The Destruction of Carthage

Carthage was once a rival with Rome for control of the shipping and trade on the Mediterranean Sea.  The two city states engaged in three major wars to decide preeminence.  These are known by Historians as The Punic Wars.  In the Third Punic War, Carthage was absolutely and completely destroyed.  Rome encircled the city.   Over a period of time, the city was destroyed block by block by block.  This was done by burning the buildings, reducing them to rubble, and killing any inhabitants that tried to escape.  Of the original estimated population of  one million inhabitants, only 50,000 survived to be sold into slavery.

The process of destruction took several years and was presided over by Scipio Africanus the Younger.  At one point, legend has it, one of his assistants saw him crying on the battlefield and asked him why.  This was his reply: "Because I know that one day the order will be given to burn and destroy Rome and the order will be carried out as thoroughly and efficiently as we are doing here today."

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The Carthaginians were a Phoenician Colony and a descendant of the Phoenician culture of Tyre, Philistine and Phoenicia itself.  The Carthaginians practiced infanticide and human sacrifice to please their Gods.  The graveyards of sacrificial remains have been found by archaeologists today.

At one point early in the Third Punic War, the Queen of Carthage confronted her husband at his absolute failure to defeat the Romans.  In an completely "blind rage" she threw her four children into the sacred sacrificial fire and then leaped into the flames herself, to her own fiery death.

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After the defeat of Carthage, salt was plowed into the farm fields so that nobody could live in the city ever again.  The fields remain barren to this day.

The destruction of Carthage was so complete that not a single complete text of the language remains.  The inscriptions found on the remaining sculptures and ruins are indecipherable, because there are so few of them.  The Carthaginian language remains unknown and indecipherable to this present age.

Nothing remains of the culture of Carthage today.  Not a single story, legend, song, poem, or nursery rhyme.   It has all vanished into timeless silence and all we know is what we can learn from the stories of Rome and a few carved rocks that are left in the desert.

copyright (c) 2017

William Schaeffer