| Third Punic War | |||||||
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| Part of the Punic Wars | |||||||
The location of the city of Carthage |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Roman Republic | Carthage | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Scipio Aemilianus | Hasdrubal the Boeotarch | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 80,000 men | 120,000+: 90,000 defenders which includes only 30,000 regular forces, 30,000+ civilians |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 17,000 killed | 62,000 killed, 50,000 enslaved |
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The Third Punic War (Latin: Tertium Bellum Punicum) (149 BC to 146 BC) was the third and last of the Punic Wars fought between the former Phoenician colony of Carthage, and the Roman Republic. The Punic Wars were named because of the Roman name for Carthaginians: Punici, or Poenici.[1]
The war was a much smaller engagement than the two previous Punic Wars and primarily consisted of a single main action, the Battle of Carthage, but resulted in the complete destruction of the city of Carthage, the annexation of all remaining Carthaginian territory by Rome, and the death or enslavement of the entire Carthaginian population. The Third Punic War ended Carthage's independent existence.
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In the years between the Second and Third Punic War, Rome was engaged in the conquest of the Hellenistic empires to the east (see Macedonian Wars, Illyrian Wars, and the Roman-Syrian War) and ruthlessly suppressing the Hispanian peoples in the west, although they had been essential to the Roman success in the Second Punic War. Carthage, stripped of allies and territory (Sicily, Sardinia, Hispania), was suffering under a huge indemnity of 200 silver talents to be paid every year for 50 years.
According to Appian the senator Cato the Elder usually finished his speeches on any subject in the Senate with the phrase ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, which means "Furthermore, it is my opinion that Carthage must be destroyed", a position earlier cited by Cicero in his dialogue De Senectute.[2] He was opposed by the senator Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum, who favoured a different course, one that would not destroy Carthage, and who usually convinced the Senate.
The peace treaty at the end of the Second Punic War required that all border disputes involving Carthage be arbitrated by the Roman Senate and required Carthage to get explicit Roman approval before going to war. As a result, in the fifty intervening years between the Second and Third Punic War, Carthage had to take all border disputes with Rome's ally Numidia to the Roman Senate, where they were decided almost exclusively in Numidian favor.
In 151 BC, the Carthaginian debt to Rome was fully repaid, meaning that, in Punic eyes, the treaty was now expired, though not so according to the Romans, who instead viewed the treaty as a permanent declaration of Carthaginian subordination to Rome akin to the Roman treaties with its Italian allies. Moreover, the retirement of the indemnity removed one of the main incentives the Romans had to keep the peace with Carthage - there were no further payments that might be interrupted.
The Romans had other reasons to conquer Carthage and her remaining territories. By the middle of the 2nd century BC, the population of the city of Rome was about 400,000 and rising. Feeding the growing populace was becoming a major challenge. The farmlands surrounding Carthage represented the most productive, most accessible and perhaps the most easily obtainable agricultural lands not yet under Roman control.
In 151 BC Numidia launched another border raid on Carthaginian soil, besieging a town, and Carthage launched a large military expedition (25,000 soldiers) to repel the Numidian invaders. As a result, Carthage suffered a humiliating military defeat and was charged with another fifty year debt to Numidia. Immediately thereafter, however, Rome showed displeasure with Carthage’s decision to wage war against its neighbour without Roman consent, and told Carthage that in order to avoid a war it had to “satisfy the Roman People.”
In 149 BC, Rome declared war against Carthage. The Carthaginians made a series of attempts to appease Rome, and received a promise that if three hundred children of well-born Carthaginians were sent as hostages to Rome the Carthaginians would keep the rights to their land and self-government. Even after this was done, however, the allied city of Utica defected to Rome, and a Roman army of 80,000 men gathered there.[3] The consuls then demanded that Carthage hand over all weapons and armour. After those had been handed over, Rome additionally demanded that the Carthaginians move at least ten miles inland, while the city itself was to be burned. When the Carthaginians learned of this they abandoned negotiations and the city was immediately besieged, beginning the Third Punic War.
The Carthaginians endured the siege starting c.149 BC to the spring of 146 BC, when Scipio Aemilianus took the city by storm. Though the Punic citizens fought valiantly, they were inevitably gradually pushed back by the overwhelming Roman military force and destroyed.
Many Carthaginians died from starvation during the later part of the siege, while many others died in the final six days of fighting. When the war ended, the remaining 50,000 Carthaginians, a small part of the original pre-war population, were, as was the normal fate in antiquity of inhabitants of sacked cities, sold into slavery by the victors.[4] The city was systematically burned for somewhere between 10 and 17 days; the city walls, its buildings and its harbor were utterly destroyed.
The remaining Carthaginian territories were annexed by Rome and reconstituted to become the Roman province of Africa. A century later, the site of Carthage was rebuilt as a Roman city by Julius Caesar, and would later become one of the main cities of Roman Africa by the time of the Empire.
That Roman forces then sowed the city with salt to ensure that nothing would grow there again is almost certainly a 19th century invention.[5] Contemporary accounts show that the land surrounding Carthage was declared ager publicus and that it was shared between local farmers, and Roman and Italian ones. North Africa soon became a vital source of grain for the Romans. Roman Carthage was the main hub transporting these supplies to the capital. The fact that Rome came to rely on North African grain as quickly as she did after conquering Carthage makes any notion that she might have destroyed Carthaginian farmlands quite doubtful.
Numerous significant Carthaginian cities, such as those in Mauretania, were taken over and rebuilt by the Romans. Examples of these rebuilt cities are Volubilis, Chellah and Mogador. Volubilis, for example, was an important Roman town situated near the westernmost border of Roman conquests. It was built on the site of the previous Carthaginian settlement, but that settlement overlies an earlier neolithic habitation.[6] Utica, the Punic city which changed loyalties at the beginning of the siege, became the capital of the Roman province of Africa.[3]
In January 1985, Ugo Vetere, the mayor of Rome, and Chedly Klibi, the mayor of Carthage, signed a symbolic friendship and collaboration pact, "officially" ending the conflict between their cities.[7]
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