I take sides when I learn about history and I was totally on board with the romans when learning about the first two punic wars. As far as I know, Rome wanted to protect itself from Carthage and the mamertines. Plus there's some record of the romans being moral and lawful(although I can't find it anywhere online, I just heard it on a podcast), supposedly they had to protect Regium, but the soliders they sent took the mamertine approach and just killed the men and took their posessions, wife and family included. The romans sent their troops, captured the original soldiers that took over the city, and executed them.
That seems to me like a conscious moral decision. That the romans didn't believe in abusing people just because they could.
Then the raw deal they gave to Carthage is bad, but it could easily be a misunderstanding or a single bad actor. Later on, throughout the wars, Rome was really trying to survive. And at least they were brave when after they battle of cannae, they did not surrender. I was rooting for them learning about all the punic wars up until the end.
But god, the siege of Carthage. It was despicable, if I understood it correctly. Carthage paid the romans for 50 years and they prospered, not trying to rule the world or anything, they focused on making money. The romans found out about this and they feel both scared of another war and a filthy desire to steal from them since they could.
They asked them to provide 300 noble kids as hostages, Carthage agrees, they ask then for all their weapons, amazingly Carthage agrees. And then they basically demand war, demanding them to destroy their own city. Absolutely horrific. Carthage obviously refused at last and went to war for 3 years.
And the romans just massacred them, some became slaves some commited suicide by throwing themselves and their children to fire. It seems even Scipio cried after seeing that nightmarish image.
So this is my question, did the people of rome hate this? Were they lied to and they believed there was a just reason to go to war?
If they were afraid of their civilization, why didn't they try to unite them and make them romans? They would've agreed I guess.
And when Julius Caesar rebuilt the city, was that a message? Did he oppose what the romans did to the cartheginians? Did other romans publicly crticize what their predecessors did?
The motivation of Rome's previous great wars against Carthage, Macedonia and the Seleucid Empire, while vigorously contested by modern historians, can at least be *plausibly* chalked up to real security concerns (a take particularly associated with Arthur Eckstein). Carthage in 264 and 218 was a major power with well organized military forces, in 218 it was engaged in aggressive territorial expansion. So was Macedonia in 200 and 171, and the Seleucid Empire in 191.
But it is impossible to say that Carthage in 150 was a security threat to Rome or anyone else. The Carthaginians could not even beat the Numidians, although their mobilization to defend themselves against Numidian aggression provided the callow pretext for Rome's invasion. It is very hard to argue that the Third Punic War was anything other than a war of choice, an act of naked aggression against a neighbor, not much different morally from Putin's lawless invasion of Ukraine.
Putin's invasion is the act of a cloistered autocrat. But Rome's invasion of Carthage had to be approved by a vote of the Roman people, with an army commanded by elected consuls filled with citizen militiamen. But all of the "democratic" aspects of the Republican system were pro-war in 149 BC. The fact that Carthage was weak yet prosperous seems to have been a major selling point: Roman citizens flocked to the militia draft in the hopes of an easy victory (App. Pun. 75). Both consuls, who led the initial invasion force, clearly were hoping for a triumph.
As it was, they were disappointed. Carthage rather than suffering a quick defeat, fought well. The Roman citizen militia was in poor shape after a period of relatively peace--the Romans hadn't fought a "major theater war" in nearly a generation, since the Battle of Pynda in 168.
That anxiety may also explain why the Romans suddenly wanted to attack Carthage. The old guard, the men who had won Rome's empire, was passing. It is notable that Cato the Elder, a relic who had served in the Second Punic War, was the most vehement cheerleader for destroying Carthage. Asymmetric wars in Spain from 153 onward had been brutal and demoralizing, eliciting a reluctance to serve from both elites and commons. In that sense, the Third Punic War may have partly been conceived as a war of ideological renewal.
In terms of blowback, Polybius seems to have been horrified by the duplicitous rush to war, and the bad faith diplomacy used against Carthage (we mostly have Polybius' take as filtered through Appian). While Scipio Aemilianus' philosophical tears at watching the sack are presented as a rumination on the cycle of empire (Carthage now, but Rome eventually), his comparison of Carthage and Rome at least suggests a layer of empathy, even as he razed the city to the ground to cement his political reputation.
Carthage was not the only city Rome razed in 146. Seemingly aping Aemilianus' glories, Mummius also razed Corinth, captured at the end of the Achaean War. While there was some criticism of Mummius in the sources as a philistine art thief, its notable that he spread art looted from Corinth far and wide, even to the allies; a statue base from Pompeii in Oscan celebrates a dedication from Mummius, probably something pillaged from Corinth.
The Romans hardly seem to have been horrified by this dual city smashing, as they elected Scipio and Mummius censor together in 142 BC.