Who won the siege of New Carthage?
Rome won. In 209 BC Publius Cornelius Scipio, the future Africanus, attacked New Carthage (modern Cartagena), Carthage's capital in Spain, from land and sea and took it in a single day. While his legions stormed the gate, part of his army waded a shallow lagoon behind the city and climbed the walls on that side. The commander Mago surrendered the citadel.1
The capture of New Carthage was the boldest stroke of the young Publius Cornelius Scipio, the future Scipio Africanus. New Carthage, called Qart Hadasht by its Carthaginian founders and Carthago Nova by the Romans, is today Cartagena in southeastern Spain. In 209 BC, by Polybius's dating, Scipio marched south from the Ebro, appeared before the city with an army while his fleet closed the harbor, and took it by storm in a single day.2
The siege was short, but the prize was large: the Carthaginian capital in Spain, its harbor, its arsenal, its treasury and the hostages that held the Iberian peoples to Carthage. Archaeologists of the University of Murcia describe the city as Carthage's main political base and military port in the western Mediterranean, and J. H. Richardson calls the victory crucial for the Roman war effort in Spain and in Italy too. It is also the source of two famous stories: the lagoon that seemed to open a path for the Romans, and the “continence of Scipio”. This page is part of our guide to the Punic Wars; for the commander, see Scipio Africanus.3
Why did Scipio attack New Carthage?
The city was a Carthaginian foundation of the war years between the First and Second Punic Wars. Hasdrubal, son-in-law of Hamilcar Barca, founded it in about 228 or 227 BC on a small peninsula at the head of one of the best harbors of the Mediterranean, close to the silver mines of the coastal hills, and named it after the mother city: Qart Hadasht, “the new city”. Two centuries later Strabo still called it by far the most powerful city of the region, with a strong wall, harbors, a lake and the silver mines.4
For the Barcid family it was more than a port. It was the political center and military base of their dominion in Iberia, the harbor that faced Africa, the store of their arms and war material, and the place where they kept hostages from the Iberian communities. Hannibal began his march to Italy from here in 218 BC. Recent analysis of amphorae found in the Punic levels of Cartagena shows that the city received jars made mainly in today's Tunisia, and some made in Sicily and probably in Algeria.5
The Carthaginians felt safe there. According to Polybius, who drew on the memories of Scipio's friend Gaius Laelius, the garrison of trained soldiers numbered only about 1,000, because nobody imagined that anyone would attack the city while Carthage held nearly all of Spain; the rest of the large population were craftsmen, tradesmen and fishermen. On the western hill stood a costly palace which, Polybius reports, Hasdrubal was said to have built when he aimed at royal power. Cartagena's archaeologists and museums identify that hill as the Cerro del Molinete, the arx Hasdrubalis.6
Where were the Carthaginian armies?
Rome's war in Spain had nearly collapsed in 211 BC, when Scipio's father Publius and uncle Gnaeus were killed within a month of each other. The Romans held only the land north of the Ebro. In Rome no experienced commander came forward, and the assembly gave the Spanish command to the younger Publius, barely twenty-four by Livy's account. He landed at Emporiae and made Tarraco his headquarters; the Real Academia de la Historia dates his landing, with Marcus Junius Silanus, to 210 BC.7
Carthage had three armies in Spain, but they were far apart. Polybius places Mago beyond the Pillars of Hercules, among the Conii, Hasdrubal son of Gisgo in Lusitania near the mouth of the Tagus, and Hasdrubal Barca besieging a town of the Carpetani in central Spain, each more than ten days' march from New Carthage. Livy gives other winter quarters: Gades, the interior above the forest of Castulo, and near Saguntum. Scullard explains the dispersal from the Carthaginian side: armies had to be fed in a poor country, restless tribes had to be held down, and the three commanders were at odds with one another.8
Scipio's plan and march to New Carthage
Scipio formed the plan in winter quarters and told no one but Laelius. He had learned from fishermen that the lagoon behind the city was shallow, could be forded in most places and receded every evening. Polybius insists that the whole design rested on calculation, citing a letter that Scipio later wrote to King Philip V of Macedon. Liddell Hart, writing in 1926, saw in it a model of secrecy and thorough preparation: Laelius was to sail with the fleet and arrive at the same moment as the army.9
In spring Scipio crossed the Ebro with 25,000 infantry and 2,500 cavalry, the figures of both Polybius and Livy. Both say he reached New Carthage on the seventh day. Scullard doubted it: the road is about 324 miles, which would mean some 45 miles a day without rest. In a 2005 study David Fernández Rodríguez also rejects a seven-day march from the Ebro, some 480 km, and, like Adolf Schulten before him, counts the seven days from Saguntum. Appian tells a different story again, of a single night march.10
The city, the lagoon and the Punic wall
Polybius, who says he inspected the site himself, describes a bay closed by an island at its mouth, a city built on a peninsula of hills, sea on two sides, a lagoon on the third, and a neck of land only about two stades wide joining it to the mainland. A channel had been cut between the lagoon and the sea, crossed by a bridge. His compass points are off: the lagoon, the marsh later called El Almarjal, lay to the north. Of his five hills, Cartagena's archaeologists and museums match Asclepius with the Cerro de la Concepción, Hephaestus with Despeñaperros, Aletes with Monte San José and Cronus with Monte Sacro.11
Archaeology has found the wall that faced the Romans. A stretch about 30 meters long was uncovered at La Milagrosa in the late 1980s, on the slope of the Cerro de San José, where it closed the isthmus, the only land approach. It is a casemate wall in Hellenistic style: two parallel walls linked by cross walls, an outer face of large sandstone blocks and inner walls of mudbrick, standing just over 10 meters high; charred beams show that a second story ran above the chambers. The excavators note that Livy wrote that nothing defended the city better than its walls.12
How did Scipio take New Carthage?
The next morning Laelius's ships lined the seafront, firing missiles, and about the third hour of the day Scipio sent 2,000 picked men with the ladder carriers along the isthmus. Mago, the commander of the city (not the Mago who led one of the field armies), split his 1,000 regulars between the citadel and the eastern hill and armed about 2,000 townsmen to sally from the isthmus gate. The sortie met the Romans close to their camp; Roman reserves kept coming, and the townsmen broke. Many were crushed in the gate as they fled.13
The Romans set their ladders against the wall, but the great height of the wall hampered the climbers, ladders broke under their weight, and the first escalade failed; Scipio sounded the recall. Scipio moved along the line covered by three men with large shields, so that he could see and be seen. The wall that had stopped them was the one the excavators have found: more than 10 meters of stone and mudbrick across the isthmus.14
The second assault was the diversion. Scipio sent fresh troops with more ladders against the gate and posted 500 men with ladders at the edge of the lagoon. When the water fell, they waded across, guided by men who knew the shallows, and found the wall on that side unmanned, since every defender had gone to the gate. They climbed it without a blow, cleared the wall walk and broke open the gate from inside. The eastern hill fell, and Mago, seeing the city lost, asked for his life and surrendered the citadel. Appian tells it differently: Scipio himself seized a ladder and ran into the lagoon, and trumpeters on the captured towers spread panic.15
Then came the sack. Following Roman custom, Scipio sent most of his men into the city to kill everyone they met until he gave the signal; Polybius saw dogs cut in two and animals dismembered in captured towns and explains the practice as a means of terror. The killing stopped when the citadel surrendered, and the looting began in order, by maniples. Liddell Hart granted that the massacre is revolting to modern ideas, but judged it a deliberate Roman policy aimed at the townspeople's will to resist.16
Tide, wind or legend: what happened in the lagoon?
The ancient writers do not agree on what lowered the lagoon. Polybius speaks of an ebb that came every day towards evening, so strong that a current ran through the channel to the sea, and says Scipio had promised his men help from Poseidon. Livy puts the crossing at about midday, when a falling tide was helped by a strong north wind, and has Scipio tell his men to follow Neptune. Appian also has a midday ebb, with water breast high at one time of day and below the knee at another.17
The difficulty is that the Mediterranean has almost no tide, and the British Mediterranean Pilot, quoted by Scullard and many after him, says there are none in Cartagena harbor. Scullard argued in 1930 that a north or northeast wind, which can lower the water there by a foot or more, explained the ebb: a stroke of luck that Scipio was ready to use, not a daily event he could count on. As Richardson quotes them, F. W. Walbank thought the incident sounded more like a wind phenomenon than a tide, and Dexter Hoyos judged a strong northerly wind the likeliest cause. David Fernández Rodríguez cites studies that put the sea's oscillations at Cartagena at less than half a meter.18
Others have gone further. A. and M. Lillo argued that sluice gates let the water out, and Benedict Lowe that the lagoon was used as salt pans. Richardson, in a 2018 article subtitled “the tide, the wind and other fantasies”, rejects the sluices and doubts the whole tradition: much of it comes through Laelius, Scipio's friend, and the story of a commander favored by the gods grew up early. What all versions share is a shallow lagoon, a column of about 500 men and an unguarded stretch of wall.19
Casualties, prisoners and spoils
No ancient writer gives the number of dead on either side. Polybius counts nearly 10,000 prisoners. Scipio freed the citizens and returned their houses; about 2,000 craftsmen became public slaves of Rome, promised freedom at the end of the war if they worked well; the strongest of the rest went to the fleet as rowers. Polybius says 18 Carthaginian ships were taken, Livy only five; Scullard thought Polybius, who drew on Laelius, the fleet's commander, the better witness.20
The arsenal fell intact. Livy lists 120 large and 281 small catapults, 23 large and 52 small ballistae, 73 standards, gold bowls and 18,300 pounds of silver, then warns that his sources disagreed so much on the garrison, the prisoners and the spoils that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Mago and about fifteen Carthaginian councillors were sent to Rome with Laelius as living proof of the victory.21
The hostages and the Continence of Scipio
The real prize were the hostages from the Iberian communities. Scipio treated them as future friends: he reassured them and sent word to their cities that they would go home if their peoples joined Rome. Both writers tell how the wife of Mandonius, brother of the Ilergete chief Indibilis, fell at his feet and begged him to protect the young women better than the Carthaginians had, and how he promised to guard them like his own sisters and daughters.22
The most famous scene came next. In Polybius, soldiers bring Scipio a beautiful captive girl; he says that as a private man he would have welcomed no gift more, but as a general none less, and returns her to her father. Livy turns the girl into the bride of a Celtiberian noble, Allucius, gives back the ransom her parents brought as a wedding gift, and has Allucius return with 1,400 horsemen. Alejandro Egea Vivancos of the University of Murcia traces how the story grew in each retelling into the “continence of Scipio” of Renaissance and Baroque painting.23
Who won the siege of New Carthage, and why did it matter?
Rome won, and Scipio used the victory at once. He drilled his legions in a repeated four-day cycle of runs, weapon care, rest and mock combat, trained his rowers at sea and set the craftsmen to making arms, so that the city became what Polybius, borrowing from Xenophon, called a workshop of war. Then he repaired the walls, left a garrison and returned to Tarraco with the hostages.24
The Carthaginian commanders first tried to keep the news quiet, Livy says, then played it down as one town filched by a trick, though they knew how much they had lost. When a Carthaginian fleet under Mago did try in 206 BC, landing at night and attacking the stretch of wall where the Romans had broken in, the garrison sallied and drove his men back to their ships.25
The loss cost Carthage its main base in Spain, the arsenal, the harbor facing Africa, the silver of the coastal mines and the hostages that bound Iberian peoples to Carthage. Iberian leaders began to change sides; the Real Academia de la Historia records that in 208 BC, the year of his next victory, at Baecula, the Ilergete chief Indibilis hailed Scipio as king. Scipio went on to win at Ilipa and to drive Carthage out of Spain by 206 BC, the road that led to Zama. New Carthage became a Roman city and remained an important port.26
When was New Carthage captured: 209 or 210 BC?
Livy places the capture in 210 BC. He knew that other writers put it in the following year but thought it improbable that Scipio had spent a whole year in Spain doing nothing. Most modern historians date it to the spring of 209 BC instead. The Cambridge Ancient History traces Livy's slip to a confusion of Polybius's Olympiad year, which ran from summer to summer, with the Roman consular year; David Fernández Rodríguez notes that a few scholars, such as Serge Lancel, still follow Livy. The Real Academia de la Historia dates Scipio's landing to 210 BC and the capture to 209 BC. No source gives the day.27
Where is New Carthage today?
New Carthage is Cartagena, in the Region of Murcia, on the same bay. Its old town stands on the same five hills that Polybius described. The stretch of Punic wall that guarded the isthmus can be visited in the Centre of Interpretation of the Punic Wall on the slope of the Cerro de San José. Excavations elsewhere in the city have found layers of destruction that José Miguel Noguera Celdrán of the University of Murcia shows alongside the Roman capture of Qart Hadasht.28
,_RP-P-H-H-383.jpg){kind=link}