State · 146 BCE
Rome destroys Carthage and Corinth
Carthage (Tunisia)
In early 146 BCE, after a three-year siege in the Third Punic War, Roman troops under Scipio Aemilianus stormed Carthage, destroyed the city and sold some 50,000 survivors into slavery; its lands became the Roman province of Africa. In the same year Lucius Mummius defeated the Achaean League and sacked Corinth, bringing mainland Greece under direct Roman control.
Why it mattered
With its great rival gone and Greece subdued, Rome became the unchallenged power of the Mediterranean, and the flood of Greek art and learning into Rome reshaped Roman culture.
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