THIRD PUNIC WAR BEGUN, 148 B.C.
Carthage had been humbled, but not destroyed. She still enjoyed the advantages of her magnificent situation and continued to be a competitor of Rome for the trade of the Mediterranean. The Romans watched with jealousy the reviving strength of the Punic city and at last determined to blot it out of existence. In 149 B.C. a large army was landed in Africa, and the inhabitants of Carthage were ordered to remove ten miles from the sea. They resolved to perish in the ruins of their capital, rather than obey such a cruel command.
[Illustration: A TESTUDO A relief from the Column of Trajan, Rome. The name testudo a tortoise (shell) was applied to the covering made by a body of soldiers who placed their shields over their heads The shields fitted so closely together that men could walk on them and even horses and chariots could be driven over them.]
[Illustration: Map, THE EXPANSION OF ROMAN DOMINIONS 264-133 B. C.]
DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE, 146 B.C.
Carthage held out for three years. The doubtful honor of its capture belonged to Scipio Aemilianus, grandson, by adoption, of the victor of Zama. For seven days the legionaries fought their way, street by street, house by house, until only fifty thousand inhabitants were left to surrender to the tender mercies of the Romans. The Senate ordered that the city should be burned and that its site should be plowed up and dedicated to the infernal gods. Such was the end of the most formidable rival Rome ever met in her career of conquest. [7]
SICILY
The two European countries, Sicily and Spain, which Rome had taken from Carthage, presented to the conqueror very different problems. Sicily had been long accustomed to foreign masters. Its civilized and peace-loving inhabitants were as ready to accept Roman rule as, in the past, they had accepted the rule of Greeks and Carthaginians. Every year the island became more and more a part of Italy and of Rome.
SPAIN
Spain, on the contrary, gave the Romans some hard fighting. The wild Spanish tribes loved their liberty, and in their mountain fastnesses long kept up a desperate struggle for independence. It was not until the Romans sent Scipio Aemilianus to Spain that the Spanish resistance was finally overcome (133 B.C.).