa, but the worst was not that, but rather the aggression against Numidia, an ally of Rome, was constituted as casus belli so that the Senate, instigated, of course, by old Cato and the Campanian landowning aristocracy that competed with the Punics in the wine and fig business, would declare a new war on the hated rival. When all this became known in the streets of Carthage, the Sufetes and more conservative members of the Council did not hesitate to send cordial emissaries to Rome showing excuses, sending hostages and notifying the death sentence of Hasdrubal and the rest of the dissident military, the majority in whereabouts unknown since the defeat against the Numidians at Bagradas.
In the spring of 149 BC, an army of eighty thousand men landed in the important city of Utica (today in ruins in the municipality of Zana, 40 km northeast of Tunisia) commanded by the consul Manio Manilio Nepote . Carthage surrendered unconditionally as the banners of the legions appeared on the horizon. Lucius Marcius Censorinus , a colleague from Manilio's consulate and in charge of the fleet, demanded the delivery of all the ships, which were set on fire in front of the city, as well as all war material. Two hundred thousand military equipment and two thousand catapults, scorpions and ballistae were given to the Romans. The problem came with the last clause required by the two consuls to accept the surrender:applying Cato's phrase to the letter, "Carthago delenda est ”(Carthage was to be destroyed). The city was to be moved eighty stadia inland (about ten miles), leaving its original location, and its fabulous port, so that everything would be demolished and never pose a new military or economic threat to Rome.
That last condition was the one that lit the flame of the war, because it was totally unacceptable. The doors were closed and the so-called collaborators of Rome assassinated. Under the guise of negotiating an armistice, emissaries were sent to the Roman camp as the people began to prepare for the impending siege. Provisions were stocked up and new weapons were made day and night, melting down metals of all kinds. Even the women gave up their hair to make the tension ropes for the new ballistae and scorpions. The Council issued a pardon for Hasdrubal, who at the head of the survivors of the battle against Masinissa maintained control of a vast territory in the interior. The Carthaginian commander did not think twice about heeding the Council's plea. Inexplicably, he was not intercepted by either of the two consuls and entered Carthage unimpeded at the head of his troops, immediately taking over the defense of the city. As Asdrúbal was already inside the walls, the first Roman assault took place, the result of which was disastrous for the aggressors. Perhaps to demoralize the enemy troops, perhaps out of sheer viciousness, Hasdrubal ordered all Roman prisoners to be crucified on the city walls. Crows and vultures satiated their maws with Roman meat in view of their own and others...
Carthage was the most impregnable city in the western Mediterranean. At that time located on an isthmus and surrounded by three walled sections, with its double port and its enormous reserves, it was a very complex morsel for an army little trained in the art of poliorcetica. In addition, the Roman fleet was unable to cut off maritime access to the city, so food and supplies continued to arrive through said route. That stagnation caused the Roman camp to look more like a suburb than a fort. Merchants, artisans, magicians, prostitutes and servants of all kinds and conditions swarmed through the shops at will, relaxing forms and discipline to the minimum.
In 147 BC, after two years of total lack of progress and brutal war costs, the Senate grew tired of the passivity and incompetence of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the consul on duty in charge of the Carthaginian problem, appointing as the new consul and only commander of the Roman army in Africa to Publius Cornelius Scipio Emilianus , adoptive grandson of the famous Scipio the African, taking charge of the succession of Masinisa immediately. Although he had neither the age nor the necessary career to hold that position, as it was said, " for the good of Rome that day the laws slept ”, Even counting on the support of Cato, an effervescent detractor of his gens. In the winter of that same year Carthage was completely isolated by land and sea. As soon as he arrived in Africa, Scipio Emiliano expelled the prostitutes, artisans and pedlars from the Roman camp, resuming the iron discipline of the legions, while defeating Hasdrubal in his desperate attempt to break the land blockade. Lastly, he closed the port downright, cutting off Carthage by sea. The die was cast.
In the late spring of 146 B.C. the intramural situation was untenable. The famine due to the lack of supplies was amplified by the infections that the heat was unleashing in the unhealthy streets of Cartago. It was then, with defenders depleted, famished and sickly, that Scipio Emiliano decided the time had come to launch the final assault. Through a crack opened by a battering ram in the harbor wall, and aided by a large assault tower, the Roman troops poured in, scattering throughout the harbor district until they reached the agora. There they had to stop and spend the night, because the embarrassment and the fierce Carthaginian resistance were decimating their advance. For six long days and its six longest nights, a real urban battle took place, taking house by house, street by street, where the legionnaires received all kinds of impacts from the roofs covered by their shields and planks. Spears, boiling oil, tiles, arrows, stones, statues, furniture and everything that could be used as a projectile was thrown at the assailants by opening chrismas and dislocating bones.
The last civil resistance, some fifty thousand people, was concentrated in the upper part of Birsa , the sacred hill where, according to tradition, queen Dido she had outlined the perimeter of her new city with the thin strips of a bull's hide. The temple of Eshmun (Canaanite divinity equivalent to the Roman Aesculapius) was established as the main bastion. Asdrúbal, a born survivor, commanded those last defenders, and it was he who went down to negotiate with Scipio Emiliano an agreed surrender that would at least respect the lives of his brave fellow citizens. The Roman agreed to this pact, but not all accepted slavery as an option. About a thousand Carthaginians committed suicide in the temple. But the display of indomitable pride of the day was carried out by Hasdrubal's own wife, because she, dressed in her best tunic, rebuked her husband and her Roman victor from the pronaos of the temple exclaiming:
You, who have destroyed us by fire, will also be destroyed by fire
Her acid plea concluded, she took her two sons from hers, slaughtered them herself, and threw the three of them together into the sacred fire. According to the historian Polibio, a personal friend of Emiliano and an exceptional witness to these events, the consul was affected by all that and, remorseful, recited a sentence to himself:
A day will come when Ilium, the holy city, will perish, when Priam and his people will perish, skillful in handling the spear ”
Polibio asked his friend why he had recited that verse from Book IV of the Iliad, and Emiliano replied:
I fear that one day someone will quote them watching Rome burn
Nothing more was known about Hasdrubal the Beotarch, that although he lost that duel with Scipio Emiliano, perhaps he was not such a bad strategist, especially considering that he faced stones, sticks, saucepans turned into swords and strings made with female hair at the greatest war machine of antiquity. If he survived the surrender, and under what conditions, it would be part of a good novel... Up to here I can count.
Cato
Although the irritable Cato did not live to see the end of his hated Carthage, his influence in the majority of the Senate conditioned the dark future of that remarkable city that for two centuries had defied Rome. Scipio's advice to preserve it was not heeded and the senatorial legation that went there after the conquest and looting determined that Carthage must be completely destroyed. Scipio's legionnaires took it upon themselves for days to demolish much of the city that was still standing after the vicious assault, breaking up the site for seventeen days with salt (in a ritual and very panegyric gesture, perhaps of dubious veracity) so that nothing germinate and grow again in those cursed lands. It was Caesar, during his campaigns in Africa a century later, who agreed that the Carthage site was a perfect location to house veterans. It would be his heir, Augustus, after the great victory over his rivals Sextus Pompey and Marco Antonio in the civil wars, who would finally carry out the reconstruction of the city planned by his adopted father years ago.