Hannibal, fearing extradition, fled from his native city. He did not reconcile himself and tried in the East to resume the struggle against the hated Rome, but failed. In 183 BC. in Bithynia, surrounded by vengeful Romans, he took poison so as not to fall into the hands of the enemy.
The Third Punic War (149-146 BC) did not bring glory to Rome. If in the first two wars equal opponents fought, then in the third, the omnipotent Rome dealt with the defenseless Carthage. In 153 BC. Cato the Censor, one of the largest politicians of Rome, visited Carthage. Seeing a rich and flourishing city, he was inflamed with a desire to wipe it off the face of the earth. The words with which, after this trip, he ended all speeches in the Senate: “However, I think that Carthage must be destroyed” (in Latin: “Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam”), received wide support in Rome.
Finding fault with the fact that Carthage began a defensive war with its neighbor, the Numidian king Masinissa, Rome began to present the city with one ultimatum after another, seeking a pretext for war. The demand to destroy the city and move to another place overwhelmed the patience of the Carthaginians, and they decided to fight to the last. For three years, unarmed, surrounded on all sides, the city did not surrender to the enemy. Only in the winter of 146 BC. Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilian was able to storm Carthage. For six days and nights there were battles in the streets, each multi-storey building became a fortress. The brutalized warriors spared no one. The surviving inhabitants were sold into slavery, and the city itself was razed to the ground, and the place on which it stood was cursed. The territories belonging to Carthage were turned into Roman provinces. Rome remained the sole and sovereign master of the entire Western Mediterranean and already confidently ruled in its eastern part.
In 88 BC The Romans passed on the terrible news to each other with distrust: the army of Consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who was supposed to oppose the Pontic king Mithridates VI Eupator, was marching on Rome. For the first time in its history, the city was threatened by its own citizens.
The conflict between Gaius Marius and Sulla began long ago, even during the Jugurthine War (111-105 BC), when the quaestor Sulla captured the Numidian king Jugurtha, thereby depriving the commander-in-chief Marius of part of his military glory. Secondarily, Sulla stood in the way of Marius during the Allied War (90-88 BC) ”acting so successfully against the Italics, who demanded Roman citizenship for themselves, that the ambitious winner of the Teutons and Cimbri Marius was in the shadow of the victories of a younger rival.
But not only personal hostility was the reason that Marius and Sulla forced the Romans to shed the blood of their fellow citizens.
Coming from an humble family, Guy Marius, thanks to his frenzied ambition and military talents, managed to achieve the consulate in 105 and held it for six years. In the struggle for power, Marius relied on the army, which, after the military reform, gradually became hired. Mariy managed to create his own party, supporting people removed from senior positions. Dissatisfied with the constant re-election of Marius to the post of consul, supporters of the traditional republic, relying on the popular assembly and the main aristocratic Roman families, managed in 99 BC. remove Mary from power and remove him from Rome. However, during the Allied War, the 67-year-old commander tried - and not without success - to regain his leading position in the state. Consul Sulla, who tried to resist the political strengthening of the Marians, was deprived of command in the war with Mithridates. Instead, Gaius Marius himself wanted to lead the army, longing for a victorious war. It was then that Sulla moved his troops to Rome. Having captured the city, the consul repealed the laws adopted by the Marians, but failed to destroy the opposition. Mari fled.
