The Fifty Days That Erased Carthage
A city of a hundred thousand souls, burned street by street for six days straight — and then simply ceased to exist. This is how Rome finished what Hannibal could not.
When the Second Punic War ended in 201 BC, Rome imposed a peace so punishing it was designed to leave Carthage permanently subordinate. Scipio Africanus stripped the city of its overseas territories, demanded 10,000 silver talents paid over fifty years, took hostages, and forbade Carthage from waging war outside Africa — or even inside it — without Rome's permission. Hannibal himself, the war's greatest general, urged his countrymen to accept these terms rather than continue fighting. They did, in the spring of 201 BC, and Carthage's political subordination to Rome was sealed.
For the next fifty years, Rome's ally King Masinissa of Numidia exploited that treaty ruthlessly. He raided and seized Carthaginian territory again and again, knowing Carthage could not retaliate without Roman consent — consent Rome never granted, since Rome consistently backed its Numidian ally. The humiliations piled up until 149 BC, when Carthage finally sent an army under a general named Hasdrubal to strike back at Masinissa, treaty or no treaty. The gamble collapsed at the Battle of Oroscopa: the Carthaginian force was defeated and surrendered outright.
Rome had what it needed. Anti-Carthaginian factions, including the famously implacable Cato the Elder, seized on this illicit military action as pretext for the punitive war they had long wanted. Later in 149 BC a large Roman army landed at Utica in North Africa. Desperate to appease Rome, Carthage surrendered every weapon in the city. It made no difference — the Romans pressed forward and laid siege to Carthage itself.
The siege dragged on through repeated Roman setbacks in 149 BC, relieved only by the distinguished conduct of a mid-ranking officer named Scipio Aemilianus. A new commander took over in 148 BC and fared no better. By the spring of 147 BC, public support for Scipio Aemilianus was so overwhelming that Rome waived its own age restrictions to make him consul and commander in Africa.
Scipio's command began with two Carthaginian successes, but he tightened the siege methodically, building a massive mole to choke off blockade runners supplying the city. The Carthaginians, who had partially rebuilt their fleet, launched a surprise sortie; the engagement was indecisive, but their withdrawal was badly mismanaged and cost them many ships. The Romans then erected a large brick structure in the harbor that loomed over the city wall itself.
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