Carthage Blog 11 - Third Punic War
- Scot Stoddard
- Jul 9
- 13 min read
Updated: Jul 20
Introduction
The Third Punic War was fought between the years 149 and 146 BC. the last of a series of three wars between Carthage and the Roman Republic. The war was fought entirely in Carthaginian territory in what is now called northern Tunisia.
We briefly discussed this war in Blog Post 9 about Hannibal, the events leading up to it and the aftermath as far as Hannibal was concerned. We will go into it in this post with more detail from other angles.
When the Second Punic War ended, there were various conditions imposed upon Carthage by the Roman Republic. One of those conditions prohibited Carthage from waging war without permission from Rome. An ally of Rome, King Masinissa of Numidia, a neighboring territory to Carthage, exploited this condition for his own benefit and that of his people by constantly attacking, raiding and seizing the territory of Carthage. In 149 BC Carthage sent an army, despite the treaty with Rome, to go confront the Numidians. This turned into a disaster, as Carthage had been severely weakened, and they were defeated in this brief campaign.
Rome, however, as Rome was always quite wont to do, used this "aggression" by Carthage as a pretext to prepare a punitive expedition. Later that same year, a large Roman army landed at Utica in North Africa, a city state I discussed in Blog 3. Carthage, in an attempt to pacify the Romans, surrendered all their weapons, but to no avail, and the Romans went on to lay siege to Carthage. The Romans were unable to make any initial advances. In 148 BC, the Romans changed leadership, but this move yielded equally-poor results.
In the spring of 147 BC, Rome had an election of magistrates, and public support for Scipio Africanus The Younger was so strong that, because he was so young, the usual age restriction was lifted, enabling him to become Consul and commander in Africa. This Scipio was the son of the Scipio Africanus who led the decisive battle at Zama against Hannibal to win the Second Punic War for Rome.
Scipio's term began with two Carthaginian successes, but he doubled down on the siege and began to build a breakwater to prevent blockade runners from entering Carthage harbor with supplies.
Carthage had partially rebuilt their fleet, and much to the surprise of the Romans, they attacked and, after an indecisive engagement, mismanaged their withdrawal, which heavily damaged their fleet.
The Romans then proceeded to build a brick wall structure in the harbor that dominated the huge Carthage city walls. When that was complete, Scipio led a force against the Carthage field army camp and forced the remaining cities and towns of the area to surrender.
The final battle
In the spring of 146 BC, Rome began its final assault on Carthage and was able to finally breach the walls of the city with its siege engines and massive manpower.
Over the course of the next six days, the Romans systematically worked their way through the residential part of the city, killing everyone they encountered and burning every building behind them. On the last day, Scipio agreed to accept prisoners, all but 900 Roman deserters who had entered service with Carthage. Those deserters fought on from the Temple of Eshmun and burnt it down around themselves when all hope was gone.
At this point, the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal surrendered to Scipio on the promise of his life and freedom. Seeing this, Hasdrubal's wife, watching from a rampart, cursed Hasdrubal, then blessed Scipio, and proceeded, with her children, to walk into the temple to burn to death.
50,000 Carthaginian prisoners were sold into slavery. Many of the religious items Carthage had brought back from Sicily during the Sicilian wars were returned with much ceremony.
I'm going to leave the story here, because I want to cover the aftermath in the next and final blog about the last album track, Track 12, Fall of Carthage. But before we get to the music part of this blog, I want to discuss the reasons Rome believed they had to go this far. And like I said, we will get to the aftermath in the next blog, you haven't heard all of the story yet, and it's quite tragic. But let's examine the Roman mind for a minute.
Roman culpable mental states
By the mid 2nd century BC, Rome had become the dominant power in the Mediterranean region. Carthage and Rome had fought the 23-year long First Punic War from 264 to 241 BC, then the 17-year long Second Punic War from 218 to 201 BC, where Hannibal was defeated in the Battle of Zama. After the Second Punic War, Roman general Scipio Africanus imposed a peace treaty on Carthage that forced Carthage to give up their overseas holdings, but allowed them to keep at least some of their territories in North Africa. Also, an indemnity of 10,000 talents was to be paid to Rome, which Hannibal, as a statesman now, made happen. Carthage was prohibited from waging war outside of Africa, and only could wage war inside of Africa with Rome's permission and approval. Many senior Carthaginians were against the treaty, but Hannibal strongly suggested that they should accept it, and it was accepted in spring 201 BC. At this point, it was clear that Carthage was politically subordinate to Rome.
For the next 50 years, Masinissa, the Numidian kings we talked about early, took advantage of Carthage's inability to protect its assets. Whenever Carthage asked Rome for permission to take military action in retaliation, Rome refused to grant permission. This only led to Masinissa's raids becoming more and more flagrant, because he realized that Rome would never grant Carthage permission to retaliate. As we discussed earlier, Carthage went to war with Numidia anyway, got badly defeated, and many Carthaginians were subsequently massacred. Masinissa was rewarded by Rome with almost all of the territory of Northern Africa as a result of his subterfuge and participation in this conflict.
Carthage paid off the indemnity owed to Rome by 151 BC, and began to prosper again. They were not a military threat to anyone. However, there was still a faction in the Roman Senate that wanted to take further military action against Carthage. The dislike by Senior Senator Cato was so well known that, since the 18th century AD, he has been credited with ending all his speeches at his time with the phrase "Carthage delenda est", meaning "Carthage must be destroyed".
Any idea why?
Modern scholars have many theories as to why Rome was so eager for war. Commercial competition was one, as Carthage was a major rival and a threat to Roman hegemony; a greed for glory and loot another; the factional use of Carthage as a political "boogeyman", irrespective of its true power, was another; and perhaps a desire to quash a political system they deemed cursed or damned may be yet another.
I'll be honest, I despise Rome. Oh, the pain and suffering they have caused, the brutal punishment of execution by wild animals, the rampant, widespread use of slavery; the political assassinations and purges. They executed their own people when they grew to dislike them; for example, Julius Caesar. Later, leaders such as Marc Antony had public lists of individuals they wanted killed, which led to widespread violence and confiscation of property. They totally enjoyed crucifixion, using it as a tool to implement terror and maintain control. The Roman legal system heavily favored the elite over the lower classes so that punishments could vary drastically depending on social status.
Carthage was not the only example of genocide by Rome. Let's take the ancient Etruscan city of Veii, for example, a city of 350,000 people. It was captured by Rome in 396 BC, and all its surviving citizens became enslaved. The Romans gradually conquered the 12-city league of ancient Etruria until all Etruscan lands were subjugated to Rome, their entire population dissolved among the Romans by the first century BC.
The North African City of Utica, who had always been rather friendly to Carthage, was swayed by Rome in 149 BC to switch sides. Aware that Utica's harbor would facilitate an invasion of nearby Carthage, Rome declared war. A large Roman army landed in Utica later that year under the command of the two newly-elected Consuls. Carthage continued to try to appease Rome to no avail and sent statesmen to Utica. The two Consuls at Utica demanded Carthage hand over all their weaponry, and they did. Large convoys took took huge stocks of military equipment from Carthage to Utica, including 200,000 sets of armor and 2,000 catapults. Carthage was then disarmed and defenseless. Then Rome demanded the Carthaginians to leave their city so it could be destroyed, Carthage refused and prepared for the battle. And Carthage was destroyed anyway.
Why did Rome destroy Carthage? Why did Rome burn the Library of Alexandria? In the name of religion? In the name of conquest? Because of uncontrollable bloodlust? I cannot call it. They bullied the entire region through sheer military might alone and strength in numbers. And they were hated. Where was the democracy, the compassion? It was nonexistent. From 753 BC to
May 29, 1453 AD and the fall of Constantinople, it was always the same. Oppression of all who resist, or even who don't resist.
Enough about the Romans. I'll only mention them a little bit in the next blog, and only because it's necessary to finish our story. I despise the Romans.
Let's talk about the music!
This track needed to be dark, period, because of the subject matter. While it contains one of the most beautiful melodies I've ever written, in my opinion, it's also probably the saddest. My heart goes out to Carthage in this track.
The track opens with the sound of a catapult, or for our purposes here, a Roman siege engine. It's an intense image to see a track labeled "Roman Siege Engine", actually. It occurs here at the beginning, and once again before the main theme reprise to close out the track. It's a dark, ominous sound of battle because you now the result already upon hearing the sound: Destruction.
The next sound is wind coming off Carthage harbor, bringing the Romans with it. We hear little pieces of phrases in the bass and the guitar that are premonitions of the main theme to come, which immediately follows this into.
I've done something different with the bass here. For every other track on the album, I've played my Glarry 6-string bass, except for this track. On Third Punic War I played my Ibanez 5-string for the tonal qualities it possesses. It's darker, period. The Glarry can get really bright, especially in the upper register. I also tweaked my bass EQ pedal on this track to keep the highs in check. In the beginning here, there's multiple layers of bass tracks, and they're all stereo with stereo delays and chorus applied to them. I like the way this adds body and depth to the bass sound, but you don't want to use this all the time, it takes away a lot of punch. So in the rest of the song, except when this theme is playing again at the end, there's normal mono bass tracks.
At :24 we hear two piano notes. This theme on the piano occurs over and over again in different situations during the track, and it's usually followed by another three-note phrase. Not yet, we'll get there. This is just introducing the leitmotif.
At :30 Section 1 buildup starts, and now you hear the full piano track playing with that little two and three note pattern on the ends of the phrases. The tempo is a slow 85 bpm, and the key is D minor. The chord progression is slow, with all of the movement in the piano with that repeating theme. The chords for this verse/main theme setup are:
dm, bm
dm, Bb+7, a-7.
At :53 we're into the main theme of Section 1 proper, and the solo violin takes the melody over the same chord progression above, until we get to the bridge, where it starts to build up a bit. I love the solo violin here, it brings a tension to the track that could not be achieved with any other instrument for these purposes. It sounds lonely, forlorn, depicting the fatal tragedy that's about to occur.
At 1:16 we're into the bridge of Section 1, with the chords:
Bb+7, C, g-7, F+7, e-7
d-7, Bb+7, a-7, G7, G#dim7
The melody continues in the solo violin. This part of Section 1 sounds a little more cheerful with those major chords in there, and that represents the fact that the Carthaginians were able to hold off the Roman assault for a while, but it goes right back to the minor theme next, representing the rise and fall of this final battle. There's some hope, but .... nah, not happening. The rhythm section and rhythm guitars are a little more intense here, rhythmically interesting.
So two more passes on the initial chord chain, and we're out of Section 1.
Section 2 starts, and it gets heavy here at 2:03. We're in the heat of the battle. There's a repeated very heavy drop D riff going on, showing the steady progress of the Romans tearing through Carthage and destroying everything. Harmony lead guitars repeat a small section twice, and we get into a change at the bridge section of Section 2 at 2:38. There's an actual chord progression here, with some open B and E string chords ringing out, which the piano is doubling, and the lead guitar takes off. At 3:01 we're back to the drop D riff, and the lead guitar is shrieking in pain as the Carthaginian are dying and the city is burning.
Then there's a big change at 3:35. Here I was looking for yet a different form or genre to express sadness, and what better than some blues? So this isn't typical blues, but a rather jazz blues section, still rather sad, but perhaps the Carthaginians still had a glimmer of hope. Not really. There's three solos in a row here; first, that sad solo violin again, because why not, we already heard from him in the symphonic Section 1. Next is the piano, and third is the lead guitar over the bridge section and a return of the verse.
I want to talk about the rhythm guitars here for a second. I bought a new overdrive pedal, which I used a lot on the last three songs on this album, and it's featured here. It's called a Mosky Golden Horse.
If you're a guitarist, you've probably heard of the now infamous Klon Centaur pedal. It was a limited edition pedal, I think there was only about 4,000 made in the original production between 1994 and 2008 by a guy named Bill Finnegan in his home workshop. It's a transparent overdrive pedal, meaning it doesn't color the tone. It's a simple three knob pedal: Gain, output and treble.
Anyway, it became really famous through use by some guitar superstars such as John Mayer, Joe Perry, Jeff Beck and others. Since it was a limited edition pedal with only a small number made, it became highly sought after in the used market, reaching very high prices because of the outstanding demand for this pedal. By 2019, a USED Klon was selling for 2 grand or more. They're even more now, with some going for 4-, 5k, even being listed as high as 20k, for an overdrive pedal! That's insane. But some guys will pay this price because it's now a collector's item, and only the original run model will fit the bill!
So after 2008 when Finnegan went out of business, other companies began making more affordable Klon Clones, or Klones, if you will. The Mosky Golden Horse is one of them. So I've been reading about these Klon Klones for a while, and thought maybe one day I'd try one of them and see what this Klon Klownery was all about. Hell, I love guitar pedals, I have lots of them. Then I saw a post somewhere from a guy that had this Mosky, saying he got it for like 35 bucks on Amazon. Okay, so now I'm more interested. I have bought things off Temu before, in fact, I got my Glarry bass from Temu for $135, and it's amazing. So I'm sitting there one night and say to myself, I wonder if they have this on Temu. Sure enough, there it was. Since I was a repeat customer, they offered me a discount, $17. I laughed, said okay, and hit the "order now" button. Glad I did.
The overdrive you hear on the guitars in this blues section is the Golden Horse by itself. However, since it is so transparent and versatile, it stacks well with other pedal. Like that lead in the drop D section 2, that was the Golden Horse stacked with a Boss MT-2 Metal Zone. Dial in the highs appropriately, adjust the gain where you want it, and off ya go. The tones are amazing.
Just a little something for the gearheads out there. I will do a blog about all the gear: Guitars, basses, amps, pedals and such, in an upcoming post after the last track post for Fall Of Carthage.
The guitar solo here in the blues section is also the Golden Horse stacked with the MT-2, just different settings than the metal drop D section; I dialed the gain down on both pedals, yet still got that awesome pinch harmonic at 4:23. Oooo, that's nice. And it adds a lot of sustain!
At 5:09, we're back to an interlude section, and it's pretty much the same as the setup section for Section 1, but some little bits of lead thrown in. The lead is, once again, with the Golden Horse, by itself with maximum gain. We also juiced up the lead track here with some extra reverb in the mixdown stage, and I used a more extreme setting on my delay pedal. That same piano part is playing again underneath, with the two and three note endings, repeating the leitmotif.
There's an all stop at 5:29, with just that wind sample from the introduction playing. Then you hear the Roman siege engine for the final time, and the destruction of Carthage becomes complete with the end theme.
The end theme is the same theme and melody as Section 1, only now there's heavy rhythm guitars underneath and the solo violin is in unison with the lead guitar, Golden Horse into MT-2 tone and copious delay. Such an eerie, haunting sound. It had to be. The section plays out, and the theme is majestic, to honor the Carthaginians. But it's emotional, sad, as they've been defeated. The aftermath will come in the next track and next blog.
Conclusion
The last three songs of this album work as a unit, the story is continuous, and it's dramatically sad. I've done my best to portray the emotion through the selections of chords, tones, instruments, moods, genres, scales, and the whole musical experience. I think the story is cohesive. If you get a chance, listen to the last three tracks in a row, and think about it. The senseless destruction of a brilliant civilization. If you're a big fan of the Roman Republic/Empire, sorry if I've offended you. It's not my intent to offend anybody, these are just my opinions here, and it played a big part in the way I finished out this album. The mood, the feel, the sounds; it's all as a result of the history. Please feel free to give your input. Write me a note, an email, whatever, and let's discuss it like adults.
I will be back next time with the last blog of this series, Blog 12, Fall of Carthage, in three days. Thanks for reading, listening to the music and supporting my music. Again, I'd love your feedback. The album is up on the site, so enjoy a listen and get a free download, if you'd like. Please leave comments. And subscribe to the site, there will be more cool content coming down the road!
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