Squads of Roman ‘cleaners’ now attempted to bring order to the scenes of frenetic activity. They cleared away the bodies of the dead and wounded alike, mixing them with the rubble and sweeping them into holes in the ground. The streets needed to be clear to make way for the cohorts of army and cavalry charging forward. Horses trampled over the dismembered limbs and severed heads that remained in their way. This warfare was a far cry from the bloody field engagements of Hannibal, or the naval clashes of the First Punic War. It took the horror to another level. At all costs, however, Roman discipline had to be sustained. Although the troops were rotated in order to maintain the ferocity of their attack, Aemilianus, snatching morsels of food and sleep whenever he could, worked around the clock.19
By the seventh day the Romans’ efforts had paid off and 50,000 exhausted, starving Carthaginians approached Aemilianus bearing garlands of the god of healing, Asclepius, a signal that they wished to surrender in exchange for their lives. Aemilianus agreed. After the respite, the Roman army focused its full force on the sacred Temple of Eshmoun. This was situated at the height of the citadel and it was the fortified bolt-hole to which Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian general, and a defiant army of nine hundred defenders had retreated. The Romans surrounded it and for some time were unable to penetrate the temple’s natural defences. The grind of war – fatigue, want of food and fear – eventually forced the Carthaginians on to the roof. There was nowhere left to turn. When Hasdrubal, realizing that they were doomed, secretly deserted, Aemilianus was quick to drive home the advantage. In full view of the rebels, he staged the abject surrender of their cowardly leader before him. After that demoralizing spectacle it was only a matter of time before the rebels, including Hasdrubal’s wife and children, gave up hope and threw themselves to their deaths in the fire enveloping the temple below.20
The Romans had sealed their victory. What was utterly striking about the aftermath of the ruthless sack of Carthage, however, was the reaction of Aemilianus. The moment was not cause for thoughtless, impulsive celebration but pessimism, doubt, even guilt. Polybius, an eyewitness to the events, recorded it. Aemilianus took him into his confidence, climbed to a point where he could survey the spectacular devastation below and burst into tears. He even quoted some lines from the Iliad, the ancient Greek poem of Homer:
A day will come in which our mighty Troy,
And Priam and the people over whom
Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all.21
When Polybius asked him what he meant, Aemilianus replied that one day Rome would meet the same fate as Troy and its king, Priam. The ancient city of Carthage, after all, had been the centre of an empire that had lasted seven hundred years. It had ‘ruled over so many lands, islands and seas, and was once as rich in arms and fleets, elephants and money as the mightiest empires’.22 Now, however, it lay in ruins. It is astonishing that a Roman general should respond so differently from his all-conquering ancestors. He reflected not on the glory of Rome, not on the success of the just and free republic but on its future and inevitable demise. The echo of Homer’s poem was poignant for another reason. The sack of Troy was the moment that had provoked the flight of the Trojan Aeneas. That flight had resulted in the legendary foundation of Rome. The ‘Trojan’ Romans, said Aemilianus, would go the same way not just as the Carthaginians but as their distant ancestors too.
Over the next few days, Aemilianus reserved much of the city’s gold, silver and sacred objects for the Roman state. He made sure too that none of his friends and associates participated in excessive looting so that neither he nor they could be accused by their political rivals in Rome of privately profiting from the war. Such behaviour would be tantamount to dishonour, the great mistake of putting one’s own interests above those of the republic. Only after the richest slice of the plunder had been saved for Rome, did Aemilianus turn over the remainder of the city to the grasping hands of the Roman soldiers.
Ten commissioners soon arrived from Rome with one final request for the great conqueror. Nothing of Carthage, they said, should remain. So, after the city was burnt for ten days and demolished stone by stone, brick by brick, the Roman army concluded the most comprehensive, painstaking eradication of a city and its culture in all of ancient history. Archaeological evidence of the burning and demolition can be seen to this day. From a city of approximately a million inhabitants, the surviving 50,000 Carthaginians were sold into slavery. The towns that had supported the city were likewise destroyed, while those that had sided with Rome were rewarded. The new Roman province of North Africa was now established. It was, however, becoming harder to see where were those ancestral virtues of piety, justice and honour and what role, if any, they played.
In the same year as Carthage was razed to the ground, the rich city of Corinth in Greece was also methodically sacked by the Romans. It was punishment once again for challenging their power in the region. The two events took place within months of each other and for this reason the year 146 BC would prove a major watershed in Roman history. Across the breadth of the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic coast of Spain to Greece’s border with Asia Minor, Rome was now the supreme master. It could do anything it wanted to whomever it chose and it could do so without fear of reprisal. It did not even have to keep its word. In the war with Carthage, the ancient virtue of fides had been violated and yet, in spite of this, Rome was still victorious. The Roman gods still seemed to smile with favour and grant success.
Before leaving North Africa, Aemilianus attended to one last duty. Tiberius had been popular and held in affection by the soldiers. Now the young man’s success in the war was capped when Aemilianus awarded his cousin the Mural Crown for his courage in being the first over the walls of Carthage.23 In years to come, however, the consequences of destroying Carthage would haunt those who had carried it out, both the doubting general and the seventeen-year-old, decorated soldier. Indeed, with time, the cost of this Roman atrocity would tear the cousins apart.
CRISIS IN ROME
When Tiberius returned to Rome he stepped into glory. Wearing his golden Mural Crown, the young idealist walked through the main streets of the city as one small part of a grand procession. All the temples were open and filled with garlands and incense. Sunlit rose petals streamed down from the rooftops, and the attendants of officials did their best to control the tide of the crowds. For pouring into the streets, cheering, laughing and embracing each other, was the multitude of the Roman people.24 All this excitement and celebration was in honour of one magnificent event: Aemilianus’s triumph, the illustrious prize awarded by the Senate to honour the general’s victory in Carthage.
Trumpeters led the way, sounding out the same martial music with which they had previously roused the soldiers to war. Oxen, their horns gilded and bearing garlands, were present too. Some soldiers, in their finest armour, held aloft models, plans and pictures depicting the city they had conquered and critical scenes from the war. Behind them others carried a forest of placards inscribed with the names of foreign places now subdued. After the parade of captive Carthaginians, the spoils of their city and the piles of their armour, came Aemilianus on his chariot. He wore a purple toga into which silver stars had been woven, and his face was daubed with red paint. Thus attired, he was the personification of Jupiter, the greatest of the gods who protected Rome. However, there was no question about the conqueror’s quasi-divinity. The state slave, standing behind him, may have held a heavy gold-leaf crown over Aemilianus’s head, but every time the crowd cheered, he murmured to the generaclass="underline" ‘Remember you are only a man.’