The Romans had won two wars against Carthage; you would think that they would now have been satisfied. But they weren’t. They thought they had not beaten Carthage badly enough. They were afraid she was not quite dead or that she might come to life. They thought there might be a little spark left that might start a fire if it weren’t trampled out.
Now, it is bad sport to pummel your opponent after he is beaten, and Carthage was beaten—beaten, black and blue—there was no hope of her “coming back.” And yet a few years later the Romans attacked her again for the third and last time.
Carthage was unable to defend herself, and the Romans viciously burned the city to the ground. It is said they even plowed over the land so that no trace of the city should remain, and sowed it with salt which prevented anything growing there. After that Carthage was never rebuilt, and now it is hard to tell even where the old city once was.
32
The New Champion of the World
You can well imagine how proud all the Romans now were that they were Romans, for Rome was the champion fighter of the world. If a man could toss his head and say, “I am a Roman citizen,” people were always ready to do something for him, afraid to do him any harm, afraid what might happen to them if they did. Rome was ruler not only of Italy but of Spain and Africa. Like other nations before her, once she had started conquering, she kept on conquering, until by 100 B.C. she in her turn was ruler of almost all the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea—all except Egypt.
The New Champion of the World, who was to be champion for a great many years, was very businesslike and practical.
The Greeks loved beautiful things, beautiful buildings, beautiful sculpture, beautiful poems. The Romans copied the Greeks and learned from them how to make many beautiful things, but the Romans were most interested in practical and useful things.
For example, now that Rome ruled the world, she had to be able to send messengers and armies easily and quickly in every direction to the end of her empire and back again. So it was necessary for her to have roads, for of course there were no railroads then. Now, an ordinary road made by simply clearing away the ground gets full of deep ruts and in rainy weather becomes so muddy that it can hardly be used at all.