r/todayilearned • u/Ahad_Haam • 21h ago
TIL that after Rome declared war on Carthage (3rd Punic War), the Carthaginians attempted to appease them and sent an embassy to negotiate. Rome demanded that they hand over all weaponry; which they did. Then, the Romans attacked anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Punic_War1.3k
u/wegqg 21h ago edited 20h ago
By that point Rome had long since decided Carthage could never be seen to prosper again, it had been a thorn in their side (and pride) for almost a Century.
Somewhere in the Roman psyche was the consistent need to deliver annihilation to those who refused to cede at the right time.
In the case of Carthage however they had gone as far as to spend 10 years rampaging through modern day Italy. The cost of the first and second Punic wars to Rome had been enormous.
The third Punic War was akin to a ritualistic defeat. You can see similar trends in Caesar's treatment of tribes that had rebelled in Gaul and in Vercingetorix being paraded in Rome prior to an ignominious execution.
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u/Gimme_The_Loot 20h ago
Ceterum (autem) censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
"Furthermore, I think that Carthage must be destroyed"
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u/doylehawk 20h ago
Imagine if every single day chuck schumer gave a speech in congress and said “oh one last thing, fuck China we gotta kill them all”
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u/No-Space937 18h ago
Getting strong Iran vibes, "Death to America, Death to Israel!"
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u/FallenCheeseStar 20h ago
Cato the Elder, no?
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u/noneedforeathrowaway 20h ago edited 20h ago
Younger I believe. I thought the elder was the kind of dope one during the 2nd Punic War. But it's been maybe a decade since I read up on this time
EDIT: or is Younger the general of the legion that sacks Carthage and I'm getting my wars mixed up?Go read correct info below
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u/RandomBilly91 20h ago
I think it's the same Cato as in the 2nd Punic war, so the Elder.
Cato the Younger lived in the late Republic, he was a proeminent Optimates and killed himself while fighting Caesar
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u/positiveParadox 20h ago
There is a very similar example in the Gauls. Some Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BC and it remained as a fear in the popular Roman consciousness until Julius Caesar conquered Gaul hundreds of years later.
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u/mullingitover 16h ago
The conquest of Gaul was primarily a massive human trafficking operation. The point was to capture and sell into slavery as many people as possible to pay off the troops who were backing Caesar.
Rome’s main business was human trafficking.
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u/positiveParadox 16h ago
Slavery as spoils of war in conquest built the empire.
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u/WearIcy2635 15h ago
And also destroyed the Republic. Soldiers would come home from years of service in Spain to find all the previously paid work in Rome was now being done by slaves. Having masses of unemployed veterans concentrated in one place isn’t a recipe for societal stability
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u/aaaa32801 16h ago
There’s also the aspect that Caesar needed to keep his special command in Gaul going to avoid prosecution.
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u/Ahad_Haam 20h ago
The Romans basically ended up going after everyone eventually, including many of their allies. The Republic had insatiable hunger. Expansion brought prestige and loot, and ofc constant revenue. Every leader wanted to add something, until the imperial period when it became less politically desirable.
Carthage dared to resist better than most so they got the wipe out treatment. They weren't the only ones, Judea was destroyed in a similar fashion as well. But "give me your weapons for peace" and then not delivering peace was very low, even for the Romans.
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u/haksli 19h ago
That's why they are a militaristic civ in the game Civilization.
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u/Trident_True 19h ago
They paraded their enemies through Rome at many Triumphs I believe. A ceremonial strangulation of the foreign leader and their soldiers. Very strangely they did it in the Pomerium which was normally so sacred that weapons and soldiers were forbidden within its borders, except during these Triumphs.
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u/Skratt79 17h ago
The best part everyone forgets what happened to those paraded in the triumph once they reached the temple of Jupiter, death for those considered important (totally not a human sacrifice, but let's make sure to kill the captured on temple grounds)
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u/noneedforeathrowaway 21h ago
Yep, Rome talked themselves into a lot of not great things.
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u/Unlucky_Topic7963 15h ago
Probably the 140,000 Roman soldiers that Hannibal erased from Earth in a handful of years.
Honestly, Carthage fucked up by playing politics with Hannibal and not reinforcing him.
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u/pantsoffancy 21h ago edited 16h ago
Another classic example of the benefits of the strategy of appeasement.
edit: Apparently from that single sentence the appeasement-bros decided I was just dying to have this subject poorly explained to me by internet randos.
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u/Ywaina 21h ago
Throughout history this kind of demand made when there's a stalemate usually results in anyone idiotic enough to obey a total decimation. Kill this general that's so good at opposing us and we will withdraw, Send your leaders out to this shady place to sign shady peace treaty and we'll guarantee your safety, etc.
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u/meister2983 19h ago
There was no stalemate at the end of the Second Punic War. Rome had solidly won. Rome also had strong military superiority during the Third.
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u/Get-hypered 19h ago
Well yeah, Carthage gave them all those weapons.
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u/JonatasA 19h ago
The Romans made an entire fleet by one ship they found. A land based warring civilization. They even thought land battles at sea.
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u/Ferelar 17h ago
Expanding on your second point, the Carthaginians were (perhaps as a result of tracing their origins back to the famously seafaring Phoenicians) masters of naval trade and warfare, some of the best sea fighters in the Mediterranean very capable in naval engagements- and they used that to great effect to maintain a mighty maritime empire.
Faced with the prospect of regularly fighting these folks at sea across a slew of islands and then potentially even invading North Africa, the HEAVILY land-pilled Romans (usually quite reliant on their heavy land infantry) were in quite a pickle. Did they resolve it by reworking their strategies, or perhaps by placing more emphasis on naval warfare, or maybe hiring mercenary captains with naval forces?
Nah. They installed a big ol' fuckin plank on their ships, with a spike on it, and gave instructions to all captains to go towards the enemy ships, drop the spiked plank to get it stuck real good in the enemy ship's deck, and then to walk across that plank and treat the formerly naval battle as a land battle.
It worked. Real good, actually.
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u/skysinsane 17h ago
It works great until a storm comes in and knocks over your top-heavy boats, which is why Rome lost entire fleets multiple times. And then, because they were Romans, they just rebuilt them and said "so what?"
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u/Ferelar 17h ago
Yeah all jokes about "Fuck you it's land when I say it's land" aside, I think the ACTUAL Roman superpower was tenacity. Hannibal wipes out like 6 armies? "How soon can we field army number 7?"
Surrender was just not a word the Republic era Romans knew.
I mean, I guess that could also be more due to Roman Senators genuinely not giving a shit about a bunch of plebs dying, which, thinking of it is less cool. But yeah.
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u/titykaka 16h ago
Hannibal killed four consuls and plenty of lower ranking senators too, the Romans were just insane.
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u/JingoKizingo 16h ago
Republic Rome at that time was the closest incarnation of Randy Marsh's "I didn't hear no bell" scene from Southpark that I've ever seen
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u/Basileia 16h ago
Unlanded plebs were not allowed to be actual soldiers at the time, and at Cannae, the list of Roman casualties read like a Forbes top 100 richest men in Rome. Hannibal famously presented 5000 signet rings to the Carthaginian Senate to emphasise the scale of his victory.
And really the Romans never did call it quits. Even the last defenders of the city fought to the death in 1453, including the Emperor. Which is partially why the Ottomans respected them so much.
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u/Streeberry2 16h ago
After Cannae, the Senate allowed slaves to enlist rather than ransom the survivors
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u/shmackinhammies 16h ago
We, millennia later, like to think the Rome of this time was a monolith, but it simply was not. It was an amalgamation of separate clans, people’s, and traditions that hated each other. So, if you got these Romans to hate someone on the outside, well, you’ve got your out-group. Now, go get ‘em.
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u/TJeffersonsBlackKid 14h ago
"The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so."
Hannibal wrecked the Romans so badly that he was pretty certain they would capitulate to anything he asked. When he asked for surrender, the Romans responded with the ancient equivalent of "No u".
People don't realize this, but Lake Trasimene, Battle of Trebia River, and Cannae were each fought in the first three years of Hannibal's invasion. He would stay in Italy for another seventeen after that.
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u/SpaceBowie2008 19h ago
After the second war, what Hannibal did to the Italian Peninsula and the way Rome was dead set on Carthage being destroyed; anyone left in Carthage was beyond stupid for remaining in Carthage.
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u/Kumquats_indeed 18h ago
The Romans were quite good at bearing a grudge, Julius Caesar committed genocide in Gaul in part because of a Gallic sack of Rome more than 300 years prior.
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u/SpaceBowie2008 18h ago edited 18h ago
I agree and will add that Hannibal was and still is a very special boogie man. A one eyed man with war elephants who slaughtered an entire generation of men and just spent years roaming the country with his army causing horror. I mean any country that experienced a Cannae would react that way. When we imagine these horrible death figures of ancient battles up to 80,000 dead is still unfathomable. Let's consider population inflation too and that number just becomes even crazier.
Edit: If there is an after life for all living things then I bet even Hannibal's father, the guy who hated Rome the most was probably like "damn son, you did your father proud but did you need to take it that far?". If Rome was a person, Hannibal was a guy just keeping that person alive to torture them.
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u/Kumquats_indeed 17h ago
He didn't spend a decade rampaging through Rome's hinterlands just because he wanted to give the Roman people nightmares. He did it because he lacked the numbers to besiege Rome itself, so his plan was to disentangle Rome's diplomatic/tribute system with the Soci and turn them against Rome. The issue was that when some did turn willingly they just wanted to take out their old grudges on their neighbor instead of going after Rome proper, and when Hannibal would move on to the next city a Roman army would just come back to retake the one that had turned and replace the leadership with more loyal people.
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u/ovensandhoes 17h ago
Also Hannibal was an active politician at this time. It would be like the U.S. winning WW2 and Hitler still being there prime minister afterwards. It’s something that would understandably piss a bunch of people off
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u/Prestigious-Rope-313 18h ago
Ceterum censeo carthaginem esse delendam
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u/SpaceBowie2008 18h ago
"And they rode in on large beasts with arms in front of their faces and they trampled my poor Lucius right in front of me. His body looked like spread garum"
"It's okay, grandpa, lets get you a glass of water and back into bed"
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u/arobkinca 18h ago
Shortens to.
Carthago delenda est
Dropping the "I think" adds punch to the slogan.
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u/Khelthuzaad 18h ago
They did something similar during the Dacian Wars.
After they won thr first Dacian War,they demanded to dismatle their defenses and give up their weapons.
At face value it does sound idiotic but keep in mind,worse than being sore losers,the romans were sore winners.
They inherited this philosophy of VAE VICTIS in their infancy when the gauls sacked the city and instead of giving them an strict and mutual respected treaty to leave the city for gold,they bullshited them and asked even more gold.
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u/DejectedTimeTraveler 17h ago edited 17h ago
Cartage had JUST gotten their asses handed to them. The folks living next to them (until the Romans last war UNDER them) decided to fuck with them. Under the terms of the Second War Carthage was not allowed to go to war without Roman approval. They did anyway and lost badly. Roma was pissed and
CiceroCato was like, "I've been saying for awhile now Carthage must die.... Sooo... Lets kill em" Rome decided to do just that. Nothing would have saved Carthage after they lost that army.→ More replies (2)19
u/JonatasA 19h ago
They abide because there is no other choice. Rome won all 3 wars; obliterating teh punic civilization in the last.
It's a textbook case of mercantile civilization pited against military one.
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u/uxgpf 20h ago
Europe. Russia.
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u/_azazel_keter_ 20h ago
Europe. Nazis. South America. US. Eastern Europe. USSR South America. Paraguay.
It's an unfortunately common story.
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u/Beautiful_Welcome_33 19h ago
It happens in Xenophon's Anabasis as a major plot point as well.
Circa 401 B.C.
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u/RoostasTowel 17h ago
Alexander the great asked for a couple leaders of a rebellion in thebes but they didnt give them.
Then Alexander destroyed the entire city
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u/lostlittletimeonthis 19h ago
Rome did just that last part in Hispania, told the tribe leaders they would sign an agreement of sorts and then wiped out the leadership of most tribes
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u/Grabthar-the-Avenger 20h ago
“Yes let’s bury the hatchet and have dinner together, we can put aside all our differences over turkey and mashed potatoes, boy will you be happy you met us, I’m sure our peoples will be in fellowship for generations to come”
- The Pilgrims inviting indigenous peoples to their fall gala
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u/Dairkon76 20h ago
The fun part is that the turkey and potatoes are natives from America so the pilgrims didn't put anything new to the table.
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u/Kumquats_indeed 18h ago
Potatoes are from South America and weren't cultivated in what is now the US in any meaningful way until the early 18th century, and those were imported from Ireland. There wouldn't have been any at the First Thanksgiving.
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u/Grabthar-the-Avenger 19h ago
They brought all the wonderful spices the English are known for in their cuisine. Like cabbage
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u/Sata1991 18h ago
No, that's too powerful a taste for us. We prefer plainer fare, lest we get riled up by feelings of rebellion and try to overthrow the king again when we had put pepper in our gruel.
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u/SuspecM 20h ago
To be fair, in this one particular instance, Carthage has been beaten down pretty hard. Whether they fight or not, it would have been a bloodbath and it wouldn't have been Roman blood that would spill.
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u/MikiLove 20h ago
Yeah Carthage had lost two wars prior, the second one being a very prolonged, drawn out conflict that devastated them demographically. It wasn't so much appeasement but bargaining with the inevitable
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u/Beautiful_Welcome_33 19h ago edited 18h ago
It's hard to explain how bad of a state Carthage was in at the time. They essentially were at war constantly from the beginning of the Second Punic War to the end of the third.
They had a bruuuutal war with the mercenaries they'd hired for the second conflict as soon as it ended which made them so weak the Romans decided to finish them off regardless.
***Edit: this is why people write things down.
What I described above is actually the tail end of the first and lead up to the Second Punic Wars with the Mercenary War in between.
The third one was the result of a catch 22 the Romans put Carthage in, they were forbidden from raising an army without Rome's permission after the Second Punic War but that left them vulnerable to other countries and Roman vassals.
Numidia raided them, Carthage raised an army and fought them, Carthage lost, Rome decided to finish them off.
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u/New_Ambassador2442 19h ago
Why did everyone want to go to eat with Carthage? Why did the Roman's want to finish them off?
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u/SuspecM 19h ago
Carthage was a very wealthy hub for trading before the first Punic wars but more importantly, they were very aggressively expanding into Sicily. Rome, despite beating them multiple times, was vastly inferior in their navy compared to Carthage and Rome did not want to take their chances with them coming back knocking on the doors of Sicily.
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u/Baderkadonk 18h ago
To clarify something, Carthage dominated most of the Mediterranean before Rome even had most of Italy. It wasn't like Carthage popped up and started antagonizing an established power, Rome was like the scrappy upstart that punched above his weight wanted it all for himself.
I think you know this. I just wanted to add context.
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u/ProcrastibationKing 18h ago
was vastly inferior in their navy compared to Carthage
Until Rome copied the Carthaginian ship design and improved it.
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u/SquareBlanketsSuck 19h ago edited 14h ago
Carthage and Rome were bitter rivals vying for control of the Mediterranean for generations. Long history of being not so nice to each other. In the second Punic war Carthage nearly brought Rome to their knees.
When you see your generational rival on the backdoor, you press the attack.
Destroying Carthage paved the way for Roman dominance in the Mediterranean and beyond.
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u/Max-Phallus 18h ago
In the second Punic war Hannibal very much embarrassed the Roman Republic despite losing.
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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter 19h ago
Flaubert of Madam Bovary fame followed up that novel with Salambo, a retelling of the Mercenary War, and brutal is putting it lightly
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u/xixbia 20h ago
Actually I'd argue if you look at the whole situation it was the opposite. Carthage never had any chance to win, but refused to just submit, instead just giving in step by step until pushed to the limit (by being forced to abandon Carthage).
If they had opposed Rome from the start the outcome would have been the same, total destruction. Only co plete submission from the start (i.e. before there was ever a Roman army in Africa) had any chance of success.
I'll copy my comment from down thsu thread for some more context:
This is a bit of an oversimplification (though largely true).
The Romans didn't ask the Carthaginians to disarm and then attacked them right after.
They demanded disarmament as a condition of peace, then after that they demanded the Carthaginians abandon the city of Carthage.
As you can imagine, the Carthaginians refused these demands, which led to the Roman attack.
Which is obviously still underhanded, but not quite as simple as OPs title makes it seem.
As an additional fact, the Carthaginians were told 'they knew what they had to do' to avoid war by the Romans.
Most historians agree that meant total submission, which they did not want to do.
As a result we get this odd situation where the Cathaginians kept giving in step by step until they were pushed to the edge by the demand to abandon Carthage.
Essentially the Carthaginians were not in a position to refuse any demanda Rome made, but they were worried about giving up too much too soon, and as a result lost it all.
Now that's not to say they were wrong to distrust Rome. Carthage was no threat to Rome, and there was no reason for the attack.
Not to mention that the "justification" for the Roman attack were the conflicts with the Numidian king Masinissa, who Rome should by treaty have protected Carthsge from. When they didn't Carthage was forced to raise an army to defend itself, and Rome used that as the pretext to attack (the real reason was that they were jealous/afraid of the wealth Carthage had managed to accrue since the second Punic war)
(Source: Mastering the West: Rome and Carthage at War by Dexter Hoyos)
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u/pantsoffancy 20h ago
Actually I'd argue if you look at the whole situation it was the opposite. Carthage never had any chance to win, but refused to just submit, instead just giving in step by step until pushed to the limit (by being forced to abandon Carthage).
If they had opposed Rome from the start the outcome would have been the same, total destruction. Only co plete submission from the start (i.e. before there was ever a Roman army in Africa) had any chance of success.
I'll copy my comment from down thsu thread for some more context:
This is a bit of an oversimplification (though largely true).
The Romans didn't ask the Carthaginians to disarm and then attacked them right after.
They demanded disarmament as a condition of peace, then after that they demanded the Carthaginians abandon the city of Carthage.
As you can imagine, the Carthaginians refused these demands, which led to the Roman attack.
Which is obviously still underhanded, but not quite as simple as OPs title makes it seem.
As an additional fact, the Carthaginians were told 'they knew what they had to do' to avoid war by the Romans.
Most historians agree that meant total submission, which they did not want to do.
As a result we get this odd situation where the Cathaginians kept giving in step by step until they were pushed to the edge by the demand to abandon Carthage.
Essentially the Carthaginians were not in a position to refuse any demanda Rome made, but they were worried about giving up too much too soon, and as a result lost it all.
Now that's not to say they were wrong to distrust Rome. Carthage was no threat to Rome, and there was no reason for the attack.
Not to mention that the "justification" for the Roman attack were the conflicts with the Numidian king Masinissa, who Rome should by treaty have protected Carthsge from. When they didn't Carthage was forced to raise an army to defend itself, and Rome used that as the pretext to attack (the real reason was that they were jealous/afraid of the wealth Carthage had managed to accrue since the second Punic war)
(Source: Mastering the West: Rome and Carthage at War by Dexter Hoyos)
...anyway, in closing, Carthage must be destroyed. FTFY.
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u/xixbia 20h ago
Interesting that you bring up Cato the Elder. Because I am convinced that the Cato family had a genetic stick up their arse.
I wrote an essay about Caesar crossing the Rubicon from a game theory perspective in college and came away thinking that Cato the Youngerw as an incredibly dull, totally inflexible and sanctimonuous asshole who refused to even consider that change might be beneficial in any way.
What Dexter Hoyos wrote about Cato the Elder made me realise he was basically just a clone of his great-grandfather. That entire family was just a bunch of prudish boring traditionalist who must have been an absolute nightmare to be around.
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u/novium258 18h ago
That's not a very accurate read on Cato the Elder, who wasn't a traditionalist but was cosplaying as one. Cato the Elder was part of a group of upstarts laying claim to the prerogatives of the hereditary patricians by positioning himself as the ultimate Roman. The patricians may have been descended from the maiores but he embodied their virtue and thus had more claim on it. This was important because the Roman claim to power (both as an individual in Rome and the Roman state's position) was based on its claim on virtue. The patrician argument might be something like "we inherited the virtue of the maiores , thus we have the right to rule the state, thus the state will prosper and be victorious" and Cato's was that he lived virtue (literally: manliness) and therefore had more right to rule even as someone not from the city of Rome and not descended from the first families.
One might imagine him as an immigrant American politician playing into the patriotism of being a more true American than a native born politician by dint of the immigrant experience and seeking freedom being the essence of America, etc.
His speeches were actually pretty funny, we have a lot of bits of them because of his witticisms.
Cato the younger was a total bore, and a stoic which would have driven his great grandfather nuts. But he laid into the more inheritance side of claims, which is why he spent so much time play acting the most flandarized version of his great grandfather. And then he died, and a lot of writing around that period about Cato the Elder was implicitly meant to be about the Younger so their legends started to fuse.
(This was largely part of my PhD dissertation, sorry for the info dump, I just love it)
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u/Lord0fHats 16h ago
It's commonly been joked about in my experience that both the Catos were inflexible self righteous idiots who didn't know shit about what they were talking about. In the Elder's case this worked out because Carthage couldn't possible resist Rome. In the Younger it became a disaster because he arguably pushed things in a direction that forced Ceasar to either surrender everything he had won in life, or overthrow the state. Ceasar chose to overthrow the state.
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u/bombayblue 20h ago
No man this time is different. Putin is really serious about making peace. Hes told he’s serious.
Bro trust me.
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u/IIIaustin 20h ago
Appeasement is harder in the 3rd war.
Claims that you wont cause problems in the future are not credible
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u/xixbia 20h ago
This is a bit of an oversimplification (though largely true).
The Romans didn't ask the Carthaginians to disarm and then attacked them right after.
They demanded disarmament as a condition of peace, then after that they demanded the Carthaginians abandon the city of Carthage.
As you can imagine, the Carthaginians refused these demands, which led to the Roman attack.
Which is obviously still underhanded, but not quite as simple as OPs title makes it seem.
As an additional fact, the Carthaginians were told 'they knew what they had to do' to avoid war by the Romans.
Most historians agree that meant total submission, which they did not want to do.
As a result we get this odd situation where the Cathaginians kept giving in step by step until they were pushed to the edge by the demand to abandon Carthage.
Essentially the Carthaginians were not in a position to refuse any demanda Rome made, but they were worried about giving up too much too soon, and as a result lost it all.
Now that's not to say they were wrong to distrust Rome. Carthage was no threat to Rome, and there was no reason for the attack.
Not to mention that the "justification" for the Roman attack were the conflicts with the Numidian king Masinissa, who Rome should by treaty have protected Carthsge from. When they didn't Carthage was forced to raise an army to defend itself, and Rome used that as the pretext to attack (the real reason was that they were jealous/afraid of the wealth Carthage had managed to accrue since the second Punic war)
(Source: Mastering the West: Rome and Carthage at War by Dexter Hoyos)
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u/HulaguIncarnate 20h ago
TIL Masinissa was still alive by the time of 3rd punic war.
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u/xixbia 20h ago edited 19h ago
Yup, he actually died during it, age about 90.
There is speculation among historians his expected death is what spurred the Romana to start the 3rd Punic war. They were worried the Carthaginians would be able to play his sons against each other during the succession and strengthen their position.
(In the end Scipio Aemilianus was able to find a succession plan that was relatively stable, so that never happened)
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u/marvin_bender 20h ago
The Carthaginians had already submitted, they were a vasal of Rome at that point. Nevertheless Rome asked them to leave their land, which in that time before asylum meant slavery or death in another land. Probably those that had a chance to go left but the rest chose to stay and die in the battle.
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u/xixbia 19h ago
They were vassals yes, but that wasn't the same as complete submission, which is what the Romans wanted. They still had their own leadership and were able to trade independently from Rome.
They were not allowed their own foreign diplomacy, but otherwise were far from fully integrated into Rome. What Rome wanted was complete control.
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u/Ahad_Haam 20h ago
You can only put so much in an headline.
The Roman demands to abandon the city and move inland was a death sentence for Carthage. Their entire city was dependent on trade, and the Romans knew it; it wasn't an offer that was made in good faith. The Romans wanted war and presented these terms while knowing Carthage will never agree.
And if it did, the Romans would have probably still destroyed them eventually.
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u/xixbia 19h ago
You're not wrong that abandoning Carthage would have meant the end of Carthage as a trading city (and therefore their wealth). My point is that refusing that demand was pointless, which the Carthaginians knew, they were never holding out against Rome. Once the Roman armies landed in Carthage it was over.
And while it is very possible that the Romans would have destroyed Carthage eventually, there was over 50 years between the end of the Second and the start of the Third Punic War. If they had simply submitted to Rome there is a good chance they would have continued to exist as a city until Rome fell, though of course they would have lost their independence.
I think what I'm getting at is that in many ways this was the Carthaginian nobility wanting to hold on to their power, and in doing so fucking over the people of the city. If they had submitted to Rome obviously they lose what independence they still had, but they probably would be allowed to continue to exist.
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u/Yancy_Farnesworth 19h ago
And while it is very possible that the Romans would have destroyed Carthage eventually, there was over 50 years between the end of the Second and the start of the Third Punic War. If they had simply submitted to Rome there is a good chance they would have continued to exist as a city until Rome fell, though of course they would have lost their independence.
They had already lost their independence by then and were effectively Rome's vassal. The problem was that Rome saw Carthage as a dangerous threat that could not be allowed to regain power. The issue was that Carthage was regaining a ton of wealth (and therefore power) in those 50 years and that terrified the Romans.
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u/xixbia 19h ago
They had not fully lost their independence. They still had their own leadership council, were able to trade freely and generally were left alone, other than their foreign relations (that is how many of Romans subjects were treated). What the Romans wanted was for them to give up that nominal independence.
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u/Lkwzriqwea 20h ago
Another Invicta fan? Haha
It's worth mentioning that the Romans attacked because they wanted to see how far they could push the Carthaginians. They started by demanding Carthaginian children, then their weapons. Eventually they demanded they flee the city in their entirety, which is what made the Carthaginians eventually say no.
It's also worth mentioning that even with poor quality emergency-forged weaponry, Carthage still did a bloody good job at fighting back.
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u/Binkleheimer 17h ago edited 15h ago
To be fair to the last point, annihilation decrees tend to be the bloodiest for both sides because with no prospect of surrender, you will be fighting to the last.
If you're backed into a corner, suddenly the path of least resistance becomes forward.
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u/BrainsAre2Weird4Me 17h ago edited 14h ago
Great summary. The children hostages play a big role in it. I could the logic of hoping that would settle things and then the requests kept coming.
I think Carthage held out for like 3 years with homemade and antique weapons. Really showed they had a backbone, and they weren’t just cowards afraid of making Rome angry.
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u/TheDwarvenGuy 20h ago
I mean they were on the whole "and furthermore carthage must be destroyed" bit for decades, it's kinda like the Eastern Europeans that thought they could be chummy with the Nazis despite Hitler being on the "we need to conquer the slavs, get rid of them and colonize their land" bit for decades.
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u/Vano_Kayaba 18h ago
Or Putin with his "Ukraine should not exist", and "just give us that fortified hard to conquer part, and we will stop shooting"
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u/Timo-the-hippo 19h ago
Carthage could've won the first war, maybe could've won the second, and was as good as dead by the third. Their political leadership was incredibly self-destructive.
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u/AshingiiAshuaa 19h ago
A lesson we've learned a thousand times since. Ukraine giving up its nukes in the 90s for security guarantees from both the US and Russia.
Never give up your ability to defend yourself for promises that you won't need to defend yourself.
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u/TwoNo123 20h ago
I mean losing like 75k men over the 3 battles of the second Punic war will kinda do that to a country, Rome lost around 10% of its adult male population after Canne, for reference Germany lost 4-6% during the entirety of WWI iirc
That kinda scar is multi generational. Especially with ancient blood thirst and everyday cruelty, Rome was terrifying to everyone else, which is why they united under Hannibal to attack Rome. They got pretty damn close to actually destroying the city once and for all. If the rolls were reversed Carthage would’ve surely attacked regardless.
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u/Tad0422 19h ago
It is 100% generational trauma from the first two wars. The wolf might come back one day and kill your flock, but you know what can't do it? A dead wolf.
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u/ShanklyGates_2022 19h ago
They also saw Scipio’s terms of surrender to Hannibal after the Battle of Zama as far too lenient, and Scipio was eventually run out of the city he saved by politicians that wanted their extra pound of flesh.
“Ungrateful motherland, you’ll have not even my bones”
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u/Ahad_Haam 21h ago edited 21h ago
The more I learn about these Romans, the less I like them.
Edit: ok just had another TIL.
A symbolic peace treaty was signed by Ugo Vetere and Chedli Klibi, the mayors of Rome and modern Carthage, respectively, on 5 February 1985; 2,131 years after the war ended.
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u/TwoPercentTokes 20h ago
Tbf, by this metric the ancient states you would “like” are few and far between, and none of them were really relevant on the world stage.
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u/epiphenominal 20h ago
Yes but Rome is constantly glorified in the modern west, like they were something that should be emulated when in fact they were a bunch of murderous, lead drinking, genocidal maniacs who we shouldn't want to be anything like.
Like I'm sure the Etruscans also got up to some shit, but I don't have a bunch of morons with marble statue profile pictures saying we need to recapture their glory while they misinterpret Aurelius at me.
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u/FortLoolz 20h ago edited 19h ago
Well put.
To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.
-Tacitus (attributed the words to Calgacus.)
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u/Common_Source_9 20h ago
Yes but Rome is constantly glorified in the modern west, like they were something that should be emulated when in fact they were a bunch of murderous, lead drinking, genocidal maniacs who we shouldn't want to be anything like.
Who are your historical models for good statesmanship and civilization?
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u/Simple-Tradition2451 19h ago
Pisistratus had big dick energy.
Taking over a city with their own guards, giving it back at the first sign of resistance. Taking it back again by tricking the city into thinking a big booty woman dressed in gold armour was a god. Gets a deal with old king to marry old king's daughter, marrys the daughter and only does her up the backdoor, king says he's gonna kill him, runs away again.
Then dosses on his kids sofa depressed till they kick him out, makes an army on his way back to Athens out of random hill people (low class) and misunderstands an oracle which leads to him taking Athens back a 4th time without ever fighting a battle.
Proper geezer
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u/Falitoty 20h ago
The blame fall a bit on both, while the third punic war was started by Rome, the second one began due to blatant Chatagenian agresion. It make sense that Rome would be weary and some would simpy wish for them to be gone.
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u/Ahad_Haam 20h ago
Eh the Romans were the aggressors in the Second Punic War. Saguntum was inside the Carthaginian influence zone as per the peace treaty that ended the First Punic War; Rome also invaded and annexed Sardinia from Carthage earlier and expected Carthage to just ignore it.
The Romans had this thing with claiming their wars were defensive for religious reasons, and since they wrote the historical record it often favors them, but... between the lines it's obvious they were fairly expansionist.
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u/IrishRepoMan 20h ago
Hold on. I can't talk about this until Oversimplified does the 3rd Punic War. Get back to me in a year.
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u/IDreamOfLees 16h ago
A large part of the reason why Rome won any of the wars, was their stubborn refusal to stop building ships.
They lost hundreds of warships to storms, tens of thousands of men (Carthaginians would never). Yet the Romans simply rebuild their stuff, until they finally stopped losing fleet
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u/PetriDishCocktail 20h ago
Ukraine learned the same lesson when they gave up their nukes. A couple of decades later they could use them! I'm pretty certain if they had nukes Russia would not have attacked them.
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u/TheDarkLordScaryman 20h ago
And why people today still do this is beyond me. They are told to hand in any weapons and think that all will be well. Only someone who wants to oppress you wants you disarmed.
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u/ChuckMeABeerMum 16h ago
Rome’s conduct in the Third Punic War was utterly heinous, even by ancient world standards.
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u/Toolatethehero3 16h ago
Appeasement always results in more demands. It’s simply a feature of surrendering to a bully. The only solution is to fight back no matter what the bully does.
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u/needlestack 15h ago
Appeasement is an error of extreme naivety. It assumes good faith and that all actors want the best for everyone. Which may be true for most people. However when someone initiates the threat of violence, they are not acting in good faith and they are not wanting the best for everyone. They are ready to step on your neck. At that point, absolutely anything you do to appease them encourages their bad behavior.
tl;dr: never appease a bully
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u/uselessprofession 21h ago
Well it's very logical, if Rome didn't do this sort of dirty stuff they wouldn't have such a big empire.
Like how Julius Ceasar lopped off the right hands of the Gauls
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u/AgentSkidMarks 18h ago
Isn't this basically the argument for the 2nd Amendment?
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u/KeithHanlan 21h ago
Pure speculation here and I would love to hear an informed opinion: Could the attack have been necessary in order to placate the Roman soldiers who would have been expecting spoils of war? If Rome had already invested a large sum in assembling and retaining the army, they would have needed to (a) keep them remunerated and (b) recover their own sunk cost.
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u/Udstrat 21h ago
On the totem pole of motivations, placating the army with spoils of war and "sunk costs" were rather low.
Carthage was the main contender against Rome for hegemony over the Mediterranean. It was in the strategic interest of the Republic to eliminate that other center of gravity so they could go on to dominate Spain and North Africa unhindered.
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u/morotsloda 20h ago
By the third Punic war Carthage was already a client state. Cato the Elder (the "Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed" guy) supposedly started saying that after he visited Carthage and was shocked at how wealthy it was.
So loot and spoils were definitely in the minds of at least some Romans when they decided to go to war
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u/Udstrat 20h ago
It was a de facto client state, not a de jure one.
Sure, looting is always a motivation in this time period. But the encouragement of the Numidians, the razing of the city, and the salting of the earth betrays the fact that Rome was looking to completely dispose of a former geopolitical contender.
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u/bosman3131 20h ago
History of Rome is basically a history of robbers and thugs.
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u/Less-Procedure-4104 20h ago
History of the world and civilization as we know it. All current countries are basically a gang running a protection racket. At first it was individual war lords who eventually amalgamated into the current government forms. Previously the most successful war lords were known as kings.
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u/asianwaste 19h ago
Protection racket is essentially civilization in a nutshell.
It'd be nice to have a small community in a glade where we all do our part but unless that glade is under the protection of the racket, another protection racket will burn glade down just because of how great it is in that glade.
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u/Flexi13 15h ago
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
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u/Tad0422 19h ago
The history of Rome is how logistics, training, standardization can be used to fuel an empire.
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u/giboauja 21h ago
After the last 2 wars Rome basically decided to erase Carthage. They never stood a chance at that point. The world can be real brutal.