Punic Wars, also called Carthaginian Wars, (264-146 BCE), a series of three wars between the Roman Republic and the Carthaginian (Punic) empire, resulting in the destruction of Carthage, the enslavement of its population, and Roman hegemony over the western Mediterranean.

The western Mediterranean during the Punic Wars.

The origin of these conflicts is to be found in the position which Rome acquired, about 275 BCE, as leader and protector of all Italy. The attendant new obligation to safeguard the peninsula against foreign interference made it necessary not to allow the neighbouring island of Sicily to fall into the hands of a strong and expansive power. Carthage, on the other hand, had long been anxious to conquer Sicily and so to complete the chain of island posts by which it controlled the western Mediterranean.

Roman expansion in Italy from 298 to 201 BC.

The proximate cause of the first outbreak was a crisis in the city of Messana (Messina), commanding the straits between Italy and Sicily. The Mamertini, a band of Campanian mercenaries, had forcibly established themselves within the town and were being hard pressed in 264 by Hieron II of Syracuse. The Mamertini appealed to both Rome and Carthage, and the Carthaginians, arriving first, occupied Messana and effected a reconciliation with Hieron. The Roman commander, nevertheless, persisted in throwing troops into the city, and, by seizing the Carthaginian admiral during a parley, induced him to withdraw. This aggression provoked war with Carthage and Syracuse.

Operations began with a joint attack upon Messana, which the Romans easily repelled. In 263 the Romans advanced with a considerable force into Hieron’s territory and induced him to seek peace and alliance with them. They besieged and captured the Carthaginian base at Agrigentum in 262 but made little impression upon the Carthaginian fortresses in the west of the island and upon the towns of the interior.

In 260 the Romans built their first large fleet of standard battleships. At Mylae (Milazzo), off the north Sicilian coast, their admiral Gaius Duilius defeated a Carthaginian squadron of superior maneuvering capacity by grappling and boarding. This left Rome free to land a force on Corsica (259) and expel the Carthaginians but did not suffice to loosen their grasp on Sicily. A large Roman fleet sailed out in 256, repelled the entire Carthaginian fleet off Cape Ecnomus (near modern Licata) and established a fortified camp on African soil at Clypea (Kélibia in Tunisia). The Carthaginians, whose citizen levy was utterly disorganized, could neither keep the field against the invaders nor prevent their subjects from revolting. After one campaign they were ready to sue for peace, but the terms which the Roman commander Marcus Atilius Regulus offered were intolerably harsh. Accordingly they equipped a new army in which, by the advice of a Greek captain of mercenaries named Xanthippus, cavalry and elephants formed the strongest arm. In 255, under Xanthippus’ command, they offered battle to Regulus, who had taken up position with an inadequate force near Tunis, outmaneuvered him, and destroyed the bulk of his army. A second Roman fleet, which subsequently reached Africa after defeating the full Carthaginian fleet off Cape Hermaeum (Sharīk Peninsula), withdrew all the remaining troops.

The Romans now directed their efforts once more against Sicily. In 254 they captured the important fortress of Panormus (Palermo), but when Carthage threw reinforcements into the island the war again came to a standstill. In 251 or 250 the Roman general Lucius Caecilius Metellus at last brought about a pitched battle near Panormus in which the enemy’s force was effectively crippled. This victory was followed by an investment of the chief Punic base at Lilybaeum (Marsala), together with Drepanum (Trapani), by land and sea. The besiegers met with a gallant resistance and in 249 were compelled to withdraw by the loss of their fleet in a surprise attack upon Drepanum, in which the admiral Publius Claudius Pulcher was repulsed with a loss of 93 ships. While this was the Romans’ only naval defeat in the war, their fleet had suffered a series of grievous losses by storm, and now it was so reduced that the attack upon Sicily had to be suspended. At the same time, the Carthaginians, who felt no less severely the financial strain of the prolonged struggle, reduced their forces and made no attempt to deliver a counterattack. The only noteworthy feature of the ensuing campaigns is the skillful guerrilla war waged by a new Carthaginian commander, Hamilcar Barca, from his strong positions on Mt. Ercte (247–244) and Mt. Eryx (modern Erice) (244–242) in western Sicily, by which he effectually screened Lilybaeum from any attempt on it by the Roman land army.

In 242 Rome resumed operations at sea. By a magnificent effort on the part of private citizens a fleet of 200 warships was equipped and sent out to renew the blockade of Lilybaeum. The Carthaginians hastily collected a relief force, but in a battle fought off the Aegates Insulae (Egadi Islands), west of Drepana, their fleet was caught at a disadvantage and mostly sunk or captured (March 10, 241). This victory, by giving the Romans undisputed command of the sea, rendered certain the ultimate fall of the Punic strongholds in Sicily. The Carthaginians accordingly opened negotiations and consented to a peace by which they ceded Sicily and the Lipari (Eolie) Islands to Rome and paid an indemnity of 3,200 talents.

The First Punic War (264 to 241 BC) was the first of three wars fought between Ancient Carthage and the Roman Republic, the two great powers of the Western Mediterranean. For 23 years, in the longest continuous conflict and greatest naval war of antiquity, the two powers struggled for supremacy, primarily on the Mediterranean island of Sicily and its surrounding waters, and also in North Africa.

Sicily, the main theater of the war.

The war began in 264 BC with the Roman conquest of the Carthaginian-controlled city of Messina in Sicily, granting Rome a military foothold on the island. The Romans built up a navy to challenge Carthage, the greatest naval power in the Mediterranean, for control over the waters around Sicily. In naval battles and storms, 700 Roman and 500 Carthaginian quinqueremes were lost, along with hundreds of thousands of lives. Command of the sea was won and lost by both sides repeatedly. A Roman invasion of Carthaginian Africa was destroyed in battle at the Bagradas and the Roman consul Marcus Atilius Regulus was captured by the Carthaginians in 255. In 23 years, the Romans slowly conquered Sicily and drove the Carthaginians to the west end of the island.

After both sides had been brought to a state of near exhaustion, the Romans mobilized their citizenry's private wealth and created a new fleet under consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus. The Carthaginian fleet was destroyed at the Aegates Islands in 241, forcing the cut-off Carthaginian troops on Sicily to give up. A peace treaty was signed in which Carthage was made to pay a heavy indemnity and Rome ejected Carthage from Sicily, annexing the island as a Roman province.

The war was followed by a failed revolt against the Carthaginian Empire. The Romans exploited Carthage's weakness to seize the Carthaginian possessions of Sardinia and Corsica in violation of the peace treaty. The unresolved strategic competition between Rome and Carthage would lead to the eruption of the Second Punic War in 218 BC.

The loss of naval supremacy not only deprived the Carthaginians of their predominance in the western Mediterranean but exposed their overseas empire to disintegration under renewed attacks by Rome. The temper of the Roman people was soon made manifest during a conflict which broke out between the Carthaginians and their discontented mercenaries. A gross breach of the treaty was perpetrated when a Roman force was sent to occupy Sardinia, whose insurgent garrison had offered to surrender the island (238). To the remonstrances of Carthage the Romans replied with a direct declaration of war, and only withheld their attack upon the formal cession of Sardinia and Corsica and the payment of a further indemnity.

From this episode it became clear that Rome intended to use the victory to the utmost. To avoid complete humiliation Carthage had no resource but to humiliate its adversary. The recent complications of foreign and internal strife had indeed so weakened Punic power that the prospect of renewing the war under favourable circumstances seemed remote enough. However, the scheme of preparing for a fresh conflict found a worthy champion in Hamilcar Barca. He sought to compensate for the loss of Sicily by acquiring a dominion in Spain where Carthage might gain new wealth and form a fresh base of operations against Rome. Invested with an unrestricted foreign command, he spent the rest of his life in founding a Spanish empire (237–228). His work was continued by his son-in-law Hasdrubal and his son Hannibal, who was placed at the head of the army in 221. These conquests aroused the suspicions of Rome, which in a treaty with Hasdrubal confined the Carthaginians to the south of the Ebro. At some point also Rome entered into relations with Saguntum (Sagunto), a town on the east coast, south of the Ebro. In 219 Hannibal laid siege to Saguntum and carried the town in spite of a stubborn defense.

It is a debatable point whether his attack contravened the new treaty. The Romans certainly took this view and demanded Hannibal’s surrender. His defiant policy was too popular to be disavowed, however. The Carthaginian council upheld Hannibal’s action and drew upon itself a declaration of war.

According to Polybius, there had been several trade agreements between Rome and Carthage, even a mutual alliance against king Pyrrhus of Epirus. When Rome and Carthage made peace in 241 BC, Rome secured the release of all 8,000 prisoners of war without ransom and, furthermore, received a considerable amount of silver as a war indemnity. However, Carthage refused to deliver to Rome the Roman deserters serving among their troops. A first issue for dispute was that the initial treaty, agreed upon by Hamilcar Barca and the Roman commander in Sicily, had a clause stipulating that the Roman popular assembly had to accept the treaty in order for it to be valid. The assembly not only rejected the treaty but increased the indemnity Carthage had to pay.

Map of the Mediterranean in 218 BC

Carthage had a liquidity problem and attempted to gain financial help from Egypt, a mutual ally of Rome and Carthage, but failed. This resulted in delay of payments owed to the mercenary troops that had served Carthage in Sicily, leading to a climate of mutual mistrust and, finally, a revolt supported by the Libyan natives, known as the Mercenary War (240-238 BC). During this war, Rome and Syracuse both aided Carthage, although traders from Italy seem to have done business with the insurgents. Some of them were caught and punished by Carthage, aggravating the political climate, which had started to improve in recognition of the old alliance and treaties.

During the uprising in the Punic mainland, the mercenary troops in Corsica and Sardinia toppled Punic rule and briefly established their own, but were expelled by a native uprising. After securing aid from Rome, the exiled mercenaries then regained authority on the island of Sicily. For several years, a brutal campaign was fought to quell the insurgent natives. Like many Sicilians, they would ultimately rise again in support of Carthage during the Second Punic War.

Eventually, Rome annexed Corsica and Sardinia by revisiting the terms of the treaty that ended the first Punic War. As Carthage was under siege and engaged in a difficult civil war, they grudgingly accepted the loss of these islands and the subsequent Roman conditions for ongoing peace, which also increased the war indemnity levied against Carthage after the first Punic War. This eventually plunged relations between the two powers to a new low point.

After Carthage emerged victorious from the Mercenary War there were two opposing factions: the reformist party was led by Hamilcar Barca while the other, more conservative, faction was represented by Hanno the Great and the old Carthaginian aristocracy. Hamilcar had led the initial Carthaginian peace negotiations and was blamed for the clause that allowed the Roman popular assembly to increase the war indemnity and annex Corsica and Sardinia, but his superlative generalship was instrumental in enabling Carthage to ultimately quell the mercenary uprising, ironically fought against many of the same mercenary troops he had trained. Hamilcar ultimately left Carthage for the Iberian peninsula where he captured rich silver mines and subdued many tribes who fortified his army with levies of native troops.

Hanno had lost many elephants and soldiers when he became complacent after a victory in the Mercenary War. Further, when he and Hamilcar were supreme commanders of Carthage's field armies, the soldiers had supported Hamilcar when his and Hamilcar's personalities clashed. On the other hand, he was responsible for the greatest territorial expansion of Carthage's hinterland during his rule as strategus and wanted to continue such expansion. However, the Numidian king of the relevant area was now a son-in-law of Hamilcar and had supported Carthage during a crucial moment in the Mercenary War. While Hamilcar was able to obtain the resources for his aim, the Numidians in the Atlas Mountains were not conquered, like Hanno suggested, but became vassals of Carthage.

The Iberian conquest was begun by Hamilcar Barca and his other son-in-law, Hasdrubal the Fair, who ruled relatively independently of Carthage and signed the Ebro Treaty with Rome. Hamilcar died in battle in 228 BC. Around this time, Hasdrubal became Carthaginian commander in Iberia (229 BC). He maintained this post for some eight years until 221 BC. Soon the Romans became aware of a burgeoning alliance between Carthage and the Celts of the Po river valley in northern Italy. The latter were amassing forces to invade Italy, presumably with Carthaginian backing. Thus, the Romans preemptively invaded the Po region in 225 BC. By 220 BC, the Romans had annexed the area as Gallia Cisalpina. Hasdrubal was assassinated around the same time (221 BC), bringing Hannibal to the fore. It seems that, having apparently dealt with the threat of a Gallo-Carthaginian invasion of Italy (and perhaps with the original Carthaginian commander killed), the Romans lulled themselves into a false sense of security. Thus, Hannibal took the Romans by surprise a mere two years later (218 BC) by merely reviving and adapting the original Gallo-Carthaginian invasion plan of his brother-in-law Hasdrubal.

After Hasdrubal's assassination by a Celtic assassin, Hamilcar's young sons took over, with Hannibal becoming the strategus of Iberia, although this decision was not undisputed in Carthage. The output of the Iberian silver mines allowed for the financing of a standing army and the payment of the war indemnity to Rome. The mines also served as a tool for political influence, creating a faction in Carthage's magistrate that was called the Barcino.

In 219 BC, Hannibal attacked the town of Saguntum, which stood under the special protection of Rome. According to Roman tradition, Hannibal had been made to swear by his father never to be a friend of Rome, and he certainly did not take a conciliatory attitude when the Romans berated him for crossing the river Iberus (Ebro), which Carthage was bound by treaty not to cross. Hannibal did not cross the Ebro River (Saguntum was near modern Valencia – well south of the river) in arms, and the Saguntines provoked his attack by attacking their neighboring tribes who were Carthaginian protectorates and by massacring pro-Punic factions in their city. Rome had no legal protection pact with any tribe south of the Ebro River. Nonetheless, they asked Carthage to hand Hannibal over, and when the Carthaginian oligarchy refused, Rome declared war on Carthage.

It seemed as though the superiority of the Romans at sea would enable them to choose the field of battle. They decided to embark one army for Spain and another for Sicily and Africa. Before their preparations were complete, Hannibal began a series of operations by which he dictated the course of the war for the greater part of its duration. He realized that so long as the Romans commanded the resources of an undivided Italian confederacy, no foreign attack could beat them down beyond recovery. Thus he conceived the plan of cutting off their supply of strength at the source by carrying the war into Italy and causing a disruption of the league. His chances of ever reaching Italy seemed small, for the sea was guarded by the Roman fleets and the land route was long and arduous.

The very boldness of his enterprise contributed to its success. After a six months’ march through Spain and Gaul and over the Alps, which the Romans were in no position to oppose, Hannibal arrived in the plain of the Po in autumn 218. His force of 20,000 infantry and 6,000 horses represented the pick of his African and Spanish levies. His further advance was disputed by some Roman troops, but the superiority of the Carthaginian cavalry and the spread of insurrection among the Gaulish inhabitants forced the defenders to fall back upon the Apennines. At the end of the year the Roman army was reinforced by the division from Sicily and led out to battle on the banks of the Trebbia. Hannibal, by superior tactics, routed the significantly larger Roman force and thus made his position in north Italy secure.

In 217 the campaign opened in Etruria, into which the invading army, largely reinforced by Gauls, penetrated by an unguarded pass. A rash pursuit by the Roman field force under Gaius Flaminius led to its being entrapped on the shore of Lake Trasimene and destroyed with a loss of at least 15,000 men. This catastrophe left Rome completely uncovered, but Hannibal, having resolved not to attack the capital before he could collect a more overwhelming force, directed his march toward the south of Italy. There he hoped to stir up the peoples who had formerly been Rome’s most stubborn enemies. The Italians, however, were everywhere slow to join the Carthaginians, and a new Roman army under the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus adopted a policy of strategic non-engagement. This “Fabian strategy” earned Fabius the nickname “Cunctator” (“delayer”); without daring to close with Hannibal, Fabius dogged his steps through Apulia and Campania, preventing him from acquiring a permanent base of operations.

The eventful campaign of 216 was begun with a deviation from the Fabian strategy and a new aggressive move on the part of Rome. An exceptionally strong field army, estimated at 85,000 men, was sent to crush the Carthaginians in open battle. On August 2, 216 BCE, on a level plain near Cannae in Apulia, the Roman legions delivered their attack. Hannibal had chosen the battleground, and he deliberately allowed his centre to be driven in by the Romans’ superior numbers. While the Romans advanced, Hannibal’s cavalry wheeled round so as to take the enemy in flank and rear. The Romans, surrounded on all sides and so cramped that their superior numbers aggravated their plight, were practically annihilated. An estimated one-fifth of Roman men of fighting age were killed, and the loss of citizens was perhaps greater than in any other defeat that befell the Republic.

Battle of Cannae.

The moral effect of the battle was no less momentous. The south Italian peoples at last found courage to secede from Rome, the leaders of the movement being the people of Capua, at the time the second greatest town of Italy. Reinforcements were sent from Carthage, and several neutral powers prepared to enter the fray on Hannibal’s behalf. At first sight it seems strange that the Battle of Cannae did not decide the war. Although the great resources of Rome had been terribly reduced in respect to both men and money, they were not yet exhausted. In north and central Italy the insurrection spread but little and could be sufficiently guarded against with small detachments. In the south the Greek towns of the coast remained loyal, and the numerous Latin colonies continued to render important service by interrupting free communication between the rebels and detaining part of their forces.

In Rome itself the quarrels between the nobles and commons, which had previously unsettled Roman policy, gave way to a unanimity unparalleled in the annals of the Republic. The guidance of operations was henceforth left to the Senate, which maintained a consistent policy until the conflict was brought to a successful end.

The subsequent campaigns of the war in Italy assumed a new character. Though the Romans contrived at times to raise 200,000 men, they could spare only a moderate force for field operations. Their generals, among whom the veterans Fabius and Marcus Claudius Marcellus frequently held the most important commands, rarely ventured to engage Hannibal in the open and contented themselves with observing him or skirmishing against his detachments. Hannibal, whose recent accessions of strength were largely discounted by the necessity of assigning troops to protect his new allies or secure their wavering loyalty, was still too weak to undertake a vigorous offensive. In the ensuing years the war resolved itself into a multiplicity of minor engagements. In 216 and 215 the chief seat of war was Campania, where Hannibal, vainly attempting to establish himself on the coast, experienced a severe repulse at Nola.

In 214 the main Carthaginian force was transferred to Apulia in hopes of capturing Tarentum (Taranto). Though Crotona and Locri on the southern coast had fallen into his hands, Hannibal still lacked a suitable harbour by which he might have secured his overseas communications. For two years he watched in vain for an opportunity to surprise the town, while the Romans narrowed down the sphere of revolt in Campania and defeated other Carthaginian commanders.

In 213–212 the greater part of Tarentum and other cities of the southern seaboard at last came into Hannibal’s power. Finally in 212 the Romans found themselves strong enough to place Capua under blockade. They severely defeated a Carthaginian relief force and could not be permanently dislodged, even by Hannibal himself. In 211 Hannibal made a last effort to relieve his allies by a feint upon Rome itself, but the besiegers refused to be drawn away from their entrenchments, and eventually Capua was starved into surrender. Its fall was a sign that no power could in the long run uphold a rival Italian coalition against Rome. After a year of desultory fighting, the Romans in 209 gained a further important success by recovering Tarentum. Though Hannibal still won isolated engagements, he was slowly being driven back into the extreme south of the peninsula.

In 207 the arrival of a fresh invading force produced a new crisis. Hasdrubal, who in 208–207 had marched overland from Spain, appeared in northern Italy with a force scarcely inferior to the army which his brother had brought in 218. After levying contingents of Gauls and Ligurians, he marched down the east coast with the object of joining Hannibal in central Italy for a direct attack upon Rome itself. By this time the steady drain of men and money was telling so severely upon the confederacy that some of the most loyal allies protested their inability to render further help. Yet by exerting a supreme effort the Romans raised their war establishment to the highest total yet attained and sent a strong field army against each Carthaginian leader.

The danger to Rome was chiefly averted by the prompt insight and enterprise of the consul Gaius Claudius Nero, who commanded the main army in the south. Having discovered that Hannibal would not advance beyond Apulia until his brother had established communications with him, Nero slipped away with part of his troops and arrived in time to reinforce his colleague Marcus Livius Salinator, whose force had recently contacted Hasdrubal near Sena Gallica (Senigallia). The combined Roman army frustrated an attempt of Hasdrubal to elude it and forced him to fight on the banks of the Metaurus (Metauro). The battle was evenly contested until Nero, by a dexterous flanking movement, cut the enemy’s retreat. Hasdrubal himself fell, and the bulk of his army was destroyed.

The campaign of 207 decided the war in Italy. Though Hannibal still maintained himself for some years in southern Italy, this was chiefly due to the exhaustion of Rome after the prodigious strain of past years and the consequent reduction of Roman forces. In 203 Italy was finally cleared of Carthaginian troops. Hannibal, in accordance with orders received from home, sailed back to Africa. An expedition under his brother, Mago, which had sailed to Liguria in 205 and endeavoured to rouse the slumbering discontent of the people in Cisalpine Gaul and Etruria, was forced to withdraw.

The Second Punic War (218-201 BC) is most remembered for the Carthaginian general Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. His army invaded Italy from the north and resoundingly defeated the Roman army in several battles, but never achieved the ultimate goal of causing a political break between Rome and its allies.

While fighting Hannibal in Italy, Hispania, and Sicily, Rome simultaneously fought against Macedon in the First Macedonian War. Eventually, the war was taken to Africa, where Carthage was defeated at the Battle of Zama (201 BC) by Scipio Africanus. The end of the war saw Carthage's control reduced to only the city itself.

There were three military theaters in this war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly; Hispania, where Hasdrubal, a younger brother of Hannibal, defended the Carthaginian colonial cities with mixed success until eventually retreating into Italy; and Sicily, where the Romans held military supremacy.

DepictionHannibal's feat in crossing the Alps with war elephants, though many of them did not survive, passed into European legend: detail of a fresco by Jacopo Ripanda, c. 1510, Capitoline Museums, Rome

Hannibal

After assaulting Saguntum in Hispania (219 BC), Hannibal attacked Italy in 218 BC by leading the Iberians and three dozen elephants through the Alps. Although Hannibal surprised the Romans and thoroughly beat them on the battlefields of Italy, he lost his only siege engines and most of his elephants to the cold temperatures and icy mountain paths. In the end he could defeat the Romans in the field, but not in the strategically crucial city of Rome itself, thus leaving him unable to win the war.

Hannibal defeated the Roman legions in several major engagements, including the Battle of the Trebia (December 218 BC), the Battle of Lake Trasimene (217 BC) and most famously the Battle of Cannae (216 BC), but his long-term strategy failed. Lacking siege engines and sufficient manpower to take the city of Rome itself, he had planned to turn the Italian allies against Rome and to starve the city out through a siege. However, with the exception of a few of the southern city-states, the majority of the Roman allies remained loyal and continued to fight alongside Rome, despite Hannibal's near-invincible seeming army devastating the Italian countryside. Rome also exhibited an impressive ability to draft army after army of conscripts after each crushing defeat by Hannibal, allowing them to recover from the defeats at Cannae and elsewhere and to keep Hannibal cut off from aid.

Hannibal never successfully received any significant reinforcements from Carthage. Despite his many pleas, Carthage only ever sent reinforcements successfully to Hispania. This lack of reinforcements prevented Hannibal from decisively ending the conflict by conquering Rome through force of arms.

The Roman army under Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus intentionally deprived Hannibal of open battle in Italy for the rest of the war, while making it difficult for Hannibal to forage for supplies. Nevertheless, Rome was also incapable of bringing the conflict in the Italian theatre to a decisive close. Not only did Roman legions contend with Hannibal in Italy and with Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal in Hispania, but Rome had embroiled itself in yet another foreign war, the first of its Macedonian wars against Carthage's ally Philip V, at the same time.

Through Hannibal's inability to take strategically important Italian cities, through the general loyalty Italian allies showed to Rome, and through Rome's own inability to counter Hannibal as a master general, Hannibal's campaign continued in Italy inconclusively for sixteen years. Though he managed to sustain his forces for 15 years, Hannibal did so only by ravaging farm-lands, keeping his army healthy, which brought anger among the Romans' subject states. Realizing that Hannibal's army was outrunning its supply lines quickly, Rome took countermeasures against Hannibal's home base in Africa by sea command and stopped the flow of supplies. Hannibal quickly turned back and rushed to home defense, but suffered defeat in the Battle of Zama (202 BC).

Hasdrubal’s campaign to reinforce Hannibal

In Hispania, a young Roman commander, Publius Cornelius Scipio (later to be given the agnomen Africanus because of his feats during this war), eventually defeated the larger but divided Carthaginian forces under Hasdrubal and two other Carthaginian generals. Abandoning Hispania, Hasdrubal moved to bring his mercenary army into Italy to reinforce Hannibal, but never made it and was defeated by Roman forces near the Alps.

The political power of Carthage henceforth remained quite insignificant, but its commerce and material resources revived in the 2nd century BCE with such rapidity as to excite the jealousy of the growing mercantile population of Rome and the alarm of an influential group of statesmen. Under the influence of these feelings the conviction—sedulously fostered by Cato the Censor — that “Carthage must be destroyed” (“Delenda est Carthago”)— overbore the scruples of more moderate factions. A casus belli was readily found in a formal breach of the treaty, committed by the Carthaginians in 150, when they resisted Masinissa’s aggressions by force of arms. A Roman army was dispatched to Africa, and, although the Carthaginians consented to make reparation by giving hostages and surrendering their arms, they were goaded into revolt by the further stipulation that they must emigrate to some inland site where they would be debarred from commerce.

By a desperate effort, they created new war equipment and prepared their city for a siege (149). The Roman attack for two years completely miscarried, until in 147 the command was given to a young officer who had distinguished himself in the early operations of the war — Scipio Aemilianus, the adopted grandson of the former conqueror of Carthage. Scipio made the blockade stringent by walling off the isthmus on which the town lay and by cutting off its sources of supplies from overseas. His main attack was delivered on the harbour side, where he effected an entrance in the face of a determined and ingenious resistance. The struggle did not cease until he had captured house by house the streets that led up to the citadel.

Of a city population perhaps exceeding a quarter of a million, only 50,000 remained at the final surrender. The survivors were sold into slavery, the city was razed to the ground, and its site was condemned by solemn imprecations to lie desolate for ever. The territory of Carthage, which had recently been much narrowed by Masinissa’s encroachments, was converted into the Roman province of Africa.

The Third Punic War (149-146 BC) involved an extended siege of Carthage, ending in the city’s thorough destruction. The resurgence of the struggle can be explained by growing anti-Roman agitations in Hispania and Greece, and the visible improvement of Carthaginian wealth and martial power in the fifty years since the Second War.

With no military, Carthage suffered raids from its neighbor Numidia. Under the terms of the treaty with Rome, such disputes were arbitrated by the Roman Senate. Because Numidia was a favored client state of Rome, Roman rulings were slanted heavily in favor of the Numidians. After some fifty years of this condition, Carthage had managed to discharge its war indemnity to Rome, and considered itself no longer bound by the restrictions of the treaty, although Rome believed otherwise. Carthage mustered an army to repel Numidian forces. It immediately lost the war with Numidia, placing itself in debt yet again, this time to Numidia.

This new-found Punic militarism alarmed many Romans, including Cato the Elder who, after a voyage to Carthage, ended all his speeches, no matter what the topic, by saying: "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam" – "And I also think that Carthage must be destroyed".

In 149 BC, in an attempt to draw Carthage into open conflict, Rome made a series of escalating demands, one being the surrender of three hundred children of the nobility as hostages, and finally ending with the near-impossible demand that the city be demolished and rebuilt away from the coast, deeper into Africa. When the Carthaginians refused this last demand, Rome declared the Third Punic War. Having previously relied on mercenaries to fight their wars for them, the Carthaginians were now forced into a more active role in the defense of their city. They made thousands of makeshift weapons in a short time, even using women's hair for catapult strings, and were able to hold off the initial Roman attack. A second offensive under the command of Scipio Aemilianus resulted in a three-year siege before he breached the walls, sacked the city, and systematically burned Carthage to the ground in 146 BC. When the war ended, the remaining 50,000 Carthaginians, a small part of the original pre-war population, were sold into slavery by the victors – the normal fate in antiquity of inhabitants of sacked cities. Carthage was systematically burned for 17 days; the city's walls and buildings were utterly destroyed. The remaining Carthaginian territories were annexed by Rome and reconstituted to become the Roman province of Africa.

After Rome emerged as victorious, significant Carthaginian settlements, such as those in Mauretania, were taken over and aggrandized by the Romans. Volubilis, for example, was an important Roman town situated near the westernmost border of the Roman conquests. It was built on the site of the previous Carthaginian settlement that overlies an earlier neolithic habitation.