Rome’s destruction of Carthage erased its library and enslaved fifty thousand survivors.
Evidence
The destruction takes another seventeen days. Roman engineers and legionaries systematically demolish the walls, the temples, the public buildings, the elite residences, and the harbor installations. The library — and Carthage had a large library, comparable in scale to Alexandria’s, though we know little of its specific contents — is burned. Surviving Carthaginian inhabitants — perhaps fifty thousand of the original two hundred thousand — are sold into slavery across the Roman Mediterranean. — , The Rod and the Child, 1191
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the book’s theme of silence and destruction of records, comparing to Jerusalem 70 CE mentioned later; also relevant to any work on how imperial powers erase documentary records. — connects to: North African lands never achieved durable independence after Carthage fell