The Fall of Carthage

The Third Punic War began in 149 BC, when Rome, urged on by Cato the Elder among others, demanded that Carthage abandon its city and resettle inland, away from the sea. The Carthaginians refused and held out behind their walls for three years. In 147 BC command passed to Scipio Aemilianus, adoptive grandson of the Scipio who had defeated Hannibal. In the spring of 146 BC his troops broke in by the harbors and fought their way up toward the citadel of the Byrsa, house by house, for six days.

Appian, drawing on Polybius, describes the end. The survivors on the Byrsa surrendered, the city was plundered and burned, and the Senate forbade anyone to live on the site. Scipio, watching the fire, is said to have wept and quoted Homer's lines on the coming fall of Troy, telling Polybius that he feared for his own country. The story that the Romans sowed the ground with salt is a modern invention. Julius Caesar later planned a Roman colony on the site, founded under Augustus, and Roman Carthage became one of the great cities of Africa.