With that aim in mind, Aemilianus returned to North Africa, brought discipline back to the army and adopted a new strategy for the war. He ordered the Roman campaigns in the interior to be abandoned. All Roman units were now to focus on taking the city first by siege, then by assault. During the summer of 147 BC he created an impregnable seal around Carthage to prevent any reinforcements and provisions from reaching the city. On the land approaches, he ensured that a double wall of earthworks was built across the isthmus in just twenty days. On the harbour side, he was no less ambitious. In order to block up the entrance to the port, a barrier was created by depositing 15,000 cubic metres (52,000 cubic feet) of rocks and boulders. Siege engines were then placed on top of the wall rising out of the sea. Despite some brave Carthaginian resistance and attacks, the city was effectively made watertight by the winter. Aemilianus spent the next few months clearing up pockets of resistance in the country, and when spring came again in 146 BC, he and his army were ready to take the city. To help them, new recruits arrived from Italy. One of those green soldiers was Aemilianus’s seventeen-year-old cousin, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus.
As a close relative, Tiberius shared Aemilianus’s tent and table. The boy was, after all, not only Aemilianus’s cousin, but also his brother-in-law; earlier Aemilianus had married Tiberius’s elder sister Sempronia. But the two men had more in common than family. The war presented both of them with a unique opportunity to prove themselves. For Aemilianus, holding the annual consulship gave him a limited window of time to silence his critics. In his youth he had avoided taking the proper route to success in politics and had once confided in his friend and tutor, the historian Polybius: ‘Everyone regards me as a quiet and lazy person with no share in the energetic character of a Roman because I do not choose to plead cases in court. They say that the family does not need the sort of representative that I am but someone just the opposite. That is what hurts me most.’15 His single year as consul and general in charge of the war in Carthage was his one shot at the big time, his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to prove himself worthy of his family, to renew the fame of the Cornelii Scipiones. Glory was there for the taking so long as the weight of expectation did not get to him first.
Much too was expected of his cousin. Since his father’s death, Tiberius, along with his sister and younger brother, had been brought up by their renowned mother Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus. She had ensured that Tiberius had received the best Greek education in rhetoric and philosophy; it suited the young man’s intelligent, generous and idealistic nature. But she had also fired him with ambitions for a glorious career and a desire to excel in the Roman virtues of self-discipline and courage. As a result, although gentle, thoughtful and by no means a natural fighter like his cousin Aemilianus, Tiberius was a fiercely determined young man.16 This latter quality would prove an asset during his summer in Carthage.
Tiberius joined Aemilianus’s staff to learn the art of war, to study his actions and follow his example. However, this war also presented him with a chance to get his foot on the political ladder known as the cursus honorum, the annual electoral competition for honours. Since in ancient Rome political and military careers were not separate as they usually are today but entwined as one, ambitious young men needed to have served in a number of campaigns before they could stand for even the lower offices in the hierarchy of magistracies. But there was much more to building a political career than simply notching up one military campaign after another. As Aemilianus himself was known to observe, power in Rome began with earning integrity. An ancient aristocratic code followed on from this: ‘Dignity of rank,’ said Aemilianus, ‘arises from integrity, the honour of holding office from dignity, supreme authority from holding office, and freedom from supreme authority.’17 Liberty to do what one wished was the value most cherished by Roman aristocrats. It was the very essence of the free republic. But how to set foot on such a daunting, political path? How to begin building such character? How to emulate one’s ancestors? As Aemilianus and his officers made the final preparations for the assault on Carthage, Tiberius found out.
There is no record of what Aemilianus told his officers before battle, but it is easy to imagine that it centred on an old theme. The battle ahead was about liberty and justice winning out over tyranny. It was about decent Roman values surpassing the treachery and deceitfulness of the Carthaginians. It was, in short, about civilization vanquishing decadence and corruption. With the final assault on Carthage, 120 years of war, hatred and suspicion would come to an end. The questions of who controlled the ancient world and how it was to be run would at last be unambiguously answered. As incentives for his officers to show valour in a conflict of such proportions, perhaps Aemilianus reminded his entourage too of the usual decorations. Ancient Romans awarded acts of bravery not primarily with medals but with crowns, bracelets, necklaces and miniature spears. Depending on the nature of the achievement, the crowns took different names and forms. Some were of grass, some of oak leaves, others of gold. Only one, however, fitted this momentous occasion. The Mural Crown was to be awarded to the first person to scale the walls of the city.
Perhaps with this in mind, Tiberius and his unit waited in the dawn light for the horns to blare. With his thirst for glory contending with terror, Tiberius was about to experience his first taste of war. Then the signal came. The Romans broke cover, quickly set timbers, scaffolding and siege engines against the city wall, and took on the 30,000 Carthaginian defenders. Against the shower of arrows, spears and weighted nets trapping the Roman climbers below, Tiberius’s unit began the long scramble up the city wall some 9 metres (30 feet) wide and 18 metres (66 feet) high. Despite the swathes of Roman casualties crashing to the ground around him, Tiberius achieved what perhaps had seemed impossible: he became the first to lead his detachment to the top of the wall of Carthage. But as soon he and his men were over, they would have realised that the fight had only just begun. They now faced the enemy in gruelling, mechanical hand-to-hand combat. In the moment of his great triumph Tiberius found himself in hell.
The horrific conflict lasted six days and nights. Once inside the city, killing squads advanced house by house, narrow street by narrow street. They cut and stabbed their way from the Forum of Carthage along three streets and forced the enemy back on to Byrsa, the citadel. When the determined Carthaginians, fighting for survival, began attacking the Romans with missiles from the roofs of their close-packed houses, the Romans captured the first few tenements, murdered their occupants and mounted the roofs too. Throwing planks over the narrow alleyways, they continued to wage the war from rooftop to rooftop, leaving a trail of mutilated corpses in their wake or tossing them to the streets below. Then, amid the cries, shrieks and animal-like groans, Aemilianus raised the intensity of the brutal assault and ordered the streets to be set on fire. The booming noise stepped up the confusion. Houses came crashing down and the elderly, the wounded, women and children were forced out of their hiding places.18