Hasdrubal the Beotarch He has gone down in history as the last Carthaginian commander who faced Rome, fiercely defending his city until it was taken by assault by the troops of Scipio Emiliano . As happened with many other of the great men of Carthage, oblivion engulfed him for centuries, but he well deserves to be remembered in these pages.
It was in the middle of the year 157 B.C. when a legation of the Senate went to Carthage to mediate in one of its continuous disputes with the neighboring kingdom of Numidia, as we saw the main beneficiary of the draconian treaty that Hannibal he had to sign to end the Second Punic War. The negotiation was not very successful; the old Masinisa he always wanted more, but what struck him the most was the head of the noble Roman emissaries, the aged Marcus Porcius Cato , was the commercial splendor that once again emanated from the eternal enemy. Half a century had already passed since Carthage was defeated in the wasteland of Zama and the war indemnity had already been paid. The business was going so well that it could even be liquidated years ago, but the Senate did not want to accept the cancellation so that Carthage remembered bitterly why they paid for it. The Council destined all the fruits of trade not to an eternal and expensive war, as before, but to build an emporium that rivaled Rome itself in magnificence. Since that official trip, the austere Cato concluded all his speeches inside and outside the Senate with the immortal phrase:
“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem ese delendam”
(For the rest, I think that Carthage should be destroyed)
Cato
According to Appiano, the old Cato thought that letting Carthage flourish represented a future danger for Rome, against its great adversaries, the Scipios, who chose to keep Carthage alive, since their mere presence would prevent Rome from being left without its secular enemy. and that lack of encouragement will become counterproductive.
Predictably, the final disaster came from neighboring Numidia. Masinisa, resentful and eager for more and more territories and privileges at the expense of constrained Carthage, entered Punic territory at the head of his army in 150 BC. That outrage, consented by the Senate, led to the fall of the pro-Roman Council of Carthage and the delivery of the troops to a certain Hasdrubal the Beotarch , who went out to meet the aggressors in the Bagradas Valley, near present-day Tunisia. The Carthaginian army was defeated and the Council had to pay a new astronomical compensation to the ladino Masinisa, but the worst thing was not that, but the aggression against Numidia, an ally of Rome, was constituted as cassus belli so that the Senate, instigated by old Cato and the Campanian landowning aristocracy that competed with the Punics in the wine and fig business, would declare war on Carthage. When this became known in Carthage, the most conservative Suffetes and members of the Council did not hesitate to send emissaries to Rome showing excuses, sending hostages and notifying the death sentence of Hasdrubal and the rest of the dissident military, most of whose whereabouts were unknown since the battle. against the Numidians.
In the spring of 149 BC, an army of eighty thousand men landed at Utica (today in ruins, an important city on the Bay of Tunis) commanded by the consul Manius Manius Nepos . Carthage surrendered unconditionally as the banners of the legions appeared on the horizon. Lucius Marcius Censorinus , a colleague from Manilio's consulate and in charge of the fleet, demanded the delivery of all the ships, which were set on fire in front of the city, as well as all war material. Two hundred thousand military equipment and two thousand catapults, scorpions and ballistae were given to the Romans. The problem came with the last clause that the two consuls demanded to accept the surrender:applying Cato's phrase, “Carthago delenda est ”, Carthage was to be destroyed. The city had to be moved eighty stadia inland (about fifteen kilometres), leaving its current location and its fabulous port, so that it would be demolished and would never pose a military or economic danger to Rome. That last condition was the one that lit the flame of the war, because it was unacceptable. The doors were closed and the so-called collaborators of Rome assassinated. Under the guise of negotiating an armistice, emissaries were sent to the Roman camp as the people began to prepare for the impending siege. Provisions were stocked up and new weapons were made day and night, melting down metals of all kinds. Even the women gave up their hair to make the tension ropes for the new ballistae and scorpions. The Council issued a pardon for Hasdrubal, who at the head of the survivors of the battle against Masinissa maintained control of a vast territory in the interior. The Carthaginian commander did not think twice about heeding the Council's plea. Inexplicably, he was not intercepted by either of the two consuls and entered Carthage with his troops, immediately taking over the defense of the city. As Asdrúbal was already inside the walls, the first Roman assault took place, the result of which was disastrous for the aggressors. Perhaps to demoralize the enemy troops, perhaps out of sheer revenge, Hasdrubal ordered all Roman prisoners to be crucified on the city walls in full view of their companions.
Carthage was the most impregnable city in the western Mediterranean. Located at that time on an isthmus and with three walls of walls, its double port and its enormous reserves, it was a very complex morsel for an army not given to poliorcetica. In addition, the Roman fleet was unable to cut off maritime access to the city, so food and supplies continued to arrive through said route. That stagnation caused the Roman camp to look more like a suburb than a bastion. Merchants, artisans, magicians, prostitutes and slaves of all kinds and conditions swarmed among the shops at will, relaxing the forms to the minimum.
In 147 BC, after two years of total lack of progress and brutal war costs, the Senate grew tired of Lucius Calpurnius Piso's passivity and incompetence. , the consul on duty in charge of the Carthaginian problem, naming Publius Cornelius Scipio Emiliano as the new consul and sole commander of the Roman army in Africa. , adoptive grandson of the famous African, taking charge of the succession of Masinisa immediately. Although he had neither the age nor the necessary career to hold that position, for the good of Rome that day the laws slept, even with the support of Cato, an effervescent detractor of the Scipios. In the winter of that same year, Carthage was completely isolated by land and sea. As soon as he arrived in Africa, Scipio Emiliano expelled the prostitutes, artisans and pedlars from the Roman camp, returning to the iron discipline of the legions, while defeating Hasdrubal in his desperate attempt to break the land blockade. Lastly, he closed the port downright, cutting off Carthage by sea. The die was cast.
In the spring of 146 B.C. the intramural situation was untenable. The famine due to the lack of supplies was amplified by the infections that the heat was unleashing in the unhealthy streets of Cartago. It was then, with defenders depleted, famished and sickly, that Scipio Emiliano decided the time had come to launch the final assault. Through a crack opened by a battering ram in the port wall, and aided by an assault tower, the Roman troops poured in, scattering throughout the port district until they reached the agora. There they had to stop and spend the night, because the heat and the fierce Carthaginian resistance were decimating the legions.
For six long days and six longest nights a veritable urban battle took place, taking home by house, street by street, where the legionnaires received all sorts of impacts from the roofs covered by their shields and planks. Spears, boiling oil, tiles, arrows, stones, statues, furniture and everything that could be used as a projectile was thrown against the assailants by opening chrismas and dislocating bones. The last civil resistance, some fifty thousand people, was concentrated on top of Birsa, the sacred hill where, according to tradition, Queen Dido had delimited the perimeter of her new city with the thin strips of a bull's skin. The temple of Eshmun (Canaanite divinity equivalent to the Roman Aesculapius) was established as the main bastion. Asdrúbal, a born survivor, commanded those last defenders, and it was he who went down to negotiate with Scipio Emiliano a surrender that would at least respect the lives of his brave fellow citizens. The Roman agreed to spare their lives, but not all accepted slavery as an option. About a thousand Carthaginians, knowing that whatever the deal they would be executed as soon as they fell into enemy hands, committed suicide in the temple. But the display of indomitable pride of the day was carried out by Hasdrubal's own wife, because she, dressed in her best tunic, rebuked her husband and her Roman victor from the top of the temple saying:
You, who have destroyed us by fire, will also be destroyed by fire.
Concluding her argument, he took his two sons, cut their throats and they threw themselves together into the sacred fire. According to the historian Polibio, a personal friend of Emiliano and an exceptional witness, the consul was affected by all that and, saddened, recited a sentence to himself:
A day will come when Ilium, the holy city, will perish, when Priam and his people will perish, skillful in handling the spear.
Polibius asked his friend why he had recited that verse from Book IV of the Iliad, and he replied:
I fear that one day someone will quote them watching Rome burn.
Nothing else was known about Hasdrubal the Beotarch, who although he lost, perhaps he was not such a bad strategist, especially considering that he faced the greatest war machine of Antiquity with stones, saucepans turned into swords and cordage made with manes. If he survived the surrender, and under what conditions, it would be part of a good novel.
Although the fastidious Cato did not live to see the destruction of Carthage, his influence in the majority of the Senate conditioned the future of that remarkable city that for centuries had defied Rome. Scipio's advice to preserve it was not heeded and the senatorial legation that went there after the conquest and looting determined that Carthage must be completely destroyed. Scipio's legionnaires took it upon themselves for days to demolish much of the city that was still standing after the assault, breaking up the site for seventeen days with salt (in a ritual gesture of dubious veracity) so that nothing would ever grow on those lands . It was Caesar during his campaign in Africa who agreed that Carthage was a perfect location to house veterans and it would be his adoptive heir, Augustus, who would finally carry out the reconstruction of the city.