The Destruction of Carthage (146 BCE):
During the Third Punic War, Roman forces besieged and ultimately annihilated the city of Carthage—located in present-day Tunisia, North Africa, in a region inhabited by and closely connected to Indigenous Berber (Amazigh) populations. After a prolonged siege, Roman troops broke into the city, unleashing seven days of continuous slaughter. Thousands of residents were killed in the streets and inside their homes, while tens of thousands more—both Carthaginian citizens and surrounding Berber peoples who had taken refuge in the city—were sold into slavery. Carthage itself was burned and leveled, its infrastructure dismantled, and its political and cultural presence wiped out.
This destruction reverberated far beyond the city’s walls. Carthage had long been a dominant power interwoven with the Berber kingdoms and communities of North Africa—sometimes as overlord, sometimes as economic partner. Its fall dramatically reshaped the region’s Indigenous societies. With Carthage gone, Rome extended direct control over the Maghreb, subjugating Berber territories, exploiting their agricultural lands, and redirecting their political structures to serve Roman provincial administration. Many Berber communities experienced displacement, forced labor, and the loss of local autonomy as Rome consolidated its new province of Africa.
Historian Ben Kiernan has called the destruction of Carthage “the first genocide,” noting the explicit and repeated Roman demands for the city’s complete eradication—symbolized by Cato the Elder’s famous refrain Carthago delenda est (“Carthage must be destroyed”). The event not only extinguished Carthage as a political entity but also initiated a long period of Roman domination that profoundly altered the cultural and historical trajectory of Indigenous Berber peoples across North Africa.
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