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- [00:00]
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- [00:31]
Tom Holland
We heard you. Nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won. But maybe you should have asked for more. Say hello to the Hot Honey Snack wrap. Now you've really won. Go to McDonald's and get it while you can.
- [00:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
Who has words to capture that night's disaster? Tell that slaughter. What tears could match our torments? Now an ancient city is falling. A power that ruled for ages now in ruins. Everywhere lie the motionless bodies of the dead strewn in her streets, her homes and the gods shrines all over now, devouring fire whipped by the winds goes churning into the rooftops, flames surging over them, scorching blasts raging up the sky. Treasure hauled from burning temples, the sacramental tables, bowls of solid gold and the holy robes seized from every quarter. The enemy piling high, the plunder, children and trembling mothers rounded up in a long, endless line. So that was the greatest of all Roman poets, Virgil. And he was writing almost two centuries after Hannibal's great war against the Romans, the subject of this epic series, and a century or so after the final defeat of one of the protagonists in this story, the Mediterranean city of Carthage. And Tom, in that poem, the Aeneid, which is translated there by Robert Fagles. Virgil is taking us back, isn't he, to the legendary beginnings of Carthage, so shrouded in myth, the story of its foundation by the Phoenician queen Ben Dido. And the colonists from Phoenicia are laboring to build the new city. They're raising the walls, they're building the palaces and temples, the harbours that the Romans will later destroy. And at this point, this bedraggled group of refugees who've been shipwrecked off the African coast turn up and these people are Trojans.
- [02:46]
Tom Holland
They are. So they are, as you say, refugees from the sack of Troy by the Greeks. And the man speaking the lines that you. You read so powerfully is their leader, a prince called Aeneas, who is the son of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. And Aeneas, in that passage, is describing what it had been like to live through the destruction of Troy, to watch its topless towers consumed by fire. And he is giving this account at a great feast that has been held in his honour by Dido because she has fallen in love with Aeneas. And we talked about this in the very first episode that we did on Carthage. I mean, about 400 years ago, actually, I think it was episode 421. And people who listen to that may remember what happens next after this feast, because Aeneas and Dido go out hunting. There's a storm, they take shelter in a cave, and while they're in the cave, the earth moves. And Dido, although not Aeneas, assumes from this point on that they are now man and wife. The problem for Dido is that Aeneas has this destiny that has been plotted out for him by the gods, and specifically by Jupiter, the king of the gods. And this destiny is that Aeneas has to sail to Italy and found a town there that in due course will result in the founding of of Rome. And so Jupiter sends Mercury, the messenger of the gods, down to Aeneas and says, you know, stop hanging around with this Carthaginian woman, get on, go and found Rome. And Aeneas is very obedient to the will of the gods. And so he dumps Dido and he sails away from Carthage for Italy. And Dido is so distraught at being portrayed like this that she stabs herself to death with Aeneas sword. But not before she has called for her descendants to nurture an undying hatred for the descendants of Aeneas.
- [04:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Shore clash with shore, sea against sea and sword against sword. This is my curse. War between all our peoples, all their children, endless war. That's her curse, isn't it? And that's how it all begins. So she summons a demon to rise up from her bones, an avenger, still unknown, to stalk the descendants of Aeneas and to hunt them down with fire and iron. And Tom, who is this demon?
- [05:17]
Tom Holland
Well, I mean, every Roman reading the Aeneid, when it came out in the age of Augustus, knew exactly who was meant. It was Hannibal. Hannibal Barker, that great military genius whose career we've been describing in our previous episodes, who for almost two decades had indeed fought the Romans with fire and iron. Now, Hannibal, as we heard in our last episode, ends up this hunted fugitive. This defeated fugitive kills himself in 183 BC. But it's the measure of the shock he had given Rome and of the terror that he had inspired in Roman hearts that still more than a century and a half after his death, in the age of Augustus, you know, when the Roman Empire stands splendid and Without a conceivable rival on the face of the planet, Hannibal continues to haunt the memory of the Romans. And so I think it's not hard to imagine what a bogey man he must have seemed to Romans who had lived through his invasion of Italy and who were born in the generation or two after the great war that he had prosecuted against the Romans.
- [06:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
So that means that even though Carthage has been defeated and forced to accept a punitive peace deal, the memory of Hannibal and of Carthage's assault on Italy means that for the Romans in the decades after victory, Carthage remains the supreme enemy. You know, this is that. Would I be going too far to say there's still a sense of unfinished business for the Romans?
- [06:54]
Tom Holland
Completely. Completely. Listeners may remember that, that in our previous series we talked about Hannibal's preparations for the invasion of Italy. 218. And he has a dream. And in that dream he sees a giant serpent that is following in his wake as he invades Italy. And this serpent, quote, causing massive destruction to trees and bushes, a deafening thunderstorm following in its wake. And a God then explains to him what this serpent is. This serpent is Hannibal himself. And so the dream is portending what the Romans called the vastatio ital eye, the destruction of Italy. And that is exactly what Hannibal had inflicted on Italy. So monstrous casualty figures, hundreds of thousands of people, dead fields, vineyards, orchards going up in flames year after year after year. And nothing like it had remotely been experienced by the Romans or the peoples of Italy. You know, for two or three generations there hadn't been anything like this. And today there is considerable debate among historians about how bad the damage inflicted by Hannibal on Italy actually was. So opinions range from completely apocalyptic to merely, you know, pretty devastating, right? But however bad it was, what mattered was that the Romans, in the wake of Hannibal's war, remembered it as complete devastation. So to quote Simon Hornblower on this, I mean, he's absolutely right. The trauma of Hannibal's lengthy presence, however great or small, the actual damage he wrought will not have forgotten to that extent. Hannibal's dream may have been a true prophecy. Perceptions are a kind of reality. I mean, we know that throughout history.
- [08:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
And the Romans, I mean, the damage that the Carthaginians have inflicted is so deeply embedded in the Roman imagination. So the Romans come to talk about the Carthaginians. They use these expressions, punica fides punica fraus. The idea that the Carthaginians are the embodiments, almost the linguistic embodiments of cruelty and deceit. And infidelity and Frau and all of these kinds of things. And the Carthaginians come to assume this almost kind of demonic place in the Roman imagination.
- [09:13]
Tom Holland
Yeah. I mean I think if you. If you think about how the British viewed the Germans in the wake of the First World War and even more the Second World War, there is something of that. The way that the Romans view the Carthaginians. And people who've listened to this series may well feel that this is a bit rich because the Romans as well have been known to display cruelty and deceit and treachery and so on but that doesn't really matter because the Romans felt what they felt. And this wasn't just a kind of widespread loathing of the Carthaginians but something more, a kind of biding fear that was ultimately irrational.
- [09:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well irrational because the Carthaginians have been completely beaten.
- [09:57]
Tom Holland
Yeah. You know, completely smashed. It is so clear that you know, the days of Carthage as a great power are finished because the terms that the Romans had imposed on Carthage in the wake of the defeat of Hannibal had been intended to cripple her forever. So just to remind listeners of what those terms were. A devastating indemnity payable in instalments over the course of 50 years designed to kneecap Carthage's economy. The loss of all her overseas territories. Carthage had ruled a great empire, you know, Sicily, Spain, whatever, all gone. Once she had been the greatest naval power in the Western Mediterranean. Her fleet is now limited to 10 warships and her foreign policy is directly under the control of Rome which means that she cannot go to war without Roman permission.
- [10:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
So at the same time the Romans have done that. So they've. Carthage has been kneecapped by all this but on the western flank of Carthage. So that's. We're still in North Africa. We've got this character that we talked about before Massinissa who is Numidian and he's an old pallas Scipio Africanus and he has basically been set up as a counterbalance to the Carthaginians, hasn't he? So he's a great pal of the Romans. He is constantly kind of biting off bits of Carthage's sort of hinterland. So the kind of, I don't know, the olive groves of North Africa and so on.
- [11:24]
Tom Holland
Yeah, he's kind of nibbling away at them all the time.
- [11:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. And he's. There are constant kind of border disputes and whatnot. And basically the Numidians are. They're eroding Carthage's heartland year on year.
- [11:37]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And For Masinissa, I mean this is the servant turning on the master. Because the Numidians had been subject to Carthage. And so by salami slicing Carthage's territory, I mean he's getting his own back on, you know, the old imperial mistress. And so the poor Carthaginians, they can't really do anything about this. Because they're not allowed to fight Masinissa off. And so all they can really do is send embassies to Rome. Complaining about these encroachments by the Numidians. But obviously Massinissa, you know, he's. He's an ally of the Roman people. He can send embassies of his own and be assured of getting heard. So in 171, for instance, Carthaginians have gone to Rome to complain. Masonissa sends his own son. And this son of Masinissa's is. He knows exactly how to play the Romans. So he's endlessly going on about how the Carthaginians are treacherous and deceitful. Beware of Punic deceit, all this kind of stuff. And so the Carthaginians don't get justice. And the Romans ignore Carthaginian complaints. Not just because they are pro Numidian but also to reiterate because they are genuinely fearful that Carthage might make a comeback. And so they feel that she has to, you know, her territory has to constantly be eroded. But this is mad. I mean there's no prospect of Carthage coming back.
- [12:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, to give people a sense of the map. So we're three decades on after the defeats of Hannibal and the Romans. Power is, is spreading across the Mediterranean. So to give the example of Spain, we talked a lot about Spain. Spain with its mineral wealth have been so important to Carthaginian power. But the Romans have basically formalized their control of the coastal bits of Spain. They've conquered from Carthage. They've organized them into provinces. They're pushing inland in North Africa. So we've obviously talked about Numidia. Numidia is a basically a Roman client state. I mean in many ways Carthage is a Roman client state as well. Because it's subject to all the. The demands of the peace treaty. We talked last time about Greece. You know, we're getting into the kind of remnants of Alexander the Great's empire now. So in Greece, the Romans have been launching these devastating strikes. They've humbled the heirs of Alexander, the Macedonian kings. We talked about that last time. The legions have defeated the Macedonian Phalan. And although the Romans are not ruling Macedonia or Greece directly. Roman primacy, Roman control is basically acknowledged, isn't it, throughout Greece.
- [14:07]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And I think the Romans feel that if their strategic demands require the Greeks to knuckle down and kind of surrender chunks of territory or autonomy or whatever, then they have to do it. And there's perhaps slight element of Donald Trump's attitude to Greenland about all this. And increasingly, the more that Greece and the Balkans kind of have to do what the Romans say, the Romans decide, well, there's no point in allowing the Macedonians to have any autonomy at all. I mean, we might as well snuff that out. So in June 168, the legions once again meet with a Macedonian phalanx, and it's fought in a great battle on the Macedonian coast at a place called Pydna. And the guy in command of the Roman legions at this battle is called Aemilius Paullus. And if that sounds familiar, then it's because he is the son of the Aemilius Paullus, who had died at Cannae, Hannibal's great victory, and Aemilius Paulus Epidna. He confessed that the advance of the Macedonian phalanx was such a terrifying sight that he had briefly dreaded that he might suffer a defeat similar to that suffered by his father. But in the event, he wins this spectacular, utterly crushing victory. So the legionaries, you know, they're much more flexible, much more mobile, and they're able to infiltrate the phalanx through gaps that open up in its ranks, and then it's just a massacre. The people in the phalanx have these huge long spears, so they're hapless against the gladius, the stabbing sword that the Romans are using, and the whole battlefield just becomes this great sea of blood and viscera. All their guts are kind of, you know, the Macedonian guts are spilling out. The Macedonian king is captured, he's deposed, and ends up being led through the streets of Rome in Paulus triumph. And Macedon itself, the monarchy is abolished, and it is divided up into these kind of four petty cantons under dodgy little republics. And this is obviously a recipe for instability. But that, for the Romans, is precisely the point. You know, they're not there to administer direct rule, but what they do want is Macedonia left both submissive and impotent. And that is what, you know, these reforms do.
- [16:26]
Dominic Sandbrook
And then the same thing goes for other parts of southern Balkans, doesn't it? So Epirus, Epirus is sacked. That's in the west. That's towards sort of northern northwestern Greece, Albania. Paulus takes more than A hundred thousand slaves there. And then in Greece itself, they basically take a thousand sort of bigwigs hostage from various cities. They take them all back to Italy. And these guys had been seen as too pro Macedonian, too independent minded. And Tom, you've got a nice analogy here. Would you like to share your analogy with us?
- [16:58]
Tom Holland
Yeah. Well, to pursue the Donald Trump analogy, it's as though he were to invade Europe and take back as hostages, you know, a raft of Eurocrats from Brussels, regulators of American social media companies, and obviously the Director general of the BBC, and they would all be taken back to Washington and kept as hostages.
- [17:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Are there any people from the current government you'd like to see taken as hostages by Delta Force back to Washington? Surely there must be no comment.
- [17:24]
Tom Holland
So all these Greek hostages are taken back, and among them is a Greek from Arcadia, whose name we have been mentioning quite a lot throughout this series, and that is Polybius, who will become the great historian of Rome's rise to dominance in the Mediterranean. And the theme of Polybius's history, he kind of, he sets it out. It's how the affairs of Italy and of Africa came to be interwoven with those of Asia and, and of Greece. And all things point in concert to a single end. And that single end is the establishment of a Roman imperium, a Roman empire over the Mediterranean. And Polybius would end up spending 17 years as a detainee in Rome. And so this is how he came by his, you know, incredible familiarity with Roman politics, Roman constitutional arrangements, Roman affairs. And he is able to interview veterans of the war against Hannibal, people who had taken leading roles in that war. But in the long run, the most useful contact that Polybius makes in Rome isn't a kind of veteran of the war against Hannibal, but this guy's still in his teens. He's very precocious, very brilliant, and has an absolutely kind of glittering pedigree, because this man is the son of the Aemilius Paullus who had won at Pydna. So he's therefore the grandson of the Aemilius Paulus who had died at Cannae. He is also the adoptive grandson of Scipio Africanus, the man who had defeated Hannibal. And in Rome, adoption is taken very seriously. So that means that he is basically seen by the Romans as the grandson of Scipio Africanus, because he is the son of Aemilius Pallas, he's called Aemilianus. So Scipio Aemilianus. And, you know, he is a completely worthy grandson of the great conqueror of Hannibal when he was only 17. He had fought with his father at Pydna, covered himself in glory. He'd then gone to Spain. He had won a military crown, so basically the equivalent of a Victoria Cross by being the first over the wall of an enemy city at the same time. Like Scipio Africanus, he is a great enthusiast for Greek culture, a great scholar. And actually this is how he'd come into contact with Polybius, through the loan of some books and general literary chat. So Scipio Aemilianus and Polybius, it's like you and Tabby will be doing on your forthcoming podcast.
- [19:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Who's Tabby in that analogy? I'm Scipio Aemilianus.
- [19:58]
Tom Holland
Right, well, Scipio Aemilianus is much younger, so it's probably Tabby.
- [20:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, but it's about charisma, isn't it?
- [20:03]
Tom Holland
You are this Greek hostage.
- [20:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, absolutely not. Right, let's get back to Carthage. So Scipio Aemilianus, the Dominic Sambrook of Roman history, the Tabby Syrette of the rest is history, what does he make of Carthage? Because he's the adoptive grandson of the bloke who basically defeated it. So does he feel that he has unfinished business with Carthage? Does he want to do the same?
- [20:26]
Tom Holland
Actually, it seems not. I think that Scipio Africanus, because he was the guy who had forced terms on the Carthaginians and got them to accept these terms, he then felt a certain kind of responsibility towards Carthage because it's a bit like a patron with a client that is a relationship that is very important to the Roman aristocracy. And I think that Scipio Africanus, you know, he took this seriously. So for instance, for as long as Hannibal was in Carthage, Scipio Africanus back in Rome had had Hannibal's back. And I think all the kind of the various members of Scipio's dynasty, they share in this obligation. So we can see this from Polybius, who is obviously very influenced by what the Scipio dynasty thinks. So he's always describing how the Carthaginians are going to Rome to complain about Masinissa slicing off bits of their territory. And Polybius, you know, I mean, he emphasizes that these complaints are just. And presumably in saying that he is picking up on the opinion of his Scipionic patrons. But I think it's fair to say that this in Rome is a minority position. And there is one person in particular who views any kind of attempt to water down the harshness with which Carthage is treated as essentially a form of treason. And this is the old enemy of Scipio Africanus who again we met in the last episode. Marcus Porcius Cato.
- [21:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [21:57]
Tom Holland
Who by this point he's just turned 80. But he is as flinty and as hardcore as ever. So that kind of, you know, that ginger hair that he had has gone. He's now terrifyingly bald and got lots of crow feet and jowls. He's a terrifying man.
- [22:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
I hate him. I find Cato such an unpleasant person.
- [22:18]
Tom Holland
Well, I think there are good reasons for hating him as we will see as this episode progresses.
- [22:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
So Cato was sent. He goes to Carthage. I mean, of all people, to go. He goes to Carthage in 152, doesn't he? To investigate yet another spat between the Carthaginians and the Numidians.
- [22:36]
Tom Holland
Massinisa Masinisa by this point is also very old, it should just be said.
- [22:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
And when Cato gets to Carthage, he is horrified by what he sees because basically he had assumed that the Carthaginians would be living like dogs in the gutter, their city in ruins. But actually the Carthaginians, fair play to them. They've dragged themselves back upright and the city is actually doing quite well again. And Cato doesn't like this at all.
- [23:00]
Tom Holland
They don't have an empire to run. They don't have wars to fight. And so the Carthaginians have been able to focus all their energies on getting rich. So again, I mean, to pursue another analogy, it's a bit like West Germany after the Second World War. They're not allowed to have an army or anything. So they can just focus on kind of inventing televisions and stuff.
- [23:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
That old Carthage, Bonn parallel.
- [23:22]
Tom Holland
So the Carthaginians are actually doing very well. And despite the attempts of the Romans to kneecap its economy, the economy is booming. They have this hinterland. The Nemedians may be snipping bits off, but Carthage still controls most of it. It's very fertile, very rich. Carthage has massive grain silos. It's essentially become the breadbasket of the Western Mediterranean which is a role that it will play throughout the history, subsequent history of the Roman Empire. They have upgraded their harbors and they have this inner dockyard which has berths for 170 ships. And Cato is obviously very suspicious of this. Why do they need berths for 170 ships? And he also notices storehouses in which there are piled up great mounds of timber. And so he's thinking, you know, is this timber for the construction of merchant shipping or are the Carthaginians planning to reactivate a war fleet? And Cato Being Cato, he obviously assumes the worst. And he returns to Rome convinced that the Carthaginians are preparing for vengeance. And he stands before the Senate and he shakes out the folds of his toga. And from his toga there drops a fig. Cato bends down, he holds it up. And he invites his fellow senators to admire it. It's very plump, it's very beautiful. It's clearly still very fresh. And Cato then reveals that this fig had come from Carthage. As he points out, a mere three days sail from Rome. And his message is twofold. Firstly, Carthage is back as a great power.
- [25:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [25:10]
Tom Holland
But secondly, suppose a third Punic war were to be launched. A war of annihilation against Carthage. Then all those lands in North Africa currently ruled by Carthage would become Rome's.
- [25:26]
Dominic Sandbrook
And so from that point onwards, whenever Cato stands up in the Senate and he gives a speech. He ends every speech the same way, doesn't he? He makes the same urgent sort of resounding pronouncement. What is more, I mean, it must be extremely boring for his listeners that he says the same thing every time. Anyway, he says, what is more, I think that Carthage must be destroyed.
- [25:51]
Tom Holland
I mean, Dominic, you say it must be boring for his listeners. I don't think so at all. His speeches are not necessarily about Carthage. Yeah, but he always makes this comment. And so you're listening to it and you're kind of waiting for it.
- [26:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
How's he going to get Carthage in again?
- [26:04]
Tom Holland
He'll just mention it willy nilly. But it is a kind of drumbeat, isn't it? And if there's one thing the Romans love, it's a drumbeat of war. So I think he is essentially kind of, you know, provoking a war fever. And this kind of statement that he's making at the end of every speech. What is more, I think that Carthage must be destroyed. Abbreviated. It's become one of the most notorious of all Latin aphorisms. Carthago delenda est Carthage must be destroyed.
- [26:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
So the scene is set for the final confrontation and the annihilation of Carthage. Come back after the break for this very sad story.
- [26:47]
Tom Holland
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- [26:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
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Tom Holland
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Dominic Sandbrook
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- [27:25]
Tom Holland
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Dominic Sandbrook
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Dominic Sandbrook
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- [29:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
Welcome back to the Rest is History. The year is 152bc and Cato, this crabby, miserable old man of Roman politics who everybody admires, or at least a lot of people admire for his sort of Republican austerity and his ostentatious, performative, puritanical morality he is now calling for the total destruction of Carthage. Tom, you've got the word genocide in the notes. Presumably he's not calling for the extermination of every last Carthaginian. It's the city rather than the people. Or have I got that wrong?
- [29:44]
Tom Holland
I think if you're saying destroy a city, you are effectively saying destroy a people. To destroy the mother city of a people effectively is to destroy a people. So I think it's. I mean, it's anachronistic, but I think there is that element in it and I think that people should be aware of what is being planned, the scale of what is being planned. I mean, it is horrific.
- [30:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
And some of the Romans think it's horrific, right?
- [30:08]
Tom Holland
Absolutely. There are senators in Rome who oppose Cato. And of course many of these belong to the dynasty of Scipio Africanus. And one of them, a guy called Scipio Nasica, he's coined his own catchphrase to counter Cato's. So his is Cathago savanda est Carthage must be preserved. Now, listeners may be wondering what's his motivation in coming up with this catchphrase? Is it because he has a sense of humanity, a concern for human rights? Is it from the depths of his kindness? It is not a concern with. Being kind does not really seem to have been a factor. Those who are arguing against a war of annihilation against Carthage, their motivations were told by a Greek historian writing a century later, fundamentally is that Rome needs a worthy enemy because having Carthage as this great bogey on their doorstep keeps them honest, it keeps them on their toes. And the worry is that if you destroy Carthage, then the Romans may become decadent and self indulgent and may end up kind of turning on themselves if they don't have to guard against an outside enemy. All of which of course in a sense does happen. And so it's more than possible that that Greek historian is writing with the benefit of hindsight. I mean, you know, not necessarily, but possible. And I do think it's clear that at the time, the chief source of anxiety for Romans in the Senate, listening to Cato push for this war of annihilation is actually that they're worried about breaking the treaty that they'd signed with Carthage because this will then offend the gods and bring down divine anger on the head of their city. Because the Romans, they saw themselves as being the most devout of peoples and certainly they were kind of very legalistic. So even when they are attacking Macedonian kings or taking Greek bigwigs hostage, they always needed to feel that they were legally justified in what they were doing. They're not, as they see it, doing anything that is unmerited or unprovoked. They always have to feel that the gods are on their side. And so this is what large numbers in the Senate feel they need with regard to Carthage. They can't attack Carthage without a casus belli. And fortunately for them, they have one on hand because this is Masinissa.
- [32:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right? So this bloke has been constantly having his border skirmishes with the Carthaginians and attacking their farmland and snatching their, you know, their olive groves or whatever. But if you're Cato or one of the war hawks in Rome, isn't this the perfect opportunity? He's like the equivalent of the people in Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine who Vladimir Putin used as a pretext basically for his war in Ukraine.
- [33:14]
Tom Holland
Yes. And so Masinissa, by now in his late 80s, is as acquisitive as ever. And so his men continue to launch attacks on farms and estates in Carthage's rural hinterland with the aim of appropriating them. And in Carthage, there is now total despair that Rome will ever reign. Massinissa in. And this despair brings new leaders to power who are much more hawkish than the previous generation. And these are men who are saying, well, look, we need a more assertive foreign policy. We, you know, we cannot go on like this. So in 151, ignoring the prescriptions of the treaty that they had signed with rome back in 201, the Carthaginians go to war with Masinissa. They do not have the permission of the Romans to do this. And the result for the Carthaginians, unfortunately, is disaster. So Masinissa, he's, he's, he's now basically 90, but he's still in the saddle. He fights the Carthaginian army to a standstill near a town called Oroskopa and he isolates them on hill. They don't have any water, so they have no option but to surrender and submit to humiliating terms which include, again, a kind of massive indemnity, which is bad enough. But the real disaster is the open goal, obviously, that the Carthaginians have now given to the war party in Rome, because hawks there can now argue that Carthage is in breach of her treaty obligations and that therefore, if the Romans attack Carthage, the gods will be backing them. So that's everything they need.
- [34:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
So now the Romans have their opportunity to launch their strike. And what is more, there are financial Motives aren't there because in 151 the Carthaginians have paid off the very last installment basically of their reparations, their, their war indemnity. So there's going to be no more money coming to Rome from Carthage. If the Romans want the Carthaginian wealth, they have to go and seize it. So it's. They've both got the kind of the diplomatic opportunity because this business with Massinissa, but also now there is a very big financial incentive for greedy people in Rome to urge a war with Carthage. It's like these people who say well it's like, I don't know, Saddam Hussein is a bad man and there's a lot of oil in Iraq, you know, let's go in.
- [35:38]
Tom Holland
Yeah, exactly. And so in 150 the Romans begin to mobilize for an invasion of Africa. And back in Carthage, understandably the news of this throws the entire city into panic. And so they desperately try to appease the Romans. And they do this first of all by condemning the general who'd been defeated at Oroscopa to death. And it will not surprise regular listeners to this series to learn that the name of this general is of course Hasdrubal. Yet another, yet another Hasdrubal. And then the Carthaginians send an embassy to Rome basically to beg for mercy. And when they arrive there they're appalled to discover that this Roman task force has already left and is in Sicily. So just across the sea from Carthage. And they also find Cato on absolutely top form. So he gives a kind of zinger of a speech. What people can't be trusted to keep their treaties? The Carthaginians. What people are inveterate warmongers notorious for their cruelty? The Carthaginians. What people left Italy a smoldering wasteland? The Carthaginians. So still that. Harping on all the destruction that Hannibal had brought to Italy. And when the Carthaginian envoys, you know, they beg to know how can we make amends? I mean what can we do? They receive this very menacingly Delphic response by satisfying the Roman people. But the Senate does not specify how this satisfaction can be obtained.
- [37:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
So let's take us to the next year. Twelve months on, the Romans have landed in North Africa. They have established their base camp 30 miles northwest of Carthage. The Carthaginians send envoys to try and negotiate with the Romans. And what happens next?
- [37:26]
Tom Holland
Well they, they arrive at the Roman camp and as they approach there's this kind of great deafening blast of Trumpets. And then they enter the camp and they are led past the massed ranks of the legions who are all drawn up and who are totally silent. I mean it must have been terrifying. Ahead of them are the two consuls sat down on a podium. And the Carthaginian envoys are brought before the consuls. And they start stammering, trying to make their excuses. But all these excuses are dismissed. And then one of the consuls, Lucius Marcius Sensorinus, he informs the envoys that there will be no more negotiations until Carthage has handed over all the weapons in the city. All the armour, all the war machines. And so the envoys go back to Carthage. And shortly afterwards great wagon loads of weapons and armor come rumbling up to the Roman camp. And also in their train, over 2,000 catapults. So these are all handed over to the Romans. And then the envoys come back and they stand in front of the consuls again. And now at last the terms are delivered and I will quote them. Bear bravely the remaining commands of the Roman Senate. The envoys are told. You must evacuate your city and surrender it to us. You will be allowed to settle where you please within the limits of your own territory. Provided that it is at least 10 miles from the sea. As for us, we are resolved to level Carthage to the ground.
- [39:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
Imagine being the Carthaginian envoys listening to that. I mean, terrifying. And of course, I mean what can they do? There's no way that the Carthaginians can possibly accept this. You would think, I mean just to.
- [39:11]
Tom Holland
Emphasize for people talked about how. How a people are identified with their mother city. And in a sense to lose your mother city is to lose your identity, that city. It's not just about the history. It's also about the temples, the gods, whatever. You know, you. You lose everything. And of course, I mean, you know, on the economic sense if you no longer have a port you no longer have really have a way of making a living. So as you say, I mean it would seem impossible for the Carthaginians to accept these terms. And so it proves. Because when the ambassadors from the Roman camp return to Carthage the people of the city refused to accept it. Even though they know that in effect by doing so they are signing their own death warrant. And anyone who speaks up saying actually I think we should accept these terms. I mean, you know, we've got no chance of. Of keeping the Romans at bay. They are lynched, they're stoned, whatever. And so there is a mass effort to try and. And steal Carthage for The, the horrors that have come because of course they've handed over their catapults, their weapons, their armor, all of that. So what measures do they take? All the slaves in the city are freed to the degree that the Carthaginians still have arms. Arms are given to these slaves. People rush out to quarries outside the city and haul in stones because they're going to try and make more catapults. We're told. All the shrines, the temples and every other public space was turned into workshops where men and women worked day and night without pause, taking turns to eat according to a fixed schedule. So basically, you know, equivalent of munitions factories popping up across the city in, in their temples and in these workshops of course people are busy making swords, spears, shields. Anything made of metal in the city is being melted down and women donate their hair so that it can be used as rope for the catapults. Kind of twine it. Hasdrubal, their general who'd lost the battle at Oroscopa and is still on death row. He's reprieved and he's given back his old command and he leads out a makeshift army and prepares for a guerrilla war against the Romans. And it is war. For the third time, Roman Carthage are locked in what really is this time a death struggle. It's not a death struggle for Rome but it absolutely is for Carthage.
- [41:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
So it's the kind of war, it's a bit like, I don't know when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and you know, they had, the Germans had such a preponderance of forces but allied sympathizers with Poland sort of said oh, you know, they will have all the pluck. You know, they've got such spirit. They're fighting for their homeland. You know, the people will rise and, and they will see off the invaders all of this kind of thing. And actually that turned out to be complete wishful thinking because the, the balance of forces was such that the attacker could not but win. And in this case, well, actually it's not an immediate walkover, is it? By any means.
- [42:05]
Tom Holland
So the Carthaginians do actually manage to hold out for much longer than the Poles do against the Nazis as it turns out, for several years. And they're able to do this because even though the Carthaginians have had to, you know, have been tricked into handing over so much of their weaponry, the city is still pretty well prepared for a siege. So it has these kind of great triple walls and these walls in turn are buttressed with ditches and banks. And I mentioned the grain silos. So they have a lot of food inside the city. And they've also built huge cisterns for collecting rainwater. So again, water shouldn't be a problem. And meanwhile the Romans, as they advance up to the city, they camp beside a stagnant lake and it's summer. And so predictably they all start, you know, catching various horrible diseases. And actually Hasdrubal, who, you know, he proved an absolute dud in open combat when it comes to guerrilla warfare, he's actually pretty good. He's very successful at attacking Roman supply lines, masterminding sallies. And so all that year, 149, the siege carries on. 148 Roman setbacks continue. They are going around trying to mop up Carthaginian strongholds beyond Carthage. But these two are able to hold out. And again sallies are launched out from the walls and they burn Roman siege engines and so on. And then in 148, Masinissa, you know, the old war horse, the great, the man who had once been a Carthaginian ally and then become their great enemy. He d at the fabulous age of 91. And that might have offered hope to the Carthaginians perhaps, you know, that this kind of inveterate enemy of theirs has gone. And then there comes news from the Balkans that a pretender to the Macedonian throne has emerged. So people remember that the kingdom of Macedon had been divided up into these four cantons. A pretender has emerged and he wants to reunite these cantons and make himself king. And he defeats a Roman army and sends messages to the Carthaginians saying, will you enter into an alliance? And of course the Carthaginians say yes. So suddenly they do have an ally now, the Romans, you know, they're not despondent. They're still fully expecting to win. But I think there's a certain sense of alarm developing. And so they start to look around for a savior, someone qualified to step into the breach and prove himself a hero. And there is, of course really only the one candidate.
- [44:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
So the obvious person, I guess the adoptive grandson of Scipio Africanus. It's the person we've already talked about, Scipio Aemilianus. And he. It's not just that he has got the right bloodline or the right heredity. He has experience, doesn't he? He has already fought the Carthaginians.
- [44:58]
Tom Holland
He has. I mean, he's a very, very good soldier. So he'd been an observer at Oroskopa where Masinissa had defeated the Carthaginians. And so he had seen Hasdru, the Carthaginian commander in chief up close. You know, he knew what made him tick. And then for the past two years he'd been serving before the walls of Carthage itself where he was basically the only senior officer to have emerged with any credit at all. I mean, he'd had a very good war. The only drawback is that he's still in his 30s and people will remember that the minimum age to serve as consul is 40. That had been waived for Scipio Africanus against the opposition of Roman conservatives. But the people hadn't cared, they'd forced it through. And the same thing happens this time. The people, and I quote, declared that he was the only worthy successor of his father, Aemilius Paullus the Conqueror of Macedon and of the Scipios. And so the Senate, recognizing the force of public opinion, perhaps you know, just a little desperate themselves, agree to waive the prohibition and say, yeah, Scipio can run for consul and he's duly elected. And the intriguing thing is that even the absolute spokesman for conservatism, Cato, even Cato, gives Scipio Melianus the nod. I mean, he really is the right man for the job.
- [46:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
So now at last we come to the final chapter in the story. So the siege of Carthage, the end of the Punic wars and indeed the end of this great ancient city itself. So the Romans have put all their hopes in Scipio Aemilianus and when he arrives in Africa as consul in 146 Tom, he has the, the vigour and the dynamism and the ambition that his predecessors have lacked. And he more than bears out the hope that the Senate had in him.
- [46:47]
Tom Holland
Yes, and Hasdrubal, who has clashed with Scipio Aemilianus before, I mean, he's very respectful of his reputation. And so he, rather than continuing with his guerrilla war, he withdraws all his troops inside Carthage and hunkers down there. But this of course is only to play into Scipio Aemilianus hands because now all the Carthaginian forces are trapped inside the great city. And Aemilianus knows that if he can only invest the city completely, completely surround it, cut off all supplies of food, then he will be able in the long run to starve the city into submission. And so he wants to orders his men to start constructing a massive mole across the entrance of the harbour, which to the Carthaginian seems an impossible engineering project. But Scipio Emilianus is A very good engineer as well as a very good soldier and is able to pull it off. And so this mole ends up being constructed. Access to the harbour is now blocked off and there is no possibility of food coming into Carthage. And so Scipio Emilianus knows that he can now sit back and wait. And with each day that passes, the noose will tighten.
- [48:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
And what about the Carthaginians, while this noose is tightening, what are they doing?
- [48:08]
Tom Holland
Well, Carthage has always been run by a senate in that sense. It's always had a kind of civilian government. But Hasdrubal, he feels that the only way that Carthage survive is if he institutes a military dictatorship. And so this is what he does. You know, he's got all the soldiers at his back, there's no one to stop him. And by doing that, of course, he is able to commandeer all the food supplies within the city and ensure that his men are well fed even while everyone else starts to starve. And the corpses of those who no longer have access to food begin to litter the streets of the dying city. And Hasdrubal is anxious that this experience of starvation on the part of the vast majority of the public may result in civic unrest, may lead to pressure on him to open negotiations with the Romans. And he's not prepared to do that. So he takes Roman legionaries who've been captured in the fighting and he leads them up onto the walls of Carthage and there where the Romans far below can see what is being done to their comrades, they're tortured to death and their bodies are dumped into the Roman positions. So that of course makes sure that there will be no negotiations. And Scipio Aemilianus is waiting for the morale in the city to hit rock bottom, for people really to start dying, for disease to spread. And then when that moment comes, he strikes and he takes the Carthaginians completely by surprise. And his assault, it's not over the walls, it's through the harbors from the mole. That mole is a kind of launch pad. And so the Romans are able to. It's an amphibious attack. They go through the outer harbour, into that inner harbour that the Carthaginians had just been built. And from there there is easy access to the great marketplace in the center of the city. And once the Romans have breached the harbour defenses, they pour into this marketplace and they essentially make it the base for the sack of the city that is now going to happen. First of all, they strip this great temple that is standing there of all its gold, pile that gold up and then they start literally disassembling the city brick by brick. So what they do, there are kind of very tight narrow streets fanning off from the marketplace and there are blocks of housing that reach up six stories. And these are but the marketplace and the houses that are adjacent to the marketplace. Soldiers go in, they clear all the opposition from all the enemy, from each of the storeys of these houses. And then once the houses have been cleared, they take planks up to the top storey and they lay them out across the kind of narrow streets below. And from there they can pass into the next block of houses and they do the same. And the process just goes on and on and on. And once the houses have been cleared and the soldiers have gone from the one block to the next, they then set the houses on fire. And you get masonry, you get beams, you get the corpses of the slain, you get old men, women, children who might have taken shelter inside these houses. They all come crashing down into the streets. And we have a horrific description of what this was like. Once all the kind of the debris has fallen into the streets, cleaners came who had been charged with making the streets possible so that the soldiers can continue up the streets. And these cleaners hauled the dead and the living alike into great pits they had dug, disposing of them as though they were masonry and burning timbers mere debris. Some of the living were thrown in head first so that their legs stuck out of the ground and they were left to writhe where they had been buried a long time. So a kind of hideous, grotesque image.
- [51:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
Do you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of the siege of Tenochtitlan that we talked about in the fall of the Aztecs. The Spanish fighting house by house, destroying the houses to stop the Aztecs from using them as kind of refuges. It's very, very similar, isn't it? It's this Stalingrad style battle.
- [52:14]
Tom Holland
I mean, it's possible that there would have been Spaniards, of course, in, in the war who had read these very accounts.
- [52:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
I was thinking that, yeah, they had classical education, a lot of these people. Yeah, so they would have known about all this.
- [52:24]
Tom Holland
And, and this, the destruction of Carthage is the archetype of the destruction of a great and famous and beautiful capital. And the process of clearance goes on for six days. And on the seventh day, the vast mass of the Carthaginians who remained alive surrendered. And the only resistance now is from Hasdrubal and 900 Roman deserters who held out on the kind of the topmost fort, the Carthaginian equivalent of a necropolis. But in time he too is brought to surrender. And he's brought before Scipio Aemilianus and grovels before the feet of the Roman commander. And his wife is, who'd been with him is utterly contemptuous of this. And she takes a dagger, she slits the throats of their two sons and she throws corpses of her sons into a fire that is blazing nearby. And then she hurls herself into the flames as well. Very Dido.
- [53:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [53:17]
Tom Holland
I mean it's a bit sad that women tend only to appear in the series when they're killing themselves.
- [53:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
That's antiquity for you. Yeah. So what happens to Hasdrubal and what happens to the deserters?
- [53:30]
Tom Holland
The Hasdrubal is spared and taken back to Rome where he walks in Scipio Aemilianus triumph. And then he's allowed to settle in a. A farm outside Rome. So he survives. The Roman deserters of course are put horribly to death. The Carthaginians who've surrendered, they are all enslaved. About 50,000 of them. They're led out. Men, women, children, all become slaves. The city is systematically stripped of all its treasures. No respect is shown. The temples of the Carthaginian gods, they are demolished. Carthage had a rich and venerable literary tradition. All the libraries are emptied and given to the Numidians who promptly seem to have lost them. The romans do keep one 28 volume treatise on agriculture which they have translated into Latin because obviously they're thinking well we want to take over these lands and this is the guide to how to, you know, how to make the fields flourish. So we'll keep that. But otherwise all the wealth of Punic literature is gone. So we have nothing, we have no histories written by the Carthaginians. And so as so often, you know, in these stories whether it's the Belgians in the Congo or whatever.
- [54:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [54:46]
Tom Holland
Or indeed the, you know, the Americans in the Great Plains. We only have one side. We only have the Roman side.
- [54:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [54:53]
Tom Holland
The news of Carthage's fall is sent to Rome and the Senate. Then send back instructions to Scipio Aemilianus that what remained of the city was to be raised to the ground. And that a curse was to be laid on anyone who in the future might try to settle there. So Carthage is to be left abandoned to weeds.
- [55:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
But here's an amazing thing. They don't sow the, the ruins with salt. Everyone thinks they did that and they didn't.
- [55:19]
Tom Holland
They don't. It was a metaphorical flourish in the Cambridge Ancient History which came out in the 1920s and it's just, right, spread like wildfire ever since. Since. But that did. That did, you know, there's no reference to that happening in any, Any of the ancient sources at all. But, you know, they might as well have sowed the fields with salt because the signal that. The destruction of this very famous, very ancient, very beautiful city, the signal sent to the world was unmistakable that the Romans are no longer prepared to brook any rival, any hint of disobedience. And that is a message that is rammed home a few months later. So people may remember that, you know, there's this uprising in Macedon. This pretender to the Macedonian throne has emerged. I mean, he does not last long. He gets crushed. And there's then a kind of. There's an uprising in Greece and the Romans deal with that very brutally as well. And the suppression of that uprising culminates in the annihilation of a second famous ancient and beautiful city, and that is the. The destruction of Corinth in Greece, commanding the isthmus that joins the Peloponnese to northern Greece. And I think that anyone in the Mediterranean in 146 BC, contemplating the destruction in the same year of Carthage and of Corinth, are well aware that an era has dawned in which Rome is so preponderant that effectively no one in the Mediterranean has any real independence left at all. And, you know, within a century, the whole of the Mediterranean will become a Roman lake. But the story of how Rome rises to that position of preponderance, what it means for people in the Mediterranean and what it means for the Romans themselves, I mean, that is a story for another day. But I just thought to end this series. We've done three series in all, and we, we began the very first series with a passage that derives from Polybius's recollections. Polybius had accompanied Scipio Aemilianus to the siege and had witnessed it for himself. So I'll just finish by reading this passage. It is said that Scipio Aemilianus, as Carthage, was going up in flames, its annihilation almost complete, gazed at the city in its death throes and openly wept for his enemies. He stood wrapped in thought for a long time, pondering how every city, every people, every empire must, as men do, meet with their doom in the end. For such had been the fate of Troy, once a proud and flourishing city, and of the empires of Assyria, Media and Persia, each in their own day, the greatest in the world, and of Macedon, which only recently had blazed with such a brilliance. And then, either deliberately or because he could not help quoting them, Scipio spoke two lines of Homer. A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish, and Priam and his people all be slain. And when Polybius, speaking to him with the freedom he was granted as Scipio's tutor in Greek literature, asked him what he meant by these words, it is said that without any attempt to veil his meaning, Scipio made reference to his own country. For when he pondered how all things that are mortal must fall, he dreaded how Rome, too, would fall.
- [58:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Crikey. Well, thank you very much, Tom. That's a. A salutary warning and indeed one that sets up beautifully our next series on the Rest is History, which will be starting on Monday. And that series is the tale of the fall of the Incas, one of the longest and largest contiguous empires in world history, that came crashing down at the hands of Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors. So on Monday, members of the Rest is History club will get all six episodes in that mighty series. And if you want to join them, if you want to plunge into the streets of Cusco and Cajamarca and the jungles of the Amazon and scale the peaks of the Andes with the Spaniards, then you merely have to head to the restishistory.com to sign up and you'll get all six episodes on Monday. But for now, Tom, what an amazing effort to cover that epic story in three mighty seasons. Thank you so much. And that was Carthage. Bye bye, everybody.
- [59:53]
Tom Holland
Ave, Aquavoli.