Carthage was strongly fortified, and it was held by men who had abandoned hope. The siege lasted more than three years. Cato did not live to see his darling wish fulfilled. Masinissa also died while the siege was going on, and bitter was his end.

When Scipio Aemilianus obtained the command he at once perceived that it would be impossible to subdue the city as long as smuggling traders could run into the port with provisions. So he constructed a stone mole across the mouth of the harbour. Having thus cut off the city from the sea, he pitched his camp on the neck of the isthmus�for Carthage was built on a peninsula�and so cut it off completely from the land.

For the first time in the siege the blockade was complete: the city was enclosed in a stone and iron cage. The Carthaginians in their fury brought forth the prisoners whom they had taken in their sallies, and hurled them headlong from the walls. There were many in the city who protested against this outrage. They were denounced as traitors; a reign of terror commenced; the men of the moderate party were crucified in the streets. The hideous idol of Moloch found victims in that day; children were placed on its outstretched and downward sloping hands and rolled off them into the fiery furnace which was burning at its feet. Nor were there wanting patriots who sacrificed themselves upon the altars that the gods might have compassion upon those who survived. But among these pestilence and famine had begun to work, and the sentinels could scarcely stand to their duty on the walls. Gangs of robbers went from house to house and tortured people to make them give up their food; mothers fed upon their children; a terrible disease broke out; corpses lay scattered in the streets; men who were burying the dead fell dead upon them; others dug their own graves and laid down in them to die; houses in which all had perished were used as public sepulchres, and were quickly filled.

At last the day came. The harbour walls were carried by assault, and the Roman soldiers pressed into the narrow streets which led down to the water side. The houses were six or seven storeys high, and each house was a fortress which had to be stormed. The lean and haggard inhabitants defended their homesteads from room to room, onwards, upwards, to the death struggle on the broad, flat roof.

Day followed day, and still that horrible scene did not cease�the shouts and songs of the besiegers, the yells and shrieks of the besieged, the moans of the wounded, the feeble cries of children divided by the sword. Night followed night, and still the deadly work went on; there was no sleep and no darkness; the Romans lighted houses that they might see to kill.

The following description is taken from Appian's Libyca: "The Destruction of Carthage"

Then came new scenes of horror. The fire spread and carried everything down, and the soldiers did not wait to destroy the buildings little by little, but pulled them all down together. So the crashing grew louder, and many fell with the stones into the midst of the dead. Others were seen still living, especially old men, women and young children who had hidden in the inmost nooks of the houses, some of them wounded, some more or less burned, and uttering horrible cries. Stll others, thrust out and falling from such a height with the stones, timbers, and fire, were torn asunder into all kinds of horrible shapes, crushed and mangled.

Nor was this the end of their miseries, for the street cleaners who were removing the rubbish with axes, mattocks, and boathooks, and making the roads passable, tossed with these instruments the dead and living together into holes in the ground, sweeping them along like sticks and stones or turning them over with their iron tools, and man was used for filling up a ditch. . . . Horses ran over them, crushing their faces and skulls, not purposely on the part of the riders, but in their headlong haste . . . all together made everybody frantic and heedless of the spectacle before their eyes.

Six days and nights were consumed in this kind of turmoil, the soldiers being changed so that they might not be worn out with toil, slaughter, want of sleep, and these horrid sights.

Six days passed thus, and only the citadel was left. It was a steep rock in the middle of the town; a temple of the God of Healing crowned its summit.

The Roman soldiers were weary: nine-tenths of the inhabitants had been already killed. The people on the rock were offered their lives; they descended with bare hands and passed under the yoke. Some of them eneded their days in prison; the greater part were sold as slaves.

But in the temple on the summit of the rocky hill nine hundred Roman deserters, for whom there could be no pardon, stood at bay. The deserters set the building on fire so that they might escape the ignominious death of martial law.

A man dressed in purple rushed out of the temple with an olive-branch in his hand. This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief. His life was given him; he would do for the triumph. And as he bowed the knee before the consul a woman appeared on the roof of the temple with two children in her arms. She poured forth some scornful words upon her husband, and then plunged with her children into the flames.

Carthage burned seventeen days before it was entirely consumed. Then the plough was passed over the soil to put an end in legal form to the existence of the city. House might never again be built, corn might never again be sown, upon the ground where it had stood.

A hundred years afterwards Julius Caesar founded another Carthage and planted a Roman colony therein. But it was not built upon the same spot. The old site remained accursed; it was a browsing ground for cattle, a field of blood. When recently the remains of the city walls were disinterred they were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron, and projectiles.

This city, which had flourished 700 years from its foundation and had ruled over so many lands, islands, and seas, as rich in arms and fleets, elephants and money as the mightiest empires, but far surpassing them in daring and high courage, since though deprived of all its arms and ships it had yet withstood a great siege and famine for three years, and was now coming to an end in total destruction. Scipio, beholding this spectacle, is said to have shed tears and publicly lamented the fortune of the enemy. After meditating by himself a long time and reflecting on the inevitable fall of cities, nations, and empires, as well as of individuals, upon the fate of Troy, that once proud city, upon the fate of the Assyrian, the Medean, and afterwards the great Persian empire, and most recently of all, of the splendid empire of Macedon, either voluntarily or otherwise the words of Hector from the poet [Homer] escaped his lips: The day shall come in which our sacred Troy And Priam, and the people over whom Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all. And when Polybius, who was with him, asked him what he meant, he turned and took him by the hand, saying: "This is a glorious moment, Polybius; and yet I am seized with fear and foreboding that some day the same fate will befall my own country.''

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