Talk:Siege of Carthage (Third Punic War)

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disambiguation

There are at least 4 Battles of Carthage. This is likely the most famous (for me it is), but we need a disambiguation page, anyway (or something like if you are looking for other meanings...). The other three battles are

• Battle of Carthage (238)
• Battle of Carthage (698)
• Battle of Carthage (1861)

gala.martin (what?) 20:45, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Good call! Not sure where to move this though - there's some discussion about when the seige started. As soon as that gets sorted out, I agree the page should probably be moved to Battle of Carthage (149 BC) or Battle of Carthage (148 BC). - Vedexent 00:36, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

As the first is by some way the best known it should be the primary article under this title and this page should be turned into a disambiguation page. PatGallacher 12:43, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

This page as a disambigution page as well? Did you not see Battle of Carthage? The whole multiple-battles disambiguation page has already been set up. This page is already listed as Battle of Carthage (c.149 BC) - Vedexent 13:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Should we Merge?

Realistically - the whole Third Punic War has only one major battle that I know of: this one. Should this article be rolled into the Third Punic War article? Are there more engagements in the 3rd Punic war that should be mentioned instead? - Vedexent 23:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

why the c.?

Why do we use "c. 149 BC"? (and not just "149 BC"?). I see that other articles are listed just with the date, without the c.. gala.martin (what?) 04:23, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

You of all people ask this after a long discussion of the uncertainty of the start date on your own talk page? No consistent historical starting date could be found - you and I discussed that at length. If other articles are not so listed, it is because many of them have historically documented start times, and others do not but the author(s) decided to unjustly claim certainty of knowledge. - Vedexent 06:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I just didn't get that c. stands for circa. Generally I write ca. for circa (I do not know why, maybe it was a latin use). So, that's ok. :) gala.martin (what?) 17:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, ok :) Yeah - I've seen both uses c. and ca - I guess it doesn't matter which is used, they're both 2 characters long :) Although the circa-ness should be added to the article as well, right now it reads pretty concretely. - Vedexent 17:14, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Corn Fields

I thought that there was no corn in the Old World prior to it being brought from the New World... With respect, Ko Soi IX 11:37, 23 January 2007 (UTC) I don't think there was corn in the Old World before 1514 A.D. or so either. hmmmmmmm... Captain panda Mussolini ha sempre tarche Quis ut Dues 02:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

"Corn" used to be used for any generic cereal grain, often the one most commonly grown in any given location. It's only relatively recently that it's come to mean maize specifically. 71.228.127.48 (talk) 05:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. You've got buildings in Britain called "Corn Hall" meaning a general purpose Grain Exchange. Varlaam (talk) 06:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

two points

The third Punic war says it is impossible to salt the fields, but here it says the Romans choose not to salt the fields. Which is it? Also the map of Carthage should be included in this article, it would make it clearer. 85.216.31.171 12:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Siege

Shouldn't this just be Siege of Carthage? It was not really a battle, the disambiguation using a "c." is annoying, and it's clearly the primary topic for the term. john k (talk) 16:41, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Any other suggestions?.--Darius (talk) 12:15, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Source reliability?

I am very skeptical about the source for the following passage in the text: "The Carthaginians manned the walls and defied the Romans, a situation which lasted for two years. In this period, the 500,000 Carthaginians inside the wall transformed the town into a huge arsenal. They produced about 300 swords, 500 spears, 140 shields and 1,000 projectiles for catapults daily.[1]"

First and for all, the author of the text lived almost three hundred years after the events discussed in this article. Are there no better sources available? I am also highly skeptical about the population of Carthage: half a million souls is a number Rome probably may just yet have reached at this time in history, and probably Carthage had not by far yet done so. I would like to see a better source, instead of a 2nd century AD writer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.212.81.103 (talk) 20:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

BC Verbiage

Which calendar is being used, Julian or Gregorian? Depending the BC may need to be replaced to BCE. There seems to be a shift in the academic sector towards BCE. Here is a Wiki page regarding it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era (Ms.mandy333 (talk) 02:23, 26 September 2017 (UTC)).

Tense

The tense in this article changes and should be consistent throughout. Example 1: (First paragraph, second sentence) It was a siege operation, starting sometime between 149 and 148 BC, and ending in spring 146 BC with the sack and complete destruction of the city of Carthage.

Updated to: It was a siege operation that started between 149 and 148 BCE and ended with the sack and complete destruction of the city of Carthage in the spring of 146 BCE.

Example 2: (4th paragraph, 1st sentence) The Romans elected the young but popular Scipio Aemilianus as consul, a special law being passed to lift the age restriction.

Updated to: A special law was passed to lift the age restriction and the Romans elected the popular, young Scipio Aemilianus as consul. Ms.mandy333 (talk) 02:32, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Content Update

Article Content: Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you? No, not everything was relevant to the topic. Information on how Scepio became a Roman leader has nothing to due with the Battle of Carthage. That information should be indicated in Scepio's or Roman wikipedia page. The tone of the article seemed to digress into personal impressions rather than facts and that distracted me.

Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? Most of the article is neutral, but not all. There seems to be slight tones of sympathy for the Carthaginians.

Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? Yes, there was not enough about Carthage and the Carthaginians in battle. The Romans were overrepresented in this article.

Check the citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article? No, this citation does not work: 8. Polybius XXXVIII, 5 The Fall of Carthage.

Is each fact supported by an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted? Not each fact is supported appropriately. There are some reliable references and some of them are encyclopedia's and works of history. I found the sources to be neutral and I found no notation of a bias.

Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that should be added? There is quite a bit missing about the battle itself. As the title indicates, it is the Battle of Carthage, however, there is more information on the Romans and not enough on Carthage. The battle itself is barely outlined in this article. It does not indicate the different portions of the city, how Carthage was overrun. Which wall was scaled, the section about the building to building warefare was in Byrsa, a section of the city, which wasn't specified.

This paragraph does not have citations and has a few "author" descriptions that are not informative and may inadvertently create assumptions.

In spring 146 BC, the Romans broke through the city wall but they were hard-pressed to take the city. Every building, house and temple had been turned into a stronghold and every Carthaginian had taken up a weapon. The Romans were forced to move slowly, capturing the city house by house, street by street and fighting each Carthaginian soldier who fought with courage born of despair. Eventually after hours upon hours of house-to-house fighting, the Carthaginians surrendered. An estimated 50,000 surviving inhabitants were sold into slavery (where is the citation??). The city was then leveled. The land surrounding Carthage was eventually declared ager publicus (public land), and it was shared between local farmers, and Roman and Italian ones (ones what? Farmers?)(Citations?).

Insert this into the beginning of the Paragraph:

In the spring of 146 BCE, Scipio and the Roman troops seized the Cothon wall in Carthage. When daylight broke, 4,000 fresh Roman troops led by Scipio attacked Byrsa, the strongest part of Carthage. Three streets lined with six story houses, led to the Byrsa fortress.B oth Carthaginians and Romans waged war from the rooftops of the buildings and in the streets. The Romans used the buildings they captured, as a means to capture subsequent buildings. Scipia successfully captured Byrsa, and then set fire to the buildings, which caused further destruction and death. This fighting waged for six days and nights, until the Carthaginians surrendered.

Citation:

Casualties too high

I am new to Wikipedia editing and so don't want to do this myself, but I suggest amending the "Causalities and Losses" sidebar in the "Siege of Carthage" page from 450,000 killed to 150,000 killed and replacing the source with Ben Kiernan, “The First Genocide: Carthage, 146 BC,” Diogenes 51.3 (2004), 27, link at https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/first_genocide.pdf

Any casualty figure for an ancient battle is a guess, but Kiernan's is much more reasonable and better sourced, and Diogenes is a peer-reviewed jouurnal. The current figure of 450,000 seems to have been arrived at by deducting Roman reports of 50,000 slaves taken from a guess at the pre-destruction population of 500,000--not a good way to do it. UofTprof (talk) 13:24, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd agree with this. From what I can gather, the source of the casualty numbers is:

"The Romans plundered the city (Scipio took nothing for himself) and utterly demolished it. The 50,000 survivors of Carthage, all that remained of a presiege population of 500,000, were sold as slaves." (pg. 67)

That excerpt is from Spencer Tucker's Battles That Changed History: An Encyclopedia of World Conflict. The casualty numbers on Wikipedia are not reflected in that work, nor are the reflected in the sources referenced by that work. I checked Adrian Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars (A reference in Tucker's work) and could not corroborate numbers.

I don't have the confidence to edit the article, but I would agree with adjusting the figures based on some research. 2601:346:E80:FE7:1DA5:DCE6:8780:54D7 (talk) 04:45, 25 May 2025 (UTC)