Contra Numidia
Their cue came from the most extraordinary ruler of his time. Masinissa, King of Numidia, lived ninety years (238-148), begot a son at eighty-six,[^48] and by a vigorous regimen kept his health and strength almost to the end. He organized his nomad people into a settled agricultural society and a disciplined state, ruled them ably for sixty years, adorned Cirta, his capital, with lordly architecture, and left as his tomb the great pyramid that still stands near the town of Constantine, in Tunisia. Having won the friendship of Rome, and knowing the political weakness of Carthage, he repeatedly raided and appropriated Carthaginian terrain, took Great Leptis and other cities, and finally controlled all land approaches to the harassed metropolis. Bound by treaty to make no war without Rome’s consent, Carthage sent ambassadors to the Senate to protest against Masinissa’s encroachments. The Senate reminded them that all Phoenicians were interlopers in Africa and had no rights there which any well-armed nation was obliged to respect. When Carthage paid the last of her fifty annual indemnities of 200 talents to Rome, she felt herself released from the treaty signed after Zama. In 151 she declared war against Numidia, and a year later Rome declared war against her.
Roman demands
The latter declaration, and the news that the Roman fleet had already sailed for Africa, reached Carthage at the same time. The ancient city, however rich in population and trade, was quite unprepared for a major war. She had a small army, a smaller navy, no mercenaries, no allies. Rome controlled the sea. Utica therefore declared for Rome, and Masinissa blocked all egress from Carthage to the hinterland.
An embassy hastened to Rome with authority to meet all demands. The Senate promised that if Carthage would turn over to the Roman consuls in Sicily 300 children of the noblest families as hostages, and would obey whatever orders the consuls would give, the freedom and territorial integrity of Carthage would be preserved. Secretly the Senate bade the consuls carry out the instructions that they had already received. The Carthaginians gave up their children with forebodings and laments; the relatives crowded the shores in a despondent farewell; at the last moment the mothers tried by force to prevent the ships from sailing; and some swam out to sea to catch a last glimpse of their children. The consuls sent the hostages to Rome, crossed to Utica with army and fleet, summoned the Carthaginian ambassadors, and required of Carthage the surrender of her remaining ships, a great quantity of grain, and all her engines and weapons of war.
When these conditions had been fulfilled, the consuls further demanded that the population of Carthage should retire to ten miles from the city, which was then to be burned to the ground. The ambassadors argued in vain that the destruction of a city which had surrendered hostages and its arms without striking a blow was a treacherous atrocity unknown to history. They offered their own lives as a vicarious atonement; they flung themselves upon the ground and beat the earth with their heads. The consuls replied that the terms were those of the Senate and could not be changed.
When the people of Carthage heard what was demanded of them they lost their sanity. Parents mad with grief tore limb from limb the leaders who had advised surrendering the child hostages; others killed those who had counseled the surrender of arms; some dragged the returning ambassadors through the streets and stoned them; some killed whatever Italians could be found in the city; some stood in the empty arsenals and wept. The Carthaginian Senate declared war against Rome and called all adults—men and women, slave or free—to form a new army, and to forge anew the weapons of defense.
Preparations
Fury gave them resolution. Public buildings were demolished to provide metal and timber; the statues of cherished gods were melted down to make swords, and the hair of the women was shorn to make ropes. In two months the beleaguered city produced 8000 shields, 18,000 swords, 30,000 spears, 60,000 catapult missiles, and built in its inner harbor a fleet of 120 ships.[^49]
Destruction
Three years the city stood siege by land and sea. Again and again the consuls led their armies against the walls, but always they were repulsed; only Scipio Aemilianus, one of the military tribunes, proved resourceful and brave. Late in 147 the Roman Senate and Assembly made him consul and commander, and all men approved. Soon afterward Laelius succeeded in scaling the walls. The Carthaginians, though weakened and decimated by starvation, fought for their city street by street, through six days of slaughter without quarter. Harassed by snipers, Scipio ordered all captured streets to be fired and leveled to the ground. Hundreds of concealed Carthaginians perished in the conflagration. At last the population, reduced from 500,000 to 55,000, surrendered. Hasdrubal, their general, pleaded for his life, which Scipio granted, but his wife, denouncing his cowardice, plunged with her sons into the flames. The survivors were sold as slaves, and the city was turned over to the legions for pillage. Reluctant to raze it, Scipio sent to Rome for final instructions; the Senate replied that not only Carthage, but all such of her dependencies as had stood by her were to be completely destroyed, that the soil should be plowed and sown with salt, and a formal curse laid upon any man who should attempt to build upon the site. For seventeen days the city burned.
Aftermath
There was no treaty of peace, for the Carthaginian state no longer existed. Utica and other African cities that had helped Rome were left free under a protectorate; the remainder of Carthage’s territory became the province of “Africa.” Roman capitalists came in to divide the land into latifundia, and Roman merchants fell heir to Carthaginian trade.
Imperialism became now the frank and conscious motive of Roman politics. Syracuse was absorbed into the province of Sicily, southern Gaul was subdued as a necessary land route to completely subjected Spain, and the Hellenistic monarchies of Egypt and Syria were quietly induced—like Antiochus IV by Popilius—to submit to the wishes of Rome. From the moral standpoint, which is always a window dressing in international politics, the destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146 must rank among the most brutal conquests in history; from the standpoint of empire—of security and wealth—it laid simultaneously the two cornerstones of Rome’s commercial and naval supremacy. From that moment the political history of the Mediterranean flowed through Rome.
Cato and others
In the midst of the war its chief instigators had died in the fullness of victory—Cato in 149, Masinissa in 148. The old censor had left a deep mark upon Roman history. Men would look back to him for many centuries as the typical Roman of the Republic: Cicero would idealize him in De Senectute; his great-great-grandson would reincarnate his philosophy without his humor; Marcus Aurelius would mold himself upon his example; Fronto would call upon Latin literature to return to the simplicity and directness of his style. Nevertheless, the destruction of Carthage was his only success. His war against Hellenism completely failed; every department of Roman letters, philosophy, oratory, science, art, religion, morals, manners, and dress surrendered to Greek influence.
He hated Greek philosophers; his famous descendant would surround himself with them. The religious faith that he had lost continued to decline despite his efforts to reanimate it. Above all, the political corruption that he had fought in his youth grew wider and deeper as the stakes of office rose with the Empire’s spread; every new conquest made Rome richer, more rotten, more merciless. She had won every war but the class war; and the destruction of Carthage removed the last check to civil division and strife. Now through a hundred bitter years of revolution Rome would pay the penalty of gaining the world.
Notes
I It was on leaving for this campaign that Paulus paid his classic compliments to amateur strategists:
“In all public places, and in private parties, there are men who know where the armies should be put in Macedonia, what strategical positions ought to be occupied. . . . They not only lay down what should be done, but when anything is decided contrary to their judgment they arraign the consul as though he were being impeached. . . . This seriously interferes with the successful prosecution of a war. . . . [If anyone] feels confident that he can give me good advice, let him go with me to Macedonia. . . . If he thinks this is too much trouble, let him not try to act as a pilot while he is on land.”3
II The basilica (sc. stoa—i.e., royal portico) was a Hellenistic application of the arch to the Persian palace and the Egyptian hypostyle hall; Delos and Syracuse had raised such structures in the third century B.C.
III Said Horace, in a now-trite line: Graecia capta ferum victor em cepit: “Conquered Greece took captive her barbarous conqueror.”24a