ROMAN SUPREMACY IN THE WEST AND IN THE EAST, 201-133
B.C.
THIRD PUNIC WAR BEGUN, 148 B.C.
Carthage had been humbled, but not destroyed. She still
enjoyed the advantages of her magnificent situation and continued to be a
competitor of Rome for the trade of the Mediterranean. The Romans watched with
jealousy the reviving strength of the Punic city and at last determined to blot
it out of existence. In 149 B.C. a large army was landed in Africa, and the
inhabitants of Carthage were ordered to remove ten miles from the sea. They
resolved to perish in the ruins of their capital, rather than obey such a cruel
command.
DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE, 146 B.C.
Carthage held out for three years. The doubtful honor of
its capture belonged to Scipio Aemilianus, grandson, by adoption, of the victor
of Zama. For seven days the legionaries fought their way, street by street,
house by house, until only fifty thousand inhabitants were left to surrender to
the tender mercies of the Romans. The Senate ordered that the city should be
burned and that its site should be plowed up and dedicated to the infernal
gods. Such was the end of the most formidable rival Rome ever met in her career
of conquest. [7]
[7] In 29 B.C., one hundred and seventeen years after the
destruction of Carthage at the end of the Punic wars, a new town was founded
near the old site by the emperor Augustus. It became in time the third city of
the Roman Empire. It was destroyed by the Arabs in 698 A.D.
