“The End of Everything,” with Victor Davis Hanson | Uncommon Knowledge

hated like child sacrifice. However they did, they were heavily influenced by Greek constitutional history, so they actually had a constitutional system. They learned about Western warfare from Spartan taskmasters. And so these series were fought, what we call the Punic War, the first and the second. Unfortunately for Rome, they faced a true Alexander Napoleon-like figure in Hannibal, who brought the war home. Peter Robinson: Second Punic War, crosses what is now Spain. Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. Peter Robinson: And he goes behind the Roman line, so to speak, taking elephants into the Alps and then wreaking havoc. Victor Davis Hanson: From the year 219 to 202, this war continued.

Peter Robinson: In Italy itself. Victor Davis Hanson: In a series of battles on the Caecanius River, Trebia, Lake Trasimone and Canai, he killed or wounded a quarter of a million Italians. And he ran wild for more than a decade in Italy until Scipio Africanus invaded Tunisia and forced him to return home. But when I'm understanding it. Peter Robinson: To defend his house from him. Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, and he lost the battle of Zama. He was exiled. But that was a great trauma or wound in the Italian mind. It was always Hannibal ad Portis. They scared little children with "Hannibal at the Gates." And they were traumatized.

So they had given a very punitive piece to the Carthaginians and told them: "You are going to pay this enormous fine and you will never be able to wage war without our permission. You are going to hand over all your European and Sicilian colonies. You will have it and you will be largely confined to the city of Carthage and some satellite villages. Peter Robinson: So, the Romans. Now I'm thinking of a phrase that Madeleine Albright used to describe what we had done to Saddam Hussein. The Romans had Carthage in a box. : Yes. That was the idea.

Peter Robinson: So can I set up the third Punic War here, which brings us to the event this chapter is dedicated to?   I'm quoting the end of

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. there was no call in Rome to lay waste to a defeated Carthage and yet Rome attacks Carthage again. Why? Victor Davis Hanson: Well, it's very ironic and tragic because they paid the price early. they made. Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. They were Carthaginians and they discovered it without these overseas colonies and given their privileged location in North Africa. I have to remember that this time North Africa was the most fertile part of the Mediterranean, much more fertile than the coasts of Europe, the southern coasts.

And so they sent a delegation three years earlier to Carthage to inspect what was happening and how they paid the fine and they were amazed. The city had between 500,000 and 600,000 inhabitants. It was booming. It was exuberant. The countryside was lush. They were overconfident and unfortunately for them... Peter Robinson: And they had one of the great ports of the ancient world. Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, it was the Carthage part.   It is currently about 20 miles from modern Tunisia. It was beginning to rival Rome again, and yet they professed no bellicosity at all.  They said, "You know, we don't have a problem with you." Peter Robinson: We have learned our lesson.

Victor Davis Hanson: We learned our lesson. We are just a merchant. They were sort of remodeling themselves from an imperial power to something like Singapore or Hong Kong.   Peter Robinson: Right. Victor Davis Hanson: And, unfortunately, Rome was in that expansionist mood. Now they had consolidated Spain. They had consolidated Italy. They consolidated much of Greece and soon they would conquer all of Greece and Macedonia and they had Cato the Elder and he stood up, you know, legendarily and said, "Carthage must be destroyed as an epithet of every speech."  Then there was... After the inspectors came back, they said, "These people are insidious.

They may not have Hannibal, but they're going to rival us again." Peter Robinson: They're doing too well.   Victor Davis Hanson: They're doing it very well and we've got it all... There were people in the Roman Senate who said, "No, no, don't do that." They pose no threat and in fact they are good for us because the more they are there they put us on our guard and no... we are out of luck. The Romans had the idea that wealth and leisure make you decadent. So the very fact that they are on the other side of the Mediterranean means that they will always be alert.

Peter Robinson: Competition is good for us, Cato. Victor   Davis Hanson: Yes. Kind of like what Americans used to think in the 19th century. So, unfortunately, they decided to present Cartago with a series of demands that were not possible to meet and remain autonomous. Then they sent a group from the Senate to the consuls. The consular army was unusual, but they brought two consuls in an army and landed them there and told them, "You're going to move your city at least 15 miles from the ocean. You're not going to be a maritime power." ". If you get angry about that, the same thing happens to us.

We are Rome, we have Ostia, we are from the end. No problem. But you are going to destroy this ancient city and then you will have to move

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you can. And by the way, we want all your arms. We want your elephants, your famous elephants. They even have personal names. We want your siege ships, we want your armor, we want it all. Peter Robinson: You will live. , we will consider that the city can live. And they were willing to do it. They sent a delegation. They said, "Okay, here are our catapults, here is our bulletproof vest and we will negotiate the rest." that we're fine." And then they came back the next time and the Romans who were camped with this huge army said, "You know..." Peter Robinson: You said the Romans took an army across the Mediterranean.

Victor Davis Hanson: It's in Utica, right near them, about 20 miles away. Peter Robinson: That was larger than the landing force in the Normandy invasion. Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. Peter Robinson: It was a huge force. Victor Davis Hanson: Our sources somewhat disagree, but it could have been between 70, 90, 100,000 people. It took us all day to land 135,000, between the British and the Americans. But the Americans themselves did not have as many people as the Romans landed in Utica. And then the Romans said to all the Carthaginian allies on the northern coast: "Are you with us or against us? Because if you are with us, we will destroy you and you will be a favored colony." .

You will be able to share the loot. We will not charge you taxes. You will be the ones who will rule North Africa." If you are with them, we will do to them what you... And so most of them, not all of them, desert. And then the legates return and say to the Carthaginians: "We ruined it. They are going to kill us. And now we don't have weapons because they are going to force us to move." We thought that if we gave back our weapons, maybe they wouldn't force us to move. So they take Hasrbal, who is this fanatic, out of retirement, not the famous Hasrbal, Hannibal's father, but another one named Hasrbal.

And he is a complete maniac and they had not trusted him. And he says: "Kill all the legates. Whoever was an appeaser, we are in the middle of a wasteland. We are going to rearm." And they do it. They cut all the women's hair, they make catapults and they go crazy and then they lay siege to the city. The problem that the Romans have is that these walls are, up to Constantinople, the largest walls of the ancient world, 27 miles of fortifications. Carthage is on a peninsula and it's like a round circle with a corridor.   And they have that whole walled area and they still have a fleet and it's very difficult to take that city and the Romans are not known for their siege ships and they can't take it.

And they lose, they lose, they lose and they get the Numidian allies to join them. And suddenly, after two years, they probably lost between 20 and 30,000 Romans. Sometimes they break into the suburbs but not in. The main walls and it seems that it is an ungodly disaster. And they are very confident and, just in the case of Alexander, they do not know who they are dealing with. They bring Scipio Aemilianus out of this darkness and he is the adopted nephew, great nephew of Scipio the. African, the famous one. And he is a philosopher like Alexander the Great.

He is a man of letters.   He wouldn't do such a thing. He has a Scipio circle, playwrights, lands. He is a friend of the historian Polybius the Great, just as Alexander is a friend of Aristotle's student. So he comes and he's a legate and he's been there and he keeps saying that the consuls are incompetent and they don't know what they're doing and I should be, but he's a humble young man. And they said, "You take over."    Then he comes, gives a big lecture, and says, "You, your soldiers, are pathetic. You're lazy. This is what's going to happen." He has discipline.  They build a wall for him and the following year he turns out to be a true military genius.  He isolates the city.

He cuts down the hallway.    He cuts off all of their allies who supply them and lays siege to them and they won't give up, but they still have hope that he is a man of principle and will negotiate with them and give them terms and he is a murderer. And he does not give them deadlines and systematically breaks the great walls of Carthage for the first and only time in history. He enters the city and then, over a period of two weeks, systematically kills all the Romans. In fact, the descriptions are horrible. Peter Robinson: Now, are we still dealing with half a million people or are there still men who have not fled?

  Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. Peter Robinson: No, no, it's still very possible. Victor Davis Hanson: They have nowhere to go. They are stagnant and now starving. And he's... Peter Robinson: So this is an act of carnage. Like   Slaughter and sacrifice of cattle or sheep. Victor Davis Hanson: Well, our sources, we have accounts in Diodorus and some in Libya, fragments of Polybius here and there. They tell us that the Roman army has to scrape the bodies because they have killed so many people because they are in... it's like Gaza, Fallujah or Mosul. They're fighting block by block and they're destroying... to get rid of the Carthaginian defenders, they're destroying the buildings and they're torn down and then the bodies are there and then the army can't move.

So they go, go, go until they reach the top, to the capital. And there's Hasrbal and his wife and, of course, he turns around and makes a deal with... Peter Robinson: And now on his side, guys.   Victor Davis Hanson: He leaves his wife and they burn. And then he's gone...he ends up retired in Italy, one of the few people he's around...he suffers a Roman triumph and is humiliated in the parade and they let him live. Peter Robinson: and they let him live. Victor Davis Hanson: And then they delete it. I don't think it's accurate to say that they sowed the land with salt as the myth says, but they did declare it completely an inhospitable place and it was sacrosanct to even approach it.

They lowered it to the foundations.   There is no more formal center of Punic

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. They had a very rich literature on agriculture and agronomy. He's gone. What happens? They are remains of people who in the time of Augustine in the 5th century AD. There are still people who say they speak Punic, very few. And the Romans under Caesar made something called Carthago Nova, a new city, but it's a Roman city built on... something near the old city. Peter Robinson: So it's gone. Victor Davis Hanson: He is no longer here.