In 149 BC Rome launched the Third Punic War against Carthage, its great rival city-state in North Africa, and after three years of siege utterly destroyed it in 146 BC. The site was razed, its population enslaved or killed, and the territory absorbed as the Roman province of Africa. The destruction of Carthage removed Rome's last major Mediterranean rival and became a byword for total, annihilating conquest in Western literary tradition.

The Third Punic War and the destruction of Carthage were pivotal in Roman history, inspiring poets like Virgil and Horace to craft narratives that celebrated Roman dominance. Cato's infamous phrase 'Carthago delenda est' became a rallying cry, symbolizing the moral justification of empire in Roman poetry.