ABSTRACT
The Romans annexed Carthage’s remaining territory as the province ‘Africa’, granting tax freedom and other privileges to Utica and the other towns which had deserted her, while the rest paid taxes and were subject to the Roman governor. Not all Carthaginians perished or became slaves: many had ed to Numidia during the war, some had deserted to the Romans, and the three hundred child hostages (we may hope) lived out their lives. They may have been among the survivors for whom Hasdrubal-Cleitomachus in Athens wrote his work of consolation. The site of Carthage itself remained desolate – apart from a failed effort to create a Roman colony alongside it twenty- ve years later – until Rome’s new despots Caesar and then Augustus ignored Scipio’s curse to found a city which, like the rest of North Africa, would ourish far into the future. (They did not, incidentally, need to scrape away any salt: it was not Scipio in 146 bc but a historian in 1928 who scattered that over the ruins.) Masinissa’s expanded kingdom continued to thrive too, even after being annexed by Caesar in 46 bc.
