After a brutal siege lasting nearly three years, Roman legions under Scipio Aemilianus finally overran and razed Carthage, slaughtering or enslaving its population and salting the earth of its fields, according to later legend. The destruction ended over a century of rivalry between Rome and Carthage and left Rome as the unchallenged power of the Mediterranean.
Carthage had already lost two wars to Rome and been stripped of its empire and navy, but its lingering commercial success stoked Roman anxiety. The Roman senator Cato the Elder reportedly ended every speech, regardless of topic, with the phrase "Carthago delenda est": Carthage must be destroyed. In 149 BC, Rome found its pretext and besieged the city.
Carthaginians resisted with startling ferocity, even melting down statues and jewelry to forge weapons after Rome had confiscated their arms as a condition of peace, only to be betrayed. The final assault came in spring, and Scipio Aemilianus's legions fought street to street for six days against starving but desperate defenders. Of a population once estimated near 500,000, only about 50,000 survived to be sold into slavery.
The city was burned for seventeen days. Whether Roman soldiers literally salted the fields is likely embellishment by later historians, but the symbolic and physical erasure of Carthage was real: the site lay abandoned for a century before Julius Caesar and later Augustus refounded a Roman colony there. The Punic Wars' end marked Rome's transformation from regional power to Mediterranean hegemon.
Key people: Scipio Aemilianus