The Roman ultimatum: 149 B. C. A fresh attack by Masinissa occurred in 151 B. C. Enraged, the Carthaginians took the field against him, but suffered defeat. The Romans at once prepared for war. Conscious of having overstepped their rights and fearful of Roman vengeance, the Carthaginians offered unconditional submission in the hope of obtaining pardon. The Senate assured them of their lives, property and constitution, but required hostages and bade them execute the commands of the consuls who crossed over to Africa with an army and ordered the Carthaginians to surrender their arms and engines of war. The Carthaginians, desirous of appeasing the Romans at all costs, complied. Then came the ultimatum. They must abandon their city and settle at least ten miles from the sea coast. This was practically a death sentence to the ancient mercantile city. Seized with the fury of despair the Carthaginians improvised weapons and, manning their walls, bade defiance to the Romans.
The siege of Carthage: 149–146 B. C. For two years the Romans, owing to the incapacity of their commanders, accomplished little. Then disappointment and apprehension led the Roman people to demand as consul Scipio Aemilianus, who had already distinguished himself as a military tribune. He was only a candidate for the aedileship and legally ineligible for the consulate. But the restrictions upon his candidature were suspended, and he was elected consul for 147 B. C. A special law entrusted him with the conduct of the war in Africa. He restored discipline in the Roman army, defeated the Carthaginians in the field and energetically pressed the siege of the city. The Carthaginians suffered frightfully from hunger and their forces were greatly reduced. In the spring of 146 B. C. the Romans forced their way into the city and captured it after desperate fighting in the streets and houses. The handful of survivors were sold into slavery, their city levelled to the ground and its site declared accursed. Out of the Carthaginian territory the Romans created a new province, called Africa. The last act in the dramatic struggle between the two cities was ended.
III. War with Macedonia and the Achaean Confederacy: 149–146 b. c.
The Fourth Macedonian War: 149–148 B. C. The mutual rivalries among the Greek states, which frequently evoked senatorial intervention, and the ill-will occasioned by the harshness of the Romans towards the anti-Roman party everywhere, caused a large faction among the Hellenes to be ready to seize the first favorable opportunity for freeing Greece from Roman suzerainty.
Relying upon this antagonism to Rome, a certain Andriscus, who claimed to be a son of Perseus, appeared in Macedonia in 149 and claimed the throne. He made himself master of the country and defeated the first Roman forces sent against him. However, he was crushed in the following year at Pydna by the praetor Metellus, and Macedonia was recovered. The four republics were not restored but the whole country was organized as a Roman province (148 B. C.).
The Achaeans assert their independence. The Achaean Confederacy was one of the states where the feeling against Rome ran especially high. There the irksomeness of the Roman protectorate was heightened by the return of the survivors of the political exiles [pg 103]of 167, 300 in number. The anti-Roman party, supported by the extreme democratic elements in the cities, was in control of the Confederacy when border difficulties with Sparta broke out afresh in 149 B. C. The matter was referred to the Senate for settlement, but the Achaeans did not await its decision. They attacked and defeated Sparta, confident that the hands of the Romans were tied by the wars in Spain, Africa and Macedonia.
The dissolution of the Confederacy: 146 B. C. The Roman Senate determined to punish the Confederacy by detaching certain important cities from its membership. But in 147 the Achaean assembly tempestuously refused to carry out the orders of the Roman ambassadors, in spite of the fact that the Macedonian revolt had been crushed. Their leaders, expecting no mercy from Rome, prepared for war and they were joined by the Boeotians and other peoples of central Greece. The next year they resolved to attack Sparta, whereupon the Romans sent a fleet and an army against them under the consul Lucius Mummius. Metellus, the conqueror of Macedonia, subdued central Greece and Mummius routed the forces of the Confederacy at Leucopetra on the Isthmus (146 B. C.). Corinth was sacked and burnt; its treasures were carried off to Rome; and its inhabitants sold into slavery. Its land, like that of Carthage, was added to the Roman public domain. Like Alexander’s destruction of Thebes this was a warning which the other cities of Greece could not misinterpret. A senatorial commission dissolved the Achaean Confederacy as well as the similar political combinations of the Boeotians and Phocians, The cities of Greece entered into individual relations with Rome. Those which had stood on the side of Rome, as Athens and Sparta, retained their previous status as Roman allies; the rest were made subject and tributary. Greece was not organized as a province, but was put under the supervision of the governor of Macedonia.