The Ancients - The Fall of Carthage

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

It’s 146 BC. Fire rises high over the North African coast. The once-thriving port city of Carthage is burning. Thousands of Roman soldiers have breached the defences and swarmed into the city, intent on wiping this city from the face of the earth. This is the fall of Carthage.Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Eve MacDonald to plot the steps that lead to the Romans ruthlessly crushing this ancient Mediterranean power, once and for all. In the infamous words of the Roman statesman Cato the Elder; ‘Carthago Delenda Est’ - Carthage Must be Destroyed’Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited and produced by Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘ANCIENTS’. https://historyhit.com/subscriptionYou can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's 146 BC. Fire rises high over the North African coast. The once thriving port city of Carthage is burning. Screams can be heard amidst the multi-storey houses that tower over its streets.

Thousands of Roman soldiers had breached the defences and swarmed into the city, intent on wiping this city and its people from the face of the earth. Every building they passed, they set alight. Every man, woman, and child that didn't surrender, they butchered. And yet, the fighting rages on. The remnants of Carthaginian resistance desperately try to repel this Roman juggernaut street by street, building by building, story by story. This is gruesome ancient urban warfare. For hours they resist, but the determined Romans slowly gain ground. The defenders retreat again and again until they're forced up to the Bursa Hill, Carthage's Acropolis, and their last stronghold. There was no escape from here. They knew their fates were sealed. This would be their last stand, watching on as their beloved city was engulfed by flames below them.

They were witnessing one of the most devastating destructions in ancient history. The demise of their people, the eradication of their city, the fall of Carthage. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we are exploring the savage story of the Fall of Carthage. To tell this story in great detail, our guest today is Dr. Eve MacDonald from the University of Cardiff. A brilliant speaker and a regular guest on the Ancients, Eve and I recorded this episode in person at the Spotify studio in London, and I must say, it is one of my favourite interviews to date.

We've done many episodes on the Romans and their great achievements in the past, but in this episode, let's not kid ourselves, the Romans really are the bad guys. This story is both brutal and extraordinary, how the Romans ruthlessly crushed Carthage, this rival ancient Mediterranean power, once and for all. In the infamous words of the Roman statesman Cato the Elder, Carthago delenda est. Carthage must be destroyed. Eve, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you, Tristanistan it's a pleasure to be here and in a lovely studio today we've done it in the past we've done online ones via zoom i think the first one we did on the sasanian empire then we've done a few in person with different microphone gear and now we're here we've reached the top even it's great to have you here. Absolutely. Absolutely. You've come a long way, Tristan.

And I mean, yourself too, because in regards to Carthage, you are the one and only person we go to. And the fall of Carthage, this is, it's an epic end to an epic story, isn't it? When Carthage finally meets its demise. It really is. And one of the things I think that's so difficult to get our brains around when we think about Carthage and its end is to try and detach it from almost that epic past, because it is so dramatic. It's so dramatized. And the Romans dramatized it for their own history and their own both, you know, sort of criticism and their glorification. Carthage becomes so important in the Roman history that we almost can't understand what happened

underneath to the Carthaginians. And that's something I'm really interested in. So, it's like there's an epic story of Carthage, and then there's the Carthaginian story of Carthage. And those two things sort of sit side by side that are really, you know, a fascinating way of trying to think about it. You know, who were these people who this happened to? So you've got the Roman lens through which to try and tell the story of Carthage and pick apart almost that Roman perspective of Carthage too, to try and figure out the Carthaginian version of events. Yes, or try to, if we can. I mean, as you know, it's not exactly a simple process because everything

that was sort of written about the Punic Wars by the Carthaginians or by people who say favored the Carthaginians, even if the Carthaginians themselves didn't write it, all of that has really disappeared from our view. And so although some of our sources had access to it, we don't have access to it. So it's really hard to get a picture of that story from North Africa, from the city itself. And I think that's something to always think about is this is projected to us from Rome, but also this was happening to people in a place that was a real city. So do the Romans, do they like to portray Carthage as the big bad enemy of,

particularly for those writing later, of, in their regards, ancient times? Well, I think so. I mean, I thought it isn't that simple even with the Roman sources, is it? Nothing is ever simple with our sources because there was a lot of debate around Carthage. I mean, Carthage was an important culture and an incredibly important civilization in the Mediterranean. And the Roman wars with Carthage were epic. They became the story of the Rome's rise to power and Rome's rise to empire. And so

as Rome articulated its own story, it uses Carthage as a foil. And Carthage becomes so important in Rome's story that really there's this idea to many Romans who are writing about it that without Carthage, the Roman Empire would never have risen. And we know we can deconstruct that. You can deconstruct that. I can. As historians, we know that's not entirely true. But in the narrative of the Romans, it's quite true. So yes, Carthage is absolutely fundamental to people, Romans looking back on their own rise to power. And that's why it's so true. So yes, Carthage is absolutely fundamental to Romans looking back on their own rise to power. And that's why it's so fascinating, but it's also just in itself an incredible epic. An incredible epic. And we'll start, as we always do, with the background. So you've

already mentioned how North Africa, Mediterranean, but just pinpoint exactly whereabouts are we talking with Carthage, the city of Carthage itself? So the city of Carthage sits in the modern country of Tunisia. It's just outside of modern Tunis, and it's on a peninsula that sticks out into the sea on the Bay of Tunis, right at the very, very northern tip of Africa and the center of the Mediterranean. It's not far from Sicily, sort of very connected east and west, north and south. It's in a brilliant position for a city. And of course, once Carthage is destroyed, Tunis becomes

a really important and connected city in the Mediterranean. So that place where Carthage is, is right at the middle of everything. It's a very ideal location, isn't it, for trade, which seems to be a big part of Carthage's story. Because another part of Carthage's story that I think sometimes we overlook because it is so dominated by its wars with Rome, figures like Hannibal and so on, that actually by the time they're fighting the Romans, Carthage has been a city, a wealthy city, for centuries, for hundreds of years. This is a city and a people with a long history and a prestigious history long before the arrival of the Romans on the scene. with a long history and a prestigious history long before the arrival of the Romans on the scene. Absolutely. Carthage was famously founded by the Phoenicians, maybe by a queen named Ido. And they're from the eastern, they're from Lebanon.

They're from Yatyr, the city of Tyre, which was an incredibly old and important city in the Mediterranean as well. It was founded in the 9th century BC. So very, very early on, and it was founded as we think of a colony or a trading outpost maybe both of those things right in that area because Phoenicians were moving to the west of the Mediterranean to collect natural resources and taking these things back to the east of the Mediterranean and Carthage was the perfect position as well as the other city in that region called Utica, both founded by Phoenicians, really as a stop-off place along the north coast of Africa. So you have to think about trade and contact in that period being one of little short hops along the coast rather than big voyages across the sea.

And so Carthage is founded in this period by Tyrians, by people perhaps from the royal family of the city of Tyre. And it grows eventually over that period from the 9th to the 6th century BC into a really important city, a really important and strategic city right in the middle of the Mediterranean. And if we skip forwards to the period that we're talking about today, so these great conflicts with Rome, they're roughly divided into three great wars and the so-called Punic Wars. The so-called Punic Wars, which you can imagine the Carthaginians didn't call them the Punic Wars. Punic is a word that was used by the Romans to describe people from Carthage and from the culture of Carthage. This is a Poenian Punic, isn't it? Yes, yeah. And we don't know exactly whether it's related to the idea of Phoenician, which is related to the Greek word for the color purple because of the purple dye that's extracted

from the Murex shells in the Mediterranean. It was so valuable for trade and commerce, and the Carthaginians were connected to that trade. Or some people argue that it's actually a common name, Punel. We have some evidence for it being a name itself. But nonetheless, Punic is what Romans called the Carthaginians. It's not what the Carthaginians called themselves. And the Punic Wars are the three wars that Roman Carthage fought, first over Sicily, then over really the Western Mediterranean. I would say the Second Punic War is much about the fighting over Spain and Portugal as it is about Hannibal and Italy, if you think about it strategically. The Second Punic War, that's the big one with Hannibal Barker and those big names that we know and crossing the Alps.

Exactly, Hannibal crossed the Alps. And it comes out of Iberia. It comes out of the Iberian Peninsula. That's where the Barchids are And that's where the Romans are really interested in taking that land from Carthage. And so that Second Punic War is enormously important. It's Mediterranean-wide. Of course, it connects and touches every different culture in the Mediterranean. And Carthage loses that war after almost 20 years. And then the third Punic War, which I think we could even call the Carthaginian-Roman Wars or the Roman-Carthaginian Wars in some ways if we want to detract that name, that slanderous name that the Romans called the Carthaginians from it, but we call it Punic because that's what's convention. That happens. It's not really a war. I wouldn't say you can call it an actual because that's what's convention. That happens. It's not really a war.

I wouldn't say you can call it an actual war in the same way that you would call the other two wars. This is really a siege of the city of Carthage that takes place from 149 to 146 BC. And the Carthaginians fight back and fight hard in it. But it's really the Romans laying siege to Carthage with the intention of destroying the city. Well, let's delve into the whole reasons and the context as to why the Romans then decide to besiege the city of Carthage itself. So if we start at the beginning of the 2nd century BC, so this is at the end of the 2nd

Punic War, this Mediterranean-wide super conflict between the main protagonists of the Romans and the Carthaginians, but so many other characters at play, Spanish tribes, Syracuse, Macedon, and all of that. But as you've mentioned, Carthage loses that war. So at the end of the Second Punic War, is Carthage a shadow of its former self? Is it subjugated? What does Carthage and what was once its empire, what does it now look like? So you have to think about what happened at the end of the Second Punic War after the Battle of Zama, where Hannibal is defeated by Scipio, who becomes Scipio Africanus. And that happens in 202. And in 201, the peace treaty is signed. And there's a 50-year peace treaty signed between Carthage and Rome, and it basically means that Carthaginians give up their navy, they give up their elephants, they are disarmed pretty comprehensively. The land that they

still control is connected more or less to what they had before in North Africa, but the winners in the war, in the peace of the Second Punic War are the Romans and the Roman allies, who are a Numidian tribe kingdom called the Massili and their king, who is one of the most fantastic people in all of history, Massanissa. I don't know if you've done a- I haven't done Massanissa, Juba, Jugurtha, all of those kind of Numidian kings I'd love to do one day. Absolutely. I mean, Massanissa has to be one of the greatest characters in any historical period. I mean, he lives to be 90-something years old. He's said to fight in full armor, on bareback, on horse, into his 80s.

He fathers tens of tens of tens of children. He fathers tens of tens of tens of children. And really, he decides one of the moments at the end of the Second Punic War that's so important is when Massanissa, who had been an ally of Carthage, decides to switch sides to the Romans. Do you see the writing on the wall with the Romans? Because they land in Africa. Zama has fought in Carthaginian home territory almost. So he kind of sees that the Romans are- He does, but he actually sees that in Spain in 206 after the Battle of Elipa, when Scipio defeats Hannibal's brothers in Spain, Hannibal's brother Mago and another man whose name is Hasdrubal Gisco. There's a lot of Hasdrubals in this story. I'm just going to make that clear right now. So, Massinissa, after the battle in 206, stops, thinks, we seem, about where things are going. The Carthaginians

now lost all their territory in Spain and makes a treaty with Scipio, who becomes Scipio Africanus. And so, really, he is thinking about what his kingdom is going to be, what his future is. And he sees, yeah, the writing on the wall, as you say. He sees the Romans are going to win this war. And so he makes a deal with Scipio. And it's a very personal connection to Scipio himself, but the Romans too. And he goes back to Africa and wins back the kingdom of his father and really sets himself up as the chief ally of the Romans in North Africa.

And that's really what's really important at the end of the Second Punic War, and that's who the winner is. The winner of the land in much of Africa is Massanissa and his kingdom. He wins against his neighboring Numidian kingdom of Cephax, who's another great character, who has an amazing Carthaginian wife called Sophonisba. And it's all drama and romance and intrigue between these three characters. But at the end of the Second Punic War, Massanissa

wins. He wins all the territory of the Carthaginian ally, the other kingdom, the Massasili. So he has a big kingdom that basically surrounds the territory of Carthage. But it's interesting. At the end of the Second Punic War, Rome doesn't directly control the land in North Africa, which is surrounding the much reduced control of Carthage at that time. It's controlled, however, by a powerful ally. And in its own right, Rome has now very much established dominance, at least over the western Mediterranean, because Carthage has been brought to heel and their powerful ally, Massinissa and the Massili, they're basically just surrounding and keeping an eye on Carthage. Yes. And Carthage can't do anything without Roman approval.

Oh, interesting. So part of the treaty is that Carthage isn't allowed to go to war unless they are approved to do so by the Romans. And so every time over the course from the say 200 BC to the say 150, for those 50 years, every time there's a conflict, every time Massanissa decides to take a little bit more of Carthaginian territory, they go to arbitration with the Romans and the Romans decide every single time for their ally Massanissa.. So it's a long and painful process of international relations in that sense for the Carthaginians. They can't do anything. Massinissa does whatever he wants. He's really dominating and directing that kind of territorial situation. But Carthage

thrives in the period after the second Punic War. So at the same time as it's losing territory to Massanissa, the city itself, from what we see from the archaeology, is unbelievable. It's growing and thriving in this period. It doesn't physically look like a city that's been downtrodden and defeated. You mentioned archaeology there, because we've talked about written sources and Roman sources. I'm guessing figures like Polybius and Livy are big for this period. But also archaeology of Carthage is one. I remember when we did the origins of Carthage earlier this year, and you highlighted how you have to dig really deep to try and learn more about those early stages of Carthage's history. But because this is near the end of Carthaginian Carthage, I'm guessing more archaeology has been discovered that can give you

a bit more of a snapshot as to life, as to the city of Carthage itself at this time. We do. And in fact, most of what we know about the Punic city, the early city of Carthage, comes from this period. It comes from the period just from the Second Punic War until its destruction. And we see there some amazing things going on. So in the physical landscape, they completely rebuild their ports. So when you go to Carthage or if you look at Carthage on a satellite, or you go to Google Earth and you put your Carthage in and you can zoom right down onto this, you can still see the ports that were used in the ancient city. And those ports were built in this period we're talking about. The Punic ports, they're called, they were built in the period just at the, either the dating is not quite precise enough to give us whether it's just at the

end of the Second Punic War or just into the period, the inter-war period, just into the beginning of the second century BC. And that's when these so-called Punic ports, these famous ports were built that are described really clearly by Appian in his sort of eyewitness, the preservation of what seems to be an eyewitness account of the end of Carthage. He's writing later, but he was probably using eyewitness accounts, as you say. Yeah, we think so. And he describes them in amazing detail. So there's these really elaborate ports, a circular military har and a rectangular merchant harbor. And you can see both those waterways still today when you look at Carthage. The decoration was really elaborate.

There were ship sheds. It was all porticoed and set up with beautiful decorated fronts on all the ship sheds and things. So it's really elaborate and incredibly expensive, very, very wealthy sort of statement of the city itself. And that's happening in this period just at the end of the war when we think Carthage should be at its lowest point. So that's something that's quite interesting. It's a bit of a, something people discuss about how and why this was happening. What is it that's going on at Carthage that we don't really understand clearly or isn't explained to us by any ancient source that can give Carthage so much prosperity.

We see other things like the building of beautiful elite houses up on one of the hills next to the Beersa Hill in Carthage as well. So there's evidence of prosperity and wealth, but there's also evidence of political chaos and turmoil. So I think what we have to think about, and I don't necessarily think that would be difficult for us today to understand, is sometimes the physical structure of a city or what it looks like and what's going on doesn't necessarily represent what's happening socially on the ground with the people. I always think about that with my students and I try to, how would we think about the housing crisis today, a thousand years from now? How would we see it in the archaeological record? would we see it in the archaeological record? Would we see it in the archaeological record?

If you just see the great skyscrapers of Canary Wharf or something like that. Exactly. We only see construction. So this is what's really interesting. We're only getting one picture of that. But it's certainly a picture that shows us that there are some definitely wealthy people living in Carthage who are using money from a reorganized perhaps economy, one that isn't spending a lot of money on war, isn't developing a big military industrial complex is what we would call it today.

And they're diverting that into furthering trade in different regions, agricultural wealth. There's all kinds of things that they... I mean, it's a really wealthy place. So they're just focusing on that. There seems to be a restructuring of the economy in the 190s as well. Hannibal, our famous Hannibal, of course, who rides off the battlefield of Zama, chased by Massanissa, goes to his family estates or down near Sus, based by Massinissa, goes to his family estates or down near Sus, modern Sus, Hadrumatum. And he eventually, by 196 BC, becomes one of the chief magistrates in Carthage. So he becomes the suffet of the city of Carthage. Oh, so he stays in Carthage for some time. He stays in Carthage for a number of years, or he stays in Africa for a number of years. He gets

involved in the civic administration of the city. And there's all kinds of interesting details coming out about, you know, they have to pay a reparation to Rome every year. And one of the great details, again, we have about how wealthy the Carthage is in this period is they offer this 50-year period of the peace treaty at the end of the Second Punic War. period of the peace treaty at the end of the Second Punic War, the Carthaginians offered to pay back the whole reparation amount after 10 years in 191 BC. So they say, and the Romans are really pissed, excuse my language, they're really unhappy. The Romans are very unhappy with this moment because it sort of irks them that Carthage is so prosperous that they can pay back all this money so quickly.

And the Romans, of course, are in the midst of all these wars in Greece at the time. And in the Eastern Mediterranean, they've dragged themselves into all kinds of other conquests. Meanwhile, Carthage has been dealing with its own problems. And also the fact that, I mean, still, I know he ultimately will leave and he'll go to the Eastern Mediterranean and continue to fight the Romans. But maybe it's also a bit of a hunch to the face in a kind of way to the Romans that their great enemy Hannibal, who has inflicted so many defeats, killed so many Romans, you know, he's almost the boogeyman in the Roman imagination, hasn't been captured. He was still being able to serve in the city supposedly subjugated by

the Romans for a good few years after the end of the war. Exactly. And he's also, there's a lot of close connections between Romans and Carthaginian families at this time as well. And Scipio Africanus is one of Hannibal's great supporters in the Roman Senate of all things. Yeah, it's quite interesting because of course, as you know, and we all know, I mean, anyone who follows the end of the Roman Republic, it breaks down into a fairly chaotic and factional and quite violent system within the Roman Senate. And so within that Roman Senate, of course, there's different factions and a lot of connection between people in Carthage and Rome. And so Hannibal is basically chased out of Carthage by his own enemies within

the Carthaginian Senate and the enemies that he has in the Roman Senate. But it's not a simple story. There's factional fighting on both sides. But Hannibal accuses some of his fellow Carthaginian elite senators of the corruption, of sending, I think it's debased, Livy says it's debased coinage as part of the reparation payment. There's all kinds of things going on with the currency. And he tries to restructure that economy. And he's basically accused of plotting against the Romans with Rome's great enemy. They've moved on to a new enemy in the Eastern Mediterranean, Antiochus III, the Seleucids.

Yeah, the Seleucid king. And so, Hannibal is accused of plotting with Antiochus. And then the Romans decide they're going to go and capture him and he leaves the country rather than stay and be captured by the Romans and taken back to Rome in chains. And so he goes to Tyre, he goes east, and he becomes sort of an adjunct in the wars between Antiochus and the Romans. But that period, I mean, back to what's happening in Carthage, it's certainly that period where we have political chaos, obviously, but we have economic prosperity. One of the other arguments is that the Carthaginians reorient their trading to really focus on Africa and on North Africa and the Ptolemaic kingdoms. That's the other successor kingdom in Egypt. That's right. That's still pretty prominent at this time. Yeah, prominent and still wealthy, very, very wealthy. There's a huge growth in connectivity across the Mediterranean as well, and Carthage is taking advantage of that. That's

where a lot of the prosperity comes from. There's still a node on that route. I can imagine going from somewhere, let's say, Gadir, Cadiz, all the way along the African coast, Balearic Islands, Carthage, Cyrene, of course, just a bit as well, and then ultimately Alexandria, so you can see that great connection. Then, of of course syracuse and the roman world as well i mean let's move on so we've highlighted the context second century bc carthage even though subjugated by rome basically economically really prosperous but as the decades go on, how do things start to deteriorate, or at least, let's say, more hostility starts becoming apparent between Carthage and the Romans? So we go to the 150s BC. And in the 150s BC, so imagine what's happening, and you have to think

about it. There's a peace treaty that was signed in 201 BC between Rome and Carthage. So that peace treaty is going to end in 151 BC, isn't it? And so everybody knows this. It's not a secret, obviously. Massinissa knows this, the Carthaginians knows this, the Romans know this. And in preparation- So Massinissa is still alive at this point? Yes, of course. Massinissa and the Massili is still alive, and he's still really directing his territory as a king. He sent his sons to Greece to be educated. He makes a dedication to a temple on Delos in the Mediterranean. He's this Mediterranean-wide man who is a Numidian warrior at his essence, or the word actually today in North Africa for the Numidians or the Libyans,

the Berbers as they have been called, it's Amazigh, is what the people who are from Algeria call the indigenous people. And he is very much this man of that culture who's also Punic and Greek. And he really is the articulation of a sort of independent North African kingdom in this period. And this is what we call in international relations, secondary state formation. And it's the way that the Numidian kingdoms, when they've interacted with the Greeks and the Romans and the Carthaginians, of course, have taken on the attributes of rulership and leadership and that reflects themselves and also all their sort of interactions too. And it's really been, they've defined themselves in the face of these bigger powers.

And so that's Massinissa, Massinissa's kingdom. He's still going strong, still capturing bits of land. And of course, the Romans still then have to be called in every time there's a conflict on the borders or a conflict over land. And that's how this sort of happens. there's a conflict on the borders or a conflict over land. And that's how this sort of happens. One of the most famous, iconic moments of this whole event is when the Roman senator Cato goes to Carthage in the process of one of these arbitrations in 153 BC. And Cato gets to Carthage and he's completely shocked by what he sees. He can't believe this great city, all these people from all over the world, they're multicultural, prosperous,

big markets. And he's a real traditional Romanist in the sense that he believes in Rome's sort of moral superiority because Rome's traditional origins are as farmers. He's a farmer. He writes about agriculture. We would consider him a sort of ultra-conservative politician who believes in the traditions of the Roman Republic and wants to uphold these. Even if they don't exist anymore. In his mind, they still exist. And so he's very much this sort of traditionalist and belongs to that faction within the Roman Senate that's very hostile to Carthage. And he goes on this embassy to negotiate between the Numidians and the Carthaginians, and he's shocked by Carthage. He's absolutely blown away by how prosperous it is. And he feels and understands, like everybody does, that in two years' time, Carthage. He's absolutely blown away by how prosperous it is. And he feels and understands,

like everybody does, that in two years' time, Carthage is going to be freed of its obligations to Rome. They're going to be completely free to operate however they want. And he sees a city that is rearming itself, that it's getting ready for this moment to operate again in the Mediterranean. So Cato's pretty upset by this moment, we should say, and he goes back to Rome. He feels threatened almost. Does he feel threatened? I think possibly he does. Again, this is a moment that's so cloaked in rhetoric and legend and epic stories and Roman narrative, it's really hard to understand

exactly. But I would say that he's one of that old school who remembers Hannibal's, or very close, if he doesn't remember it himself, he knows that his family does and the impact of it. And I think that he feels threatened, perhaps in a way that is almost psychological sort of threat rather than the reality. Rome is so powerful at this point, it's very unlikely that Carthage could ever challenge it. But nonetheless, it's almost a deep psychological threat that he feels. And so he goes back to Rome and he stands in the Roman Senate and he sort of filibusters. He famously, endlessly says at the end of every speech that he gives in the Senate at Rome, Carthago delenda est, Carthage must be destroyed. And this becomes

one of the famous moments of the history of the Punic Wars, of Carthage's existence, of the Roman rise to power. But also what's interesting, he's not universally approved of in this moment. And he also does a little ploy as well. I forgot about the little ploy he does. So not only does he say, Carthago de Lenda, as Carthage must be destroyed, but he brings with him some figs into the Senate house, wrapped in his toga, and he famously lets them loose onto the floor of the Senate. And they're these big, fat, juicy figs. And he says, I've just brought these from Carthage, like sort of trying to emphasize how close Carthage is to Rome. Carthage is quite far from Rome and it's a few days sail. So it's unlikely those figs really came from Carthage itself because I think people have done the analysis of how long the figs would last. But nonetheless, the point being made is that Carthage

is close, Carthage is a threat, and we must destroy it. And that's one faction in the Roman Senate. And Cato absolutely is the icon of that faction. I think that story just tells me, it just shows you the extreme, always psychotic nature of Cato the Elder in a weird kind of way. In the fact that he's jealous of Carthaginian prosperity, he's worried of it and said, please correct me if I'm wrong. But it always just feels like the fall of Carthage, if we can link it to Cato the Elder and this famous story of him always saying Carthage must be destroyed. by this very extreme Roman politician determined to see the fall of a prosperous city and the demise of thousands of people who were prospering or who were living in the city at that time.

When you think of it that way, you can't help but picture, but paint Cato the Elder as this great villain of ancient history. Well, exactly. A villain, unless you want to argue the other side, which I don't generally, but I'm willing to here, is that, of course, his interest is purely Roman. And Rome's interests here are about control and about power in the Mediterranean. Rome is in control. And in some ways, he's very practical. He's looking at absolute control of the whole Mediterranean by Rome. He sees the reality that once an independent, free Carthage is almost impossible to fit into that vision of Rome's Mediterranean, isn't it? And I think there's both sides. I mean, at one point, I think you have to

see him as that almost psychotic anti-Carthaginian. But this is what I think is so interesting and so complex and real as well about what's happening in the Roman Senate is there are very many different views here on Carthage and not everybody feels hostile to the Carthaginians. And certainly not everybody feels that destroying Carthage is the answer. And that's something I think that we know a little bit about. We know that the great nemesis of Cato in the Senate, his name was Scipio Nasica. I mean, of course, this is a story of many Hasdrubals and many Scipios. This is Scipio Nasica. Scipio Nasica in the Senate, every single time he stood up to talk in the same period

said Carthage must be saved. So we have Carthage must be destroyed and Carthage must be saved going on in the same period said Carthage must be saved. So we have Carthage must be destroyed and Carthage must be saved going on in the Roman Senate at this point. And that sort of reflects perhaps two things. I think one is a great story and a good narrative, but the other, the underlying issues around what Rome was going to become and that it hadn't been set in the minds of the Romans. The Romans were still in the process of building their empire and conquering the world, the known world as we call it. So I think it's really interesting to understand that there's probably five or ten different views on this. But Scipio Nasica's view was not that he thought Carthage

should be allowed to prosper perhaps independently, but his was more of a moral view that Carthage stands as a testament to Roman domination and Roman resilience, and that they were able to fight back in the Second Punic War, that saving Carthage would save Rome's almost moral soul, its soul, its spirit, and it would keep it honest, that Carthage would keep Rome honest. And of course, that's kind of maybe a bit of hindsight in the history, because we know what happens to the Roman Republic. We know it falls apart and, you know, ends up in a massive civil war. But it is interesting how you've highlighted how the question of what to do with Carthage really becomes part of the Roman mindset. And it's had two different fixated views and say maybe more views as well.

But we only have those kind of saved or destroyed mindsets so how do we get from this great debate in the senate about what are we going to do with thriving Carthage to ultimately I guess Cato the Elder and his party getting their way and then deciding to fight the Carthaginians once again. Yeah. And again, we get here via Massanissa. We have the peace treaty coming to an end. We have the Carthaginians arming themselves. We have a conflict between the Numidians, the Massili, and Carthage. And we have a battle set. We don't know exactly where, somewhere perhaps near the border between what modern Tunisia and Algeria is. And the Carthaginians are led into battle. And Massanissa, we have a great scene where Scipio, known as Aemilianus, so a new Scipio, Scipio Aemilianus, he is in Iberia

fighting as a legate for Lucullus, one of the Roman consuls, and he is sent to Massinissa in 151-150 to get elephants to help him in the battles in Iberia. And so Scipio comes to the battle scene and we have this described, we think of course, by Polyius, who Scipio Aemilianus was the patron of the Greek historian. So he could have been there with Scipio Aemilianus, do we think? We don't know if he's there with Scipio Aemilianus. We certainly know that Scipio Aemilianus narrated this story to Polybius and that Appian preserves the parts of this story that are not preserved in Polybius. But we know that Scipio goes and he gets to watch this battle between the Carthaginians and the Numidians. And he describes,

you know, Massanissa suiting up in his armor and setting Scipio up high to watch the fighting. And it's a bit of a stalemate, but the fighting goes on. Scipio, you know, this is just a little sideshow at this point. Scipio, Melianus gets his elephants and leaves. That to me is so interesting. I really want to know more about that scene. Where are the elephants coming from? Who's taken over the elephant industry in North Africa? All of these unanswered questions. But nonetheless, we go forward. Massanissa ends up encircling the Carthaginian camp. It's hot. It's summer. He basically starves them out.

The descriptions are horrific where the Carthaginian soldiers are eating their shields. You know, the shields are made with wood frames and leather. So they're burning the wood in their shields and eating the leather. There's no food. They're sick. They had all sorts of diseases. Romans show up, not Scipio, to negotiate. And finally, they give up the Carthaginians in this battle scene, and they leave all their armor in the camp.

They basically go out just wearing tunics. And when they leave the camp, the Numidians charge on them and slaughter them. And hardly any Carthaginian soldiers make it back to Carthage. So Carthage's first foray into war since the second Punicor is unmitigated disaster. You'd think they would have just retreated entirely from the whole idea. But nonetheless, that's what happens. And this then instigates a Roman delegation coming again to negotiate with the Carthaginians. By this point, it's pretty much already been decided that the Romans are going to destroy Carthage. We know this by the series of demands that the Romans place on the Carthaginians at this point. So Cato the Elder has by this point, he's managed to convince enough of the Senate basically to get behind him. Yeah, and he's died. He's died. I'm sure by this point. He does not see Carthage fall. I'm not even sure he sees the beginning of the war in 149. His faction,

at least. The war hawks are now in control. Absolutely. Yeah. The faction that supported Cato and the idea of destroying Carthage are very much in control. And we know this by three things happen. The Romans demand, first of all, that the Carthaginians send 300 of their children to Lilibeum, which is modern Marsala in Sicily and is the Roman capital at the time of the province of Sicily, as hostages. So the Romans demand hostages, 300 children. And the scene in Appian is absolutely extraordinary where these children, 300 children of the elite families of Carthage, are gathered together in the ports and put on a ship and taken across to Sicily. And the mothers are chaining themselves to the ships. They're grabbing the soldiers who are taking their children. Some of them swim out after their children swim into the sea following these ships. So it's a terrible scene

in the port of Carthage of familial devastation. It's kind of this idea that they know they'll never see these children again. It's quite amazing. So 300 children go to Lilibam and are sent to Rome. The Romans then come to North Africa, a Roman consul, Censerinus, the army, they come and they have a Carthaginian delegation come out to meet them. They're near north of Carthage, near the city of Utica is where the Romans are based. So a Carthaginian delegation goes out to meet the Roman consul. And the Roman consul says, okay, we have 300 of your children as hostages. We also need you to completely disarm. So we need you to basically give up every weapon you have in the city.

It's basically conditions that the Carthaginians can't accept. Well, they do it. They do this. We're told they do this. So they say, yes, we will. So they pile up all their weapons. Again, the descriptions are amazing. The thousands of things they've managed to put together.

And they haul those out to the camp, the Roman camp. And the Romans are like, okay, now we need to do one more thing. We need you and all the people in Carthage to leave the city because we're going to burn it to the ground. They tell the Carthaginians they must abandon their city, their city that they've lived in for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, their family, origins, everything, their gods especially. And they tell them they must move basically 15 kilometers inland and never again live on the sea. And the delegation goes back to Carthage at this point. And the Carthaginians are like, no, we're not going to do this.

So that's basically when the war actually starts, the siege of the city, the beginning of the end of the actual city. But the Romans were going to destroy the city either way. They just weren't going to necessarily kill all the Carthaginians. And that bargain, if you think about it, was very much save yourselves if you want to, move away from the coast. And so the Carthaginians don't do that. They stay and fight for their city, for their gods, for their religion, for their tradition, for their culture, for all those things that you might imagine you would do, I guess. It's a really interesting and difficult thing to try and even picture what that means. I mean, with those conditions, is it unacceptable, particularly that third one? I thought the second one would have been pretty unacceptable, but interesting that, as you said, it was how

drastic the situation already was for the Carthaginians. But the Romans had their mindset on burning the city to the ground and the Carthaginians have said no. So conflict is coming. How long does it take for the Romans to get all their siege works up, their ships, their armies? I'm guessing it'll be a fleet and an army that they've now got the manpower and the resources to attack Carthage by sea and by land. How long does it take for them to set up this great siege of Carthage? It happens pretty quickly. I mean, it goes from 149 when they move. They wait for quite a while.

They wait for a number of months because they can't believe the Carthaginians are not going to abandon their city. I just think it's fascinating. They sort of sit around thinking, oh, yeah, they're bound to do it. They're not. It's a deluded mindset in a way. Well, it is. I know. it's fascinating. They sort of sit around thinking, oh, yeah, they're bound to do it. They're not. It's a muted mindset in a way. Well, it is. I know. It really is.

It's almost there's something disrespectful about the culture and the people and their connection to who they are, their identity. Anyway, so they wait a few months and then they realize, okay, well, that's not going to be a good thing. So they start to move basically after that. They have been building up their army at their base near Utica, their navy as well. And they go to lay siege. But it's not a simple story to lay siege to Carthage in any way. It's incredibly well defended, not only with a triple land wall across the peninsula, but the sea walls as well. And Carthage has a navy, has ships. It doesn't necessarily have a navy. And the Carth has a navy, has ships. It doesn't necessarily have a

navy. And the Carthaginians, from the moment they decide they're not leaving their city, start this incredible work effort where it's described that women, children, everybody is involved in making new weapons and building up the defenses and making the city as defensible as possible. And also then, it's not just Carthage itself as a city inside the walls, but there's a hinterland that the Romans have to deal with. The siege starts in 149, basically, and at the start of the season. But it's not a straightforward siege in that, you know, there's part of the wall is taken, and then the Carthaginians fight them back. The Romans attack. At night, Carthage fixes the wall, the Carthaginians.

There's all kinds of what seems to be sort of a moment of hope in the countryside where Carthage's fight back is so resilient that people are quite inspired by it in the other parts of the territory. So they rebel. There's armies that are operating in the city and outside of the city as well. So there's a Carthaginian army that's operating in the city and outside of the city as well. So there's a Carthaginian army that's operating in the countryside. There's two leaders, one I'm going to tell you about, another Hasdrubal, and also somebody named Famius, the leader of the sort of defense inside the city is actually a grandson of Massanissa. So it's one of Massanissa's daughters had been married to a Carthaginian man. His name is Hasdrubal II, I'm afraid.

Yeah, so there's a lot going on. It's not a simple like just rock up, set up some siege engines and take the city. Well, it takes three years, of course. And there's a lot of disagreement going on in Rome. There seems to be some criticism of the initial consuls. And basically, it isn't until 147 when Scipio Aemilianus, the one who had previously come to get the elephants, takes control of the military effort in Africa that the siege in earnest is effective enough to take the city. So the Carthaginians put up an incredible

defense. And I mean, how does the city fall? Is it an attack by sea or by land into the harbors or is it just overwhelmed over time? Well, no, it's very clear that what happens is that everybody seems to have understood that where the land wall met the harbor wall is the place where the walls were the weakest. And that had been for a long time the focus of the Roman efforts. The Romans had actually blocked the entrance to the Carthaginian port at one point, and then the Carthaginians dug a new entrance to their ports to allow food to come into the city. We know there's other ships in the harbor, in the bay as well, ships from other parts of the whole Mediterranean, allies fighting on other sides. So what happens is it's in the spring, it's Scipio Aemilianus' troops take the harbor wall. Eventually, that is where it starts. And that's what happens is one night they manage to break through the harbor wall and take the port.

And from the port that leads directly to the marketplace, to the Agora. Agora. And from the marketplace then, they start to fight their way through all the way up the hill to the top of the city of Carthage to the Bursa Hill. But it's brutal. It's such an incredible battle. The Carthaginians are fighting every step of the way. The Romans are throwing everything they have at this. There is incredible mayhem. There's death, destruction, burning. There's looting. We have this great description of Scipio's troops looting the temple, what the Greeks call the Temple of Apollo. We think it's Reshep, which is the Carthaginian god, Reshep. And there's a golden statue of the god inside the temple that the soldiers loot.

So this all happens down in the marketplace in the port. that the soldiers loot. So this all happens down in the marketplace in the port. And then it's basically everyone in Carthage has retreated up to the citadel, to the Bersa Hill, and the Romans have to fight their way up the streets of Carthage to get to the top of the hill. And Carthage is a city that has very tall buildings. There's a building style that's called African building, opus africanum in Latin. It was a kind of building that has been used for hundreds of years in Carthage and it allows for very tall buildings. So the buildings leading up the hill are like six or seven stories high. Throwing stones down and javelins.

And the Romans take those buildings one by one. They take one, they go up to the rooftop, they throw planks over to the next building. So Carthage is a packed, busy city, and they're throwing the people they find in these houses into the ground. They're killing everyone. There's fire raging through the city. And as the Roman troops sort of fight their way through, Scipio is having to change them because the exhaustion, the trauma they're facing, because they're killing grandmothers and children. There's people hiding out in their houses, as you can imagine, trying to save themselves. And buildings are falling, and they're falling with them. And the Romans send in what they call sweepers to clean the dead bodies

out of the streets, to clear the way for more troops, to get themselves up to the top of the Bersa Hill, where the last of the Carthaginians have held out. So it's a really dramatic scene. It's incredibly vividly described by Appian. And I mean, it's really something that to get a sense of what it was like to be in a battle like that. To me, it's one of the most incredible passages in any piece of ancient literature. I'm sure I speak for the audience as well.

This is just mesmerizing. It is. I mean, Joseph as well, sitting here, our assistant producer, we're just both completely engulfed in this story because I didn't realize there was so much detail to this terrifying. I mean, this is a fall of a city in the most dramatic terms. I'm guessing for those last few who get right to the top of the Bursa Hill, it's almost it's the last stand on top of the Acropolis, isn't it? And it doesn't end well for them. Suicide or fight to the death?

A little of everything. And there's a great scene, the last scene, my favorite scene as well. The last moment of ancient Carthage is a woman, just like the very, very beginning of Carthage is with Dido, a queen on the Bursa Hill who also commits suicide in the legend. The woman who is on the top of the ramparts of the temple on the top of the Bursa Hill, we don't know her name. Her name is the wife of Hasdrubal. And she's the wife of the leader of the defense of the city. And she is standing on the roof of the temple.

And all of the last of the holdouts are within the enclosure of the temple on the top of the Bursa Hill. And her husband and many other Carthaginians have given themselves up. They've given themselves up to Scipio. They've actually said, okay, like enough, you know, waved the white flag and said, okay, if we now surrender, will we survive? And he says, yes, you know, they'll be paraded in Roman chains and sold into slavery, but nonetheless, they're going to survive. But Hasdrubal's wife holds out and she's at the top of the temple looking down and she sees that her husband has abandoned her and her children and these, you know, the last fighters of Carthage. And she berates him. There's this amazing scene where she berates her husband who's kneeling at

Scipio's feet. And she tells him, you know, you have abandoned your family. You have abandoned the gods of the city. You've abandoned us completely. And then she commits suicide. She kills her children. She commits suicide, and she hurls herself into the flaming ruins of Carthage. And that's the end of the city, and that's the end of the story. It's pretty extraordinary. It's an amazing tale. It's absolutely that we have it preserved, that it is a drama. And we have to be a little bit suspicious that much of this is dramatized by later Romans to make it even a drama. And we have to be a little bit suspicious that much of this is dramatized by later Romans to make it even more epic. But that it's so vivid and we have such sympathy for

this Carthaginians in this story, to me, sort of shows there's an element of grains of truth in it all. Well, you mentioned grains there, so we'll get back to that in a second. But I must admit, I've been quite anti-Roman in this chat today. And we've done lots of episodes on the ancients, on the Romans. I love the Romans, but I just do feel for this episode, it's justified. Because this does feel like one of Rome's darkest hours. With the whole story and the detail that survived and the motives behind it and all of that. And with what happens next.

So they destroy the city and do they then sort the earth of Carthage so that nothing will grow again there? No. Although that's a great, one of the great stories of history is that tale. No, they don't. But for a long time, up until the 1980s, that's what everybody believed. It was completely accepted that Carthage was sown with salt, but actually it was never sown with salt. It was consecrated. So that means that there was a curse placed on Carthage and on anyone who lived there. The sowing with salt episode seems to have worked its way into the story in the Middle Ages. And there's an article written, I can't remember by whom, but if anybody's interested, you can get in touch with me.

And it was written in the 80s and it traces this story back to where the sowing of salt comes from. But nonetheless, the city was consecrated. It meant that it was cursed. You weren't allowed to settle on the city itself. And it was burnt for six days. It was left there, basically, almost like a testament, a monument on the ocean, on the side of the sea of Roman power. To me, it was almost

like a warning for a long time of anyone who threatened Rome. And it sat there like that for quite a long time. There's a story later, isn't it? Marius in the first civil war, and when he's out of Rome, he's in North Africa and there's that famous painting as well. And it's just him pensively thinking amidst the ruins of Carthage. Isn't it amazing? And this is this idea we have. Now we know that there are attempts to resettle Carthage quite quickly after the destruction. Gaius Gracchus settles- Mid-second century. Yeah, 122, I think it is. He settles the first colony there, but it doesn't take hold. I mean, some people do go and Romans are settling in North Africa. They're settling in Africa in this territory, but on the city of Carthage itself,

there's this sort of blanket curse. And so when Marius is fleeing Sulla, he ends up in Carthage. And that picture to me of this idea of the great general and these great generals of the Roman Republic who are destroying each other in civil war amongst the ruins of Carthage and the destruction of that city is so many layers of Roman ideas of what their own destruction, which really is. I mean, the civil wars destroy Rome, don't they? They allow the rise of an empire, but they destroy the Roman Republic. And there's this nice connection there, I think. There's also a great story of Pompey the Great's troops, also in the civil wars, who kind of go wild in Carthage and dig around looking for lost treasure and things like that. There must be all these rumors about the treasure of Carthage and this

abandoned city and these ruins on the coast and everything. So it's not really until Julius Caesar that we get the beginning of a new Roman colony founded officially on the place that Carthage once was. I think that in the story that that re-rise of Carthage, Roman Carthage, is another episode in itself because there is so much and becomes so important in late antiquity, doesn't it? A Christian center as well, is it? Christian center, but also to me, there's this idea of how does the old Carthage live on in the new Carthage and what is it? How did the residues of the Carthaginians and the Punic people of North Africa, how did they actually survive or do they survive at all in this period? So yeah, the

Carthage itself, of course, becomes a great Roman city, one of the second or third biggest in the Roman Empire, center, as you say, for Christianity. A fleet is put there in the second century AD. And yeah, it really becomes an important city in the Vandal Kingdom. It's the jewel of the Vandal Kingdom as well. That's right, yeah. Given the destructive end of Carthage, and you've already talked about the archaeology earlier, I mean, to end it on, is it quite exciting for the future? Archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Carthage, because of how destructive it was, finding burnt layers, finding evidence of the destruction of this great, horrific, infamous event. 146 BC is one of the worst years in ancient history,

in my opinion. One of the most dire for the legacy of Rome because obviously you've got the destruction of Corinth in the same year. But you can imagine the archaeological evidence still in the ground there. There must still be so much to find from this period or at least more traces of this great destruction of one of the greatest cities of the ancient Mediterranean world. Yes, definitely. When you dig at Carthage, everybody finds that layer. There's a big burn layer across all excavations from this period. You know, when you've reached the bottom of the Roman occupation drove these huge brick pylons that you can see today the archaeology is visible today and so in amongst massive brick pylons where they laid a platform that they found at their forum on we have punic houses underneath there with their bathtubs and

their sophisticated uh you know drainage systems and all that sort of stuff in and amongst this sort of epic roman construction so yeah the archaeology for that is really it's very clear I mean the archaeology of Carthage is very complicated because it is a thriving suburb of the modern city of Tunis it's a great place to live it always was a great place to live people love living there it really is a wonderful place to visit so the archaeology is a little bit piecemeal it's not something that's necessarily presenting itself like Athens or Rome's presents because it's done in sort of different areas. There's an archaeological park and you can go and see things and they're redoing the museum at the top of the Bersa Hill right now. So that'll be really great once they rebuild that museum and

the artifacts that are found at Carthage are great. So the museum collection is fantastic. There we go. Well, Eve, we're going to wrap it up there. This has been absolutely brilliant. And you have over the course of your career, you've written a number of books. You've done one on Hannibal, quite a lot on the Sasanians as well, another topic we've covered in quite a few episodes. And you've also got another Carthage book coming out, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. So I have myself and Sandra Bingham, I have a book on the archaeology of Carthage that's come out in July of this year with Bloomsbury. And that's just about the archaeological history. So how and why when you go to Carthage, it's really useful, say, if you were going to go to the city and have a look around to read that because it tells you

how the archaeology site formed. And then I've just almost finished a new history of Carthage that's going to be published next summer, hopefully. So that's the plan for that too. So yeah, Carthage, I'm spending a lot of time with the Carthaginians. Can't wait. We'll get you back for more Carthaginians and Sasanians in time, I've got no doubt. But it just goes me to say, from this lovely Spotify studio, Eve, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today. Thank you, Tristan. A pleasure. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Eve MacDonald brilliantly talking through the story,

the destructive story of the fall of Carthage. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. As mentioned at the beginning, I must say that is one of my favourite interviews to date. Eve is such a brilliant speaker and the story of the fall of Carthage, it is brutal yet absolutely extraordinary. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. And don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com slash subscribe. And as a special gift, you can also get 50% off your first three months

when you use code ANCIENTS at checkout. That's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.