In 149 BCE, Rome initiated the Third Punic War with a diktat that stripped Carthage of self-defense. Surrender arms, submit to inspections, even abandon your city—terms that turned negotiation into provocation. Utica bent; Carthage refused; black ships gathered off the North African coast [4][16].
What Happened
Decades after Zama, Carthage had recovered economically but remained legally shackled. Roman suspicion, inflamed by Numidian border disputes and political voices in the Senate, hardened into demands. Appian records the tenor: Carthage must disarm, hand over hostages, and accept limitations that made sovereignty a rumor [4][16].
One demand cut to the bone: move inland and abandon the coastal city. The Byrsa, the Megara, the harbors—leave them empty. Even as wagons rattled with surrendered weapons and the Senate’s envoys counted spears, this final order turned submission into defiance. Carthage refused [4].
Rome answered with siege. Consuls landed near Utica; lines were drawn around Carthage’s walls, the blue of the Gulf of Tunis gleaming behind Roman camps. The war began less as a campaign than as the logical end of a policy that outlawed Punic self-defense [4][16].
In the city, artisans reforged tools into blades; women braided slings; the sound of hammer and anvil echoed in alleys under the shadow of the Byrsa. In Rome, the Forum’s murmurs thickened: this time finish it [4].
A slow, grinding contest opened, one that would end not in a treaty but in ash [4][16].
Why This Matters
The outbreak shows how coercive peace can incubate future war. Carthage’s partial recovery under legal constraints met a Roman insistence on permanent subordination. The diktat—especially the order to relocate—made conflict unavoidable [4][16].
It embodies “Total War and Erasure.” The aim drifted from deterrence to deletion; terms were designed not to regulate Carthage but to make it impossible. Once refusal arrived, siege engines answered [4].
Strategically, the war’s start reveals a Republic that now thought in terms of provinces and obliterations, not balance. Africa would be a map color, not a rival state. The admirals and tribunes who sailed from Lilybaeum made policy with ladders and rams [16].
Event in Context
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People Involved
Key figures who played a role in Third Punic War Begins
Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus
Scipio Aemilianus (185–129 BCE), adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus, ended the Punic story. Elevated to command during the faltering siege of Carthage, he rebuilt discipline, tightened the blockade, and in 146 BCE stormed the Byrsa, leveling the city. A senatorial decree forbade habitation of the site; the new province of Africa Proconsularis followed. In this timeline, Aemilianus delivers the war’s final answer: Rome would not just defeat Carthage’s armies, it would erase the city and claim permanent supremacy.
Masinissa
Masinissa (c. 238–148 BCE), king of Numidia, turned the Second Punic War. First a Carthaginian ally in Iberia, he switched to Rome in 206 BCE, reclaimed his throne with Scipio’s help, and provided the lightning cavalry that decided Zama in 202. After Carthage’s defeat, he built a unified, prosperous Numidia and, by pressuring a shackled Carthage, helped trigger the Third Punic War. In this timeline, Masinissa is the alliance Rome needed: mobility, intelligence, and local power that transformed strategy into victory.
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