Carthago Deleta
About
After a brutal multi-year siege, consul Scipio Aemilianus's legions stormed Carthage street by street in six days of house-to-house fighting. The survivors, some 50,000 people, were sold into slavery and the city was burned to the ground. Rome plowed the site and, by legend, salted the earth so nothing would grow. Augustus later refounded Carthage as a Roman colony, and by 117 CE it stands again as a thriving provincial capital.
What happened here
A Roman army fights the way it camps: in lines, by drill, on ground chosen if possible. The legions form up in cohorts with gaps that let ranks rotate, throw a volley of heavy javelins at close range, and then close with the short sword, pushing behind the shield. Auxiliaries hold the flanks and do most of the cavalry work and most of the skirmishing. Battles are short and decided by whether one line breaks, and the killing happens in the pursuit rather than the fighting. The camp is dug and palisaded every night regardless. Afterwards the dead are stripped and the field is looted for days; the ground is remembered locally long after the campaign is a paragraph in someone's history.
In ancient writing
- Appian, Punic Wars 127–132
Six days of street fighting from the harbour up to the citadel, house by house, and the surrender of the last defenders from the temple of Eshmun.
- Polybius, Histories 38.19–22
Scipio watches the city burn and weeps, saying to Polybius beside him that one day the same will be said of Rome.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →