Beaten in 202 BC. J.-C., Carthage asks for peace, which proves very hard for her. In addition to paying a heavy indemnity, she must destroy her fleet and disband her army. The independence of the Numidians, his turbulent neighbors, previously under his tutelage, is proclaimed. She has no right to make war on them without the authorization of Rome; and yet their leader, Massinissa, spends his time, at 88, violating borders to raid territories that are supposed to belong to him.
The Carthaginian empire shrunk to a trickle. Despite all these most unfavorable circumstances, wealth gradually returned to Carthage, helped by the courage and intelligence of its inhabitants and by the cunning of its traders.
One can wonder why Rome decided suddenly, in - 150, to make disappear its rival which hardly bothered it any more. The famous story of the "figs of Cato" has long been featured. Sent on a mission to Africa in - 152 to arbitrate a new conflict between Carthage and the Numidians, Cato is amazed to see the agricultural wealth of the former rival. He brings back extraordinary figs from his trip, which he exhibits in the middle of a session of the Roman senate as proof of the enemy's rebirth and exclaims Delenda est Carthago, "Carthage must be destroyed". Then, without stopping, during the following two years, he will harass his compatriots to put them on a war footing. It was therefore thought quite logical to see the direct causes of the Third Punic War in Rome's jealous desire to seize such rich lands. However, it seems that things are less simple.
During his trip in - 152, the popular or democratic party reigned in Carthage in the person of the sufète Giscon, son of Amilcar. Not only did he rouse the people against Massinissa, but also against Rome, and popular tribunes made a great fuss against the hated guardian of the city.
Moreover, if the military fleet of the Punic city had been destroyed, its merchant fleet was more prosperous than ever; not only did it flood the entire eastern Mediterranean with its merchandise, but it also exported its subversive ideas, and one almost always found its trace in the popular revolts which shook the Mediterranean world at that time. Again, and despite the treaties, all the military arsenals of Carthage were working.
Under these conditions, it would perhaps be wrong to accuse Cato of having overestimated the Punic peril. However, his haunting Delenda est Carthago was opposed in Rome itself, by some of the senators, before finally being accepted. But it is agreed that we will keep the decision secret and that we will first try to put Carthage in the wrong to spare public opinion. The military preparation is nevertheless undertaken with celerity.
In the meantime, the popular party in Carthage sees its generals beaten and its troops decimated by Massinissa; we learn at the same time that Rome mobilizes, and it is consternation; the people, always fickle, condemn to death their leaders of the day before and place at the head of the State the pro-Roman friends of Hanno III the Great; they hasten to send an embassy to Italy to ask forgiveness for having waged war without authorization.