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146 BCEPrimary source · 3 sourcesWell documented

Cato Ended Every Senate Speech the Same Way Until Rome Finally Erased Carthage

On the timeline · around 146 BCE · The RepublicThe RepublicThe PrincipateCato Ended Every Senate Speech the Same Way Until Rome Finally Erased Carthage250 BCE225 BCE200 BCE175 BCE150 BCE125 BCE100 BCE75 BCE50 BCE

What happened

By the mid-2nd century BCE, Carthage had rebuilt itself into a prosperous trading city but posed no serious military threat to Rome. The senator Cato the Elder, who had visited Carthage and seen its recovered wealth firsthand, is recorded by Plutarch as ending his remarks in the Senate on any subject whatsoever with the same line, that in his opinion Carthage must be destroyed. When Carthage went to war against neighboring Numidia in 150 BCE without Roman permission, technically violating its Zama peace treaty, Rome used it as grounds to declare war a third time. Roman forces besieged the city for roughly three years, until Scipio Aemilianus took command in 147 BCE, sealed off Carthage's harbor, and forced his way into the city through prolonged, brutal street fighting into the spring of 146 BCE.

Why it matters

Carthage was not simply defeated, it was erased as a political entity. The city was burned to the ground, its surviving population was killed or sold into slavery, and Rome annexed its territory as a new Roman province called Africa. This closes the 118-year arc that began with a dispute over a Sicilian mercenary garrison in 264 BCE: Rome ends the story as the unrivaled power of the western Mediterranean with Carthage no longer existing as a rival state at all.

How we know

Cato's habitual Senate refrain comes from Plutarch's Life of Cato the Elder, which also records his Senate rival Scipio Nasica's opposite refrain that Carthage should be spared, preserved through the LacusCurtius classics archive. The siege and destruction are described in World History Encyclopedia's articles on the Third Punic War and on Carthage itself, both of which explicitly note that the popular story of Rome sowing salt into the ruined city's earth has no basis in the ancient sources and is a later invented legend, not a documented Roman act.

Sources

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Part of a timelineAncient Rome30 events · From a legendary fratricide on the Palatine Hill to a teenage emperor's quiet deposition twelve centuries later, told through the battles, plagues, and one bridge-crossing that ended a republic.View all →
Cato Ended Every Senate Speech the Same Way Until Rome Finally Erased Carthage · Ancient Rome · SourcedStory