Many argued that the Republic needed a rival that was worthy of the name. Without rivalry, they demanded, how would Rome’s greatness ever be maintained? Such a question, of course, could have been asked only in a state where ruthless competition was regarded as the basis of all civic virtue. Unsurprisingly, however, a majority of citizens refused to stomach its implications. For more than a century they had been demonizing the Carthaginians’ cruelty amd faithlessness. Why, most citizens wondered, should the standards of Roman life be applied to the protection of such a foe? This question was duly answered by a vote to push Carthage into war. By aiming at her complete annihilation, the Republic revealed what the logical consequence of its ideals of success might be. In such brutality, unmediated by any nexus of fellowship or duty, lay the extremes of the Roman desire to be the best.
In 149 [BCE] the hapless Carthaginians were given the vindictive order to abandon their city. Rather than surrender to such a demand, they prepared to defend their homes and sacred places to the death. This, of course, was precisely what the hawks back in Rome had been hoping they would do. The legions moved in for the kill.
— Holland, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, p. 33.
The image is of Scipio Aemilianus Africanus who commanded the Roman army in North Africa at the end of the three year siege of Carthage. The Romans burned the city to the ground and proclaimed an interdiction forbidding anyone to build there again (the bit about salting the ground is apparently a later myth – it appears in no classical source). While watching the flames consume the city he had conquered, it is said that Scipio wept and that he said to his companion, the Greek historian Polybius, “This is a glorious moment, Polybius; and yet I am seized with fear and foreboding that some day the same fate will befall my own country.”
The destruction of Carthage (and, in the same year, of Corinth) seems to be the moment that Rome gained unrivaled dominance in the Mediterranean. It was still ruled as a Republic and claimed actual administrative control over relatively few places beyond the Italian peninsula, but would soon be more or less strip mining the other lands of the Mediterranean of their wealth whether literally (silver mines in Spain) or figuratively (tax-farming in Pergamum).
“but would soon be more or less strip mining the other lands of the Mediterranean of their wealth whether literally (silver mines in Spain) or figuratively (tax-farming in Pergamum).”
And, of course, slaves from everywhere.
Ah good times. Such artifice and heaps of straw into the old “Carthago delenda est” argument. Sounds like Aceus Spadei.
According to Holland a single mine in this period might house 40,000 slaves. He also says that ice cores from Greenland show an enormous rise in lead levels from all the silver smelting. And apparently birds would die just flying through the smog clouds from one of these smelters.
The destruction of Carthage is a hobby-horse for the nutosphere? In what sense? I haven’t heard about that one. Does it have anything to do with that “Instapundo delenda est” thing? Or are they unconnected (aside from the slogan, obviously)?
Oh, the nutjobs talk the same way about ISLAMOFASCISM, it must be salted, essentially. The whole “we must be strong/defend/attack” blah blah. They like to talk about the will one must have to utterly vanquish ones enemies. Good old Scipio.
but this is history, which according to the neocons has come to an end. so why must we pay any attention to the past when we have so many years of the future to run?
run=ruin
Ok, so I don’t have to time to read all of this, but what I did was great and I will say this:
I have been to Troy and Pergamun (sp?). I have recited lines in some of the oldest existed theaters on the planet. I have been all up and down the Mediterranean coast of Turkey and I can speak as an expert: It is totally damn gorgeous and when I am a rich and famous and totally not sold out blogger (cough*Americablog*cough) I will totally go there and leave all you hosebeasts here to suffer.
While the Holland book focuses on the end of the Republic and is thus rather sketchy on the Punic wars, he does specify that Rome had already broken the power of Carthage in the Second Punic War a half-century earlier (when Hannibal was defeated).
I tried looking at Polybius’ own take on things, but the online versions I found have incomplete and/or dreadful interfaces, apparently work from drastically differing Greek texts, and provide no indication of how those Greek texts were constructed. Polybius’ Histories is in 40 books of which only the first 5 survive in complete form. The other books seem to be constructed from fragments of varying sizes, some of which seem to be summaries or descriptions taken from other authors.
But in any case it appears that, not only was Carthage no threat to Rome at the time of the Third Punic War (i.e. the one described in my original post), but they actually tried to surrender to Rome to avert the war! More than once!
On this page (starting at paragraph 3), Polybius describes how the Carthaginian emissaries made the most abject surrender possible to the Roman senate, that the senate apparently offered mercy in exchange for 300 hostages, and that these hostages were indeed sent to Rome. However, the Roman army still showed up on the coast of North Africa. It looks like the Carthaginians tried to surrender again, and turned over all their armor to the Romans (!) despite fears this would leave them more vulnerable to attacks from their local foes.
At this point, the text devolves into tiny fragments, and there is no meaningful information on how we get from the Romans carting off the Carthaginians’ armor to the legions showing up at Carthage and laying siege for three years.
It seems Polybius’ accounts, as a rule, are considered quite careful and accurate, and he was even present for many of the events in North Africa, so, for the details that are there, there’s no reason to believe a modern history would tell a significantly different story. And thus, not to put too fine a point on it, it does not appear beyond the mental capacity of the average pinecone to conclude that this episode makes a pitiful example of supreme will in the face of some implacable enemy.
Rome destroying Carthage because of fears it would regain power seems a bit like the U.S. destroying Mexico because we’re afraid they’ll take Texas back. Oh wait, they are afraid of that…
Never mind…
MEGA BINGOES!
but this time they’re building a FENCE. with ELECTRICITY. that’ll show those damn mexicans!
Because the Mexislamofascists have never encountered electricity before, and will be struck with awe and amazement at the wonder of technology.