The Fall of Carthage

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Scipio concentrated the army outside Carthage, observed by Hasdrubal with 6,000 foot and 1,000 horse as well as some of the defenders of the city camped just over half a mile away (5 stades). The discipline of the Roman army in Africa had never been especially high, but months of reverses had made things worse. Avoiding direct confrontation, the soldiers had most often served on plundering expeditions. In the same way that the legionaries involved in the constant raiding in southern Italy during the Second Punic War had degenerated into little more than bandits, service of this kind had further lowered the efficiency of the legions. Scipio made a speech declaring his intention to restore tight discipline and then expelled from the camp many of the volunteers and camp followers who had come not to fight but to loot. There was not time to train the soldiers properly. Instead he decided to mount an attack on the Megara, one of the largest of the suburbs surrounding the old citadel (or Byrsa). Two Roman assaulting parties moved forward during the night against two widely separated sections of wall. Observed by the enemy during the last stage of the approach, the attackers were repulsed by a hail of missiles, despite some initial confusion amongst the defenders. Appian tells us that the Romans then found an deserted tower adjacent to the wall, climbed it and, after throwing planks across to bridge the gap, fought their way onto the rampart. In this way the soldiers gained control of a gate and admitted Scipio with 4,000 men. The defenders panicked and fled back to the Byrsa as did the troops in the camp outside the walls, but the Romans moved forward slowly and with great care, uncertain in the dark of the routes through the Megara, much of which was given over to gardens and orchards rather than housing. Eventually Scipio decided that he was in no position to hold the ground permanently and so withdrew back to his own camp. The breakthrough had so frightened the defenders that Hasdrubal ordered Roman prisoners to be led onto the walls and then, in full view of the besiegers, tortured to death, believing that the gesture would demonstrate to the Carthaginians that there was now no hope of surrender. When members of the Council of 104, whose relations with the general had long been strained, protested, Hasdrubal had them arrested and executed.13

  The Romans now decided on establishing a much tighter blockade around the city. Scipio ordered the abandoned enemy camp to be burned then moved his own position further forward onto the isthmus. There the Romans spent twenty days constructing a series of fortifications despite the best efforts of the enemy to slow the progress. An enormous rectangle of ditches was dug, backed by a rampart 12 feet high (c. 4 m) with towers at intervals, including one in the middle of the wall facing the city which was built especially high to provide an observation post. The whole complex dominated the isthmus and made access to the city from the landward side impossible. The overland route into the city had been cut off, but supplies of food were still able to get through by sea. It was very difficult for ancient oared warships to impose a tight blockade, especially in the conditions off the coast of Carthage, and a few ships kept getting through. Hasdrubal is supposed to have kept nearly all of these supplies for the 30,000 active defenders of the city, and he and his officers lived in riotous luxury whilst the civilian population began to starve. In an effort to deny the enemy this last source of supply, Scipio ordered the construction of a mole running across the channel approaching the narrow entrance to Carthage's great harbours.14

  Ancient sieges tended to consist of move and counter-move as the attacker and defender employed their engineering skill and massive labour to gain an advantage or negate a project begun by the other side. The whole population of Carthage now threw itself into a concerted effort to keep the sea route open. Once they realized that the Roman plan was likely to succeed and that the mole was not being swept away by the sea, the Carthaginians decided to cut a new channel connecting the military harbour with the sea. The work was done at night and great secrecy maintained, with great numbers of women and children coming forward to add to the labour force. At the same time a fleet of fifty triremes supported by lighter ships was built from scratch. The Romans knew nothing of either project until at dawn one morning the new channel was cut through to the sea and the last fleet of the Carthaginian Empire sailed out.

  Appian expresses surprise that the Punic ships did not immediately fall upon the Roman fleet, which, he points out, had been neglected in recent months as most of the crews were drawn off to add to the labourers working on the siegeworks. However, it is probable that the next three days were spent training the Punic crews up to at least a basic level of efficiency for it had been many years since Carthage had possessed great numbers of skilled oarsmen. When the two fleets did finally give battle, the result was a very close engagement fought close to the shore. The smaller Punic ships proved fast and manoeuvrable, stealing in to break the oars or rudders of the larger Roman warships and then escaping. No decisive result had been achieved by the end of the day, when the Carthaginians began to withdraw, the triremes covering the lighter ships. Perhaps the new channel had not been properly finished in the haste of its construction, or maybe some of the crews and captains panicked, but some of the small ships collided with each other and soon created a solid obstacle, completely blocking the route back into the harbour. Unable to retreat by that route, the Punic triremes pulled back and moored against a stretch of quayside directly under the city walls. The area seems to have been formerly used for unloading merchant vessels which could not be accommodated in the great harbour. The galleys drew up with their bow rams facing outwards. Additional protection was provided by a rampart which had been built on the quay earlier in the siege in case the Romans had tried to land at the spot. Enthusiastically the Roman ships rushed into the attack, but suffered as much as if not more than the enemy, since after each ram the galleys were vulnerable as they carefully rowed backwards to withdraw. It was only when five allied ships from the city of Sidatae (Side) in Asia Minor dropped their stern anchors before charging forward to ram and then warped themselves back that the Roman started to gain an advantage. Copying the tactic of these experienced sailors, the larger Roman ships inflicted heavy damage. Only as darkness fell were the few surviving Punic ships able to make their way back into the harbour, the blockage in the new entrance having presumably been cleared.15

  Carthage was now cut off from the outside world and any source of supply. In time, the city would starve and be forced to capitulate, but Scipio was determined not to wait for this and continued to press his assault as closely as possible. From the newly constructed mole the Romans attacked the rampart defending the stretch of quay recently used by the Punic ships. Breaches were made with rams and the wall bombarded by artillery to prevent its repair. At night some Carthaginians swam naked across the harbour, carrying with them dry torches and the means to light them. In a furious attack these extremely brave men managed to set fire to many of the Roman siege engines, despite suffering very heavy casualties. The Roman soldiers displayed their old nervousness and ill-discipline and panicked at the noise and confusion. Scipio rode with his cavalry bodyguard outside the camp and galloped about trying to stop the rout. Where the fleeing soldiers refused to stop, the general and his men cut them down, a rare but not unknown gesture by a Roman commander.16

  Free from the barrage of missiles, the Carthaginians were able to continue repairing the damaged wall in daylight, filling the breaches and adding wooden towers to provide dominating missile platforms. The Romans returned to the attack, constructing new engines and assault ramps. Several of the new towers were set on fire and the defenders finally forced to abandon the wall. The Romans had gained control of the quay and Scipio gave orders to construct a brick wall facing and of equal height to the main city wall. When completed it was occupied by 4,000 men who were able to hurl javelins and shoot missiles at the defenders on the rampart only a short distance away. Such a massive project took considerable time and was only finished at the beginning of autumn 147. During the following months, whilst his men continued to press the siege of Carthage, Scipio decided to des
troy the Punic field army which was again wintering at Nepheris. In a well co-ordinated and planned attack the Romans stormed the enemy camp, Scipio feeding reserves into the main assault against the breach until the enemy was fully occupied and then attacking with another party on the far side of the camp. Gulussa's men pursued the beaten enemy relentlessly, while the Romans moved on to take the city of Nepheris itself. The last force which might have threatened the Romans' hold on Carthage was gone. Most of the communities in the area bowed to the inevitable and surrendered to Rome.17

  The main assault on the city was renewed in the spring of 146, using the area of the captured quay as its base. Hasdrubal guessed that the attack would come first against the rectangular merchant harbour and set light to the warehouses surrounding it. However, a party led by Caius Laelius, the son of Africanus' friend and an equally loyal companion of Scipio Aemilianus, managed during the night to slip unobserved into the inner, naval harbour and seize it. Punic resistance was, for the moment, rather feeble, due to a combination of the increasingly small rations and the hopelessness of their position. Before the end of the night the Romans had pushed forward into the Agora, or marketplace, adjacent to the civil harbour. The next morning Scipio led in 4,000 men to support Laelius but, in a display confirming the continued ill-discipline of the African army, the legionaries stopped to strip the gold from the lavishly decorated Temple of Apollo. Nothing Scipio or their officers did could persuade the men to return to duty until this had been picked clean. This incident ran directiy against the ideal of Roman discipline in which all booty was gathered and centrally distributed to the army on an equal basis. Fortunately for the Romans, the Carthaginians were unable to take advantage of this delay.

  Three wide streets led up from the captured Agora to the Byrsa, flanked on each side by tall buildings, six storeys high according to Appian. Excavations in this area have revealed such large apartment buildings, many with central courtyards, built on a regular grid pattern of roads in the Hellenistic manner. Even the main roads were unpaved and no more than about 21 feet across (7 m), the side streets averaging only 16 feet (5m). Along these roads, sloping up towards the old citadel at a gradient of around 1 in 7, the Romans attacked, led by the men who had plundered Apollo's Temple, but who had not yet been involved in any serious fighting. A deluge of missiles from roofs and windows stopped the attack almost immediately. Unable to advance up the open streets, the legionaries managed to fight their way into some of the buildings on either side, taking them floor by floor. Then parties of men climbed onto the roofs and, laying down planks across the gaps, crossed to attack the adjacent buildings. As they fought their way from building to building, the quantity of missiles being thrown into the open streets slackened and assaulting parties there were able to move forward again. Like street fighting in any era, this was a vicious business and casualties were high. The Romans fed reserves into the fighting and kept the momentum of the advance going until they had reached the Byrsa. Scipio needed to improve the access for his assault parties and engines to the inner citadel, so he ordered the rows of houses running along the three streets to be burned. As the buildings collapsed, Roman working parties set about levelling the rubble to create solid, wider paths, their commander taking little rest as he constantly urged the men on. There was no time for delicacy and Appian gives a lurid description of how corpses and the injured from the buildings were heaped with the spoil and built into the Roman assault road. Finds of human bones amongst the ruins of this area suggest that his description, which probably goes back to Polybius' eyewitness account, is not exaggerated. The project took six days, by which time the Romans were ready to move against the walls of the Byrsa.is

  On the next day a delegation carrying olive branches, the Hellenistic equivalent of a flag of truce, appeared from the citadel offering to surrender if the Roman general promised to spare their lives. The last defenders, packed into the small area of the Byrsa, with little food or water, were clearly aware of the futility of future resistance and so made none of the usual requests to be permitted to carry with them a number of garments or some of their possessions. Fifty thousand men, women and children are supposed to have marched out into captivity and a life of slavery. Only the Roman and Italian deserters, 900 in number, had been refused pardon and remained with Hasdrubal and his family. This last group had barricaded themselves into the high and inaccessible Temple of Aesculapius, but despaired of further resistance. Hasdrubal, portrayed as a poltroon by Polybius, publicly announced that he would never give in and intended to perish with his city, before abandoning his family and soldiers and surrendering. The deserters committed suicide, setting the Temple on fire and perishing in the flames. Hasdrubal's wife is said to have dressed in all the finery still left to her and appeared in plain view hurling abuse at her faithless husband. She then killed her children, throwing their bodies into the fire, and then herself stepped into the flames and died. The story may be no more than a dramatic literary invention and we can never know whether or not it actually occurred, but such a ghastly scene is a fitting end to the last day of the Carthaginian Empire.19

  The siege was over and Scipio allowed his men several days to plunder freely, only the gold, silver and votive offerings in the temples being kept aside. Some of this was distributed to the army in the usual fashion, although the men who had plundered Apollo's Temple without orders were excluded from the division. Messengers were sent to Sicily, announcing that spoils taken from them in the past and dedicated in Carthage's temples could now be reclaimed. Unclaimed votive offerings were then auctioned off and captured weaponry and ships burned. When the news of the victory, carried in a ship containing a sample of the plunder, reached Rome it produced a spontaneous night of public rejoicing, followed by more organized celebrations and sacrifices the next day.20

  Carthage was destroyed, fulfilling Cato's ardent wish and the Roman demand which had finally forced the unwilling Carthaginians to fight in 149. Soon a senatorial commission of ten would arrive to supervise Scipio's systematic destruction of the city. Large areas had been destroyed by fire, leaving a layer of burnt material still covering much of the site today.

  Remaining buildings were demolished, although the destruction was not as total as has sometimes been assumed. Archaeologists have discovered walls still standing several yards high underneath the later Roman city. The oft repeated story of the ground being ploughed up and the earth sown with salt to prevent future cultivation is a much later invention. Yet even though the ruins of the city remained, the existence of Carthage the living state and political entity had ceased for ever. The Roman city which would one day be built on the same site shared little or nothing apart from its name and location with its Punic predecessor. As Scipio Aemilianus gazed upon the wreck of the once proud city he is supposed to have wept and quoted from a passage of the Iliad referring to the fall of Priam's Troy. He explained to a puzzled Polybius that he was wondering whether his own home would one day suffer a similar fate.21

  Scipio returned to Rome and celebrated a spectacular triumph, the procession carrying the spoils being described after the pattern of recent decades as more lavish than anything ever seen before. Like his grandfather, Scipio Aemilianus took the name Africanus, but unlike him he proved more successful in the political life at Rome, perhaps as a result of his more conventional career. His circle of friends, notably Gaius Laelius, were later considered to represent the best of the Roman aristocracy, combining a traditional sense of duty with awareness of Greek culture, so that Cicero would later frame his discussion of the Roman Republic as an invented debate between these men. In 134 Scipio was again elected to the consulship amidst widespread popular enthusiasm and sent to Spain where he finally ended the Celtiberian War by capturing Numantia in the following year. So low had the confidence of the Roman soldiers in Spain dropped after repeated defeats that Scipio refused to fight a battle against the massively outnumbered Numantines and instead blockaded and starved them into submission. In 12
9 Scipio died, in slightly mysterious circumstances with rumours of murder circulating at the time and later, never having experienced the disappointment of his grandsire.22

  It is as pointless to compare the generalship of Aemilianus to that of Africanus as it is to attempt to prove that any famous commander was better than another, however entertaining such a pursuit might seem. Both men won the victories that concluded a war and success was the principal criterion which the Romans themselves used to judge their commanders. The campaigns of 149-146 were very different to either of the earlier wars between Rome and Carthage, lacking the formal, pitched battles which had been especially characteristic of the Second Punic War. Although the size of the Roman expeditionary force in 149 cannot be established with any certainty, it is clear that far fewer soldiers were fielded by each side in the Third War. In most respects the armies and the majority of their commanders were far less efficient than their predecessors. The decline in the effectiveness of the legions at this period has already been noted and it must also be remembered that the Carthaginians had few experienced mercenaries or officers to call upon in 149, their only military expedition of recent years having ended in disaster. Africanus had been granted the time to train his armies to the highest peak of efficiency in Spain and in Sicily prior to the African expedition, but Aemilianus never enjoyed this luxury. To the very end of the siege, the Roman troops were prone to sudden panics and bouts of indiscipline such as the uncontrolled looting of Apollo's Temple.23