Roman Mole Projects Close Carthage's Harbor

Siegecraft is a kind of carpentry. After Carthage’s sortie, Rome turned to engineers to make the harbor a prison. From the strand near the commercial harbor’s mouth, work parties drove piles, dumped stone, and lashed timber, fashioning moles that crept outward like fingers closing a throat. By 147 BCE, the harbor’s once-azure channel narrowed to a turbulent trickle [9], [17]. Appian lingers on the labor: men in shifts, the steady boom of rams driving piles, the groan of cranes swinging baskets of rock, the creak of ropes. The sea took on the color of mud as the bottom rose under the weight of construction. Carthaginian counter-battery fire harassed the works; Roman siege towers and screens answered [9]. Closing a harbor is strategy made literal. It cut Carthage off from supplies and hope, strangling any chance of repeating the 149 sortie. Even small boats found passage perilous. From Utica’s safer quays, Roman supply ships shuttled men and food to the siege lines, minimizing risks while the moles lengthened day by day [17]. In the city, food prices climbed; rationing bit. Along the cothon, ships that once rode at anchor now sat in stagnant water, boxed in by Roman rock. The sound of hammers carried at night into the alleys below Byrsa, where residents understood the meaning: when the sea is closed, the land soon falls. The moles were not just barriers. They were announcements. Rome would spend timber, stone, and time to end Carthage as a maritime power and as a city.