legal

Senate Orders Obliteration and Forbids Habitation

Date

-146

Part of

legal

In 146 BCE, the Roman Senate instructed Scipio to obliterate whatever remained of Carthage and to forbid habitation on the site. Appian preserves the decree’s bluntness as policy followed siege [10].

What Happened

Conquest became law. After the city fell, Scipio received senatorial orders not to spare the shell. Appian records the directive: if anything remained, “obliterate it and that nobody should be allowed to live there.” A siege had ended; an erasure began [10]. The instruction gave legal shape to what Roman soldiers had already practiced with fire and pickaxe. Temples toppled; walls leveled; houses pulled down to their foundations. The color of Carthage’s sandstone turned to dust; the sound of demolition replaced the din of battle. The ban on habitation extended the destruction into the future. It transformed a place into a negative space on the map—no city here, only a memory and a warning. Utica would be the provincial hub; Carthage, a forbidden scar [10]. For administrators, the order simplified security. No rival pole would rise again on the Gulf of Tunis. For moralists, it dramatized Roman determination. For Carthaginians, it sealed captivity. The legal text in Rome’s archives aligned with the rubble under Scipio’s feet. Not everything would stay erased. Later Roman Carthage would rise in imperial times. But in 146 BCE, the old city’s name moved from the realm of policy to the realm of legend and archaeology.

Why This Matters

The decree codified the aim that had guided the siege: remove Carthage as a political entity. It authorized physical obliteration and social banishment, turning a conquered enemy into an absence [10]. This was more than victory; it was a prescribed forgetting. Within siegecraft-to-erasure, this is the legal capstone. Engineering and infantry had reduced walls; the Senate now reduced future possibilities. Historians emphasize Appian’s wording to distinguish attested policy from later myths. There is no ancient source for salting the site; there is for forbidding habitation. The difference matters when assessing Roman intent and action [10], [11], [16], [23].