In the year 606 from the founding of the City, that is, in the fiftieth year after the Second Punic War, in the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Lucius Mummius, Publius Scipio, consul of the previous year, striving to destroy Carthage by a final stroke, entered the Cothon.
1 Anno ab urbe condita DCVI id est anno quinquagensimo post bellum Punicum secundum Cn. Cornelio Lentulo L. Mummio consulibus P. Scipio, superioris anni consul, delere Carthaginem suprema sorte molitus Gothonem ingreditur.
There, while the fighting went on for six days and nights without a break, utter despair drove the Carthaginians to surrender, begging that those whom the disasters of war had left might at least be allowed to live as slaves.
2 ubi dum sex continuis diebus noctibusque pugnatur, ultima Carthaginienses desperatio ad deditionem traxit petentes, ut quos belli clades reliquos fecit, saltem seruire liceat.
First a column of women came down, pitiable enough, and after it a column of men, more wretched still. For it is recorded that there were twenty-five thousand women and thirty thousand men.
3 primum agmen mulierum satis miserabile, post uirorum magis deforme descendit. nam fuisse mulierum XXV milia, uirorum XXX milia memoriae traditum est.
King Hasdrubal surrendered of his own accord. The deserters, who had occupied the temple of Aesculapius, threw themselves headlong of their own will and were consumed by fire. The wife of Hasdrubal, with a man’s grief and a woman’s frenzy, threw herself and her two sons with her into the midst of the blaze — the last queen of Carthage now meeting the same end in death as the first had once met.
4 rex Hasdrubal se ultro dedit. transfugae, qui Aesculapii templum occupauerant, uoluntario praecipitio dati igne consumpti sunt. uxor Hasdrubalis se duosque filios secum uirili dolore et furore femineo in medium iecit incendium, eundem nunc mortis exitum faciens nouissima regina Carthaginis, quem quondam prima fecisset.
The city itself burned for seventeen days on end, and furnished its conquerors with a wretched spectacle of the changeableness of the human condition.
5 ipsa autem ciuitas decem et septem continuis diebus arsit miserumque spectaculum de uarietate condicionis humanae uictoribus suis praebuit.
Carthage was destroyed, all the stone of its walls being ground to dust, in the seven hundredth year after it had been founded.
6 diruta est autem Carthago omni murali lapide in puluerem conminuto septingentensimo post anno quam condita erat.
The whole multitude of captives, except for a few leading men, was sold. Thus the Third Punic War was ended in the fourth year after it had begun.
7 multitudo omnis captiuorum exceptis paucis principibus uenundata est. ita quarto quam coeptum fuit anno bellum Punicum tertium terminatum est.
But to me, though I have searched with all diligence — yet as a man of slower wit — the cause of the Third Punic War, by which Carthage so far provoked the Romans that it was decreed she should justly be overthrown, has nowhere at all shone out; and this moves me most of all: that if, as in the earlier wars, an evident cause and grievance had been inflaming them against a foe rising up, there would have been no need of deliberation.
8 Sed mihi quamlibet studiose quaerenti uerumtamen homini tardioris ingenii nusquam omnino causa tertii belli Punici, quam in tantum Carthago accenderit, ut iuste euerti decerneretur, eluxit, illudque me uel maxime mouet, quod, si ita ut in superioribus bellis euidens in adsurgentem causa et dolor accendebat, consultatione non opus erat.
But since some of the Romans judged that she must be destroyed for the perpetual security of Rome, while others judged that Carthage should be left unharmed in her own state, for the sake of a perpetual care for Roman valour, which they would always expend upon themselves out of suspicion of a rival city — lest Roman vigour, ever exercised in wars, should be loosened into languid sloth through security and leisure — I find that the cause arose not from any wrong done by provoking Carthaginians, but from the fickleness of Romans growing torpid.
9 at uero, cum alii Romanorum propter perpetuam Romae securitatem delendam esse decernerent, alii uero propter perpetuam Romanae uirtutis curam, quam sibi semper ex suspicione aemulae urbis inpenderent, ne uigor Romanus bellis semper exercitus in languidam segnitiem securitate atque otio solueretur, incolumem Carthaginem statui suo permittendam esse censerent: causam non ex iniuria lacessentum Carthaginiensium sed ex inconstantia torpescentium Romanorum ortam inuenio.
This being so, why do they impute to the Christian times their own dullness and rust, by which they are crusted over outside and eaten away within? They who, nearly six hundred years before, as their own prudent and fearful men had foretold, destroyed Carthage, that great whetstone of their brightness and keenness.
10 quod cum ita sit, cur Christianis temporibus imputant hebetationem ac robiginem suam, qua foris crassi, intus exesi sunt? qui porro ante sescentos fere annos, sicut sui prudentes timentesque praedixerant, cotem illam magnam splendoris et acuminis sui Carthaginem perdiderunt.
And so I shall bring this volume to an end, lest perhaps, by striking too hard, when I have knocked off the rust for a time but cannot draw out the needed keenness, I should find only a useless roughness. And yet I should by no means dread a roughness coming to meet me, if I found the hope of a keener edge within.
11 Itaque finem uolumini faciam, ne forsitan conlidendo uehementius discussa ad tempus robigine ubi necessarium acumen elicere non possum, superuacuam asperitatem inueniam. quamquam obuiantem asperitatem nequaquam expauescerem, si interioris spem acuminis inuenirem.