Corinthus Deleta

About

Consul Lucius Mummius crushed the Achaean League's army outside Corinth, then razed the wealthy city, killed its men, and sold its women and children into slavery. Its famous bronzes and artwork were shipped back to Rome as war trophies. The destruction, in the same year as Carthage's, marked Rome's brutal final word on Greek independence. Julius Caesar refounded Corinth as a colony a century later, and by 117 CE it is again a major provincial city.

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

• Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.16.7–8

  Mummius kills the men, sells the rest, and ships the statues and paintings to Rome; the city stands empty until Caesar refounds it.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Corinth_(146_BC)
• https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/ancient-history/destruction-of-corinth/