The consuls of 149 had no problem in assembling large forces because, unlike the wars then being waged in Spain, this one was expected to be short, easy and profitable. The armament that crossed to Sicily in the spring is reported as having 80,000 foot and 4000 horse, with 50 quinqueremes and 100 smaller warships. Another desperate embassy from Carthage, arriving meanwhile at Rome with full powers to negotiate, could only match Utica by offering unconditional surrender. The Roman concept (deditio in fidem) was much like the one applied to Germany and Japan in 1945. The surrendering side put itself absolutely into the other’s power and must submit to whatever the victors imposed. The Carthaginians certainly knew this standard Roman practice, nor had their own habits been very different in their Greek Sicilian wars.
Now the Romans did start a cat-and-mouse game. The consuls in Sicily first required three hundred children of the city’s leading families to be handed over to them as hostages. They then sailed over to Utica in full strength, where the Carthaginians at their demand delivered all their military stores – no fewer than 200,000 sets of armour, 2000 pieces of artillery, and other weapons. Then came a last demand: the citizens must leave their city and settle 80 stadia, about 16 kilometres, inland. The figure was not realistic, for it would have placed a quarter of a million Carthaginians along the difficult range of heights stretching from Tunes to the Bagradas. It really meant any distance that the Romans would judge convenient, leaving the city to be plundered and demolished.
Carthage exploded with anger and outrage, vividly recorded by Appian. The unfortunate envoys who came back to report the ultimatum were lynched by furious crowds, as were senators who had urged appeasement. Resident Italians were manhandled or killed. On the same day, the adirim declared war, freed the slaves in the city, and sent an appeal for aid to the recently-condemned Hasdrubal – now commanding 30,000 troops in the countryside and probably shadowing Masinissa. The other Hasdrubal, Masinissa’s grandson, was elected general too and took command in the city. Temples and squares became ad hoc weapons workshops; women cut off their hair to make cords for catapults. The Romans meanwhile marched down from Utica to open the siege. Masinissa, it seems, retired to Cirta to watch.
The siege of Carthage lasted three years. Her 23 Roman miles (34 kilometres) of walls – including the triple line across the flat isthmus outside Megara – defeated repeated assaults from the isthmus, the sea and the lakeshore. The citizens within the walls were not completely alone. The forgiven Hasdrubal operated in the countryside with his army, while Hippacra, Nepheris and Clupea-Aspis near Cape Bon held out too. According to Appian, the Romans were supported locally only by Utica and (on the east coast) Hadrumetum, Leptis, Thapsus and Acholla. Hasdrubal was able to send supplies in to the besieged, and until the summer of 147 foreign merchants could still reach the city despite the Roman blockade. Parts of Megara itself were probably cultivated for food.
In 149 and 148 the Carthaginians kept the besiegers at bay. Attacks on the walls were met by counter-attacks; early on, much of the Roman fleet was set ablaze by fire-ships, and Censorinus’ troops on the lakeshore were hit by an epidemic in the hot summer. Hasdrubal moved to Nepheris near the coast and could not be dislodged. Even after Himilco Phameas changed sides following a conversation with his friend Scipio Aemilianus, now an officer with the army, Carthage’s situation largely held firm. Piso, the consul in command in 148, spent that summer failing to capture Hippacra, while on Masinissa’s death the Numidian lord Bithyas with his 800 horsemen joined Hasdrubal’s army. Carthaginian spokesmen moved around Libya encouraging resistance. By now discipline in the besieging army was badly deteriorating due to setbacks and poor leadership. What had promised to be a straightforward and profitable expedition was now a war as strenuous, expensive and long-lasting as those in Spain.
The situation began, nevertheless, to worsen for the Carthaginians. The army at Nepheris could not seriously harass Carthage’s besiegers. Sometime in 148 its general Hasdrubal, now in the city and suspicious or merely jealous of his namesake the grandson of Masinissa, convinced the Carthaginians that this general – despite his vigorous leadership – was a traitor. Masinissa’s grandson was bludgeoned to death by his fellow citizens. More ominously still, Scipio’s exploits during the siege gained him election as consul for 147 and the command in Africa. With him, incidentally, he brought his friend Polybius the historian.
Scipio reinvigorated the army and the siege. New fortified camps on the isthmus cut all land communications. He frightened Hasdrubal into abandoning Megara, built a mole out into the sea below the southern city wall to block off the Cothon – the artificial ports – and seized the `Falbe quadrilateral’. A small Carthaginian fleet, built by the citizens from leftover materials in the circular port and launched through a channel secretly dug through to the sea alongside, was poorly led and suffered defeat. In the city Hasdrubal became virtual tyrant, murderously intolerant of criticism and reportedly living in luxury with his troops while the citizens starved. Deaths and desertions mounted dramatically. During the winter, Scipio attacked and destroyed the army at Nepheris under its Greek (or Greek-named) commander Diogenes and captured Nepheris itself, with up to 70,000 enemy troops and civilians reportedly killed and 10,000 taken. All of Libya now capitulated, including the Libyphoenician loyalists such as Hippacra.
No hope remained for Carthage. In spring 146 the Romans launched the final assault.
Attacking first through the naval port, then over the lakeshore wall, they moved past the `tophet’ and Cothon to reach the agora with its surrounding public buildings, like the senate house and the golden – and instantly looted – temple of `Apollo’ (Reshef). Byrsa’s citadel, the last refuge of thousands of surviving citizens, was connected to the agora by three streets lined with six-storey apartment houses where many people were still trapped. Each had to be taken against bitter hand-to-hand resistance on every level: assault troops reaching the upper floors used planks to fight their way across to another while more fighting raged on the ground far below – a struggle recalling the horrors of Dionysius’ capture of Motya. Once his men reached the walls of Byrsa, Scipio had all the houses along these streets destroyed to clear access.
Next day, the seventh since the assault began, Byrsa capitulated. The last Carthaginians, fifty thousand men, women and children, came out to be enslaved. Hasdrubal and 900 Roman deserters held out in the temple of Eshmun until the general emerged, alone, to surrender to Scipio. In a Dantesque scene the deserters set the temple on fire and hurled curses on him before perishing in the flames. So did his own wife, who then slew their two small sons and threw both them and herself into the inferno.
Scipio put the city to the torch and pronounced a solemn curse on any who might seek to dwell there. Polybius saw him weeping as he watched Carthage’s funeral pyre: the general explained that he was thinking that one day this could happen to Rome.
