Was It Necessary to Destroy Carthage?

Our second gathering in the series on ancient conflicts
(what was the first one about? You can find it here: [https://t.me/auditoria_tbilisi/5929])
will focus on no less gripping a topic — the struggle between Rome and Carthage.

While the Greek–Persian wars left both sides weakened, in Rome’s conflict with Carthage the outcome was more definitive: the Romans got what they wanted — they razed the city to the ground.

For centuries, this act — wrapped in the aura of Rome’s “righteousness” — was celebrated as a clear victory, even a progressive move.
Yet, although history does not deal in hypotheticals, the Romans themselves soon began to feel that something important had been lost.
In their attempt to restore the status quo, they tried to rebuild Carthage as a city. But they didn’t fully understand that Carthaginem esse delendam wasn’t just about physically destroying a settlement — it was a disruption of far subtler structures.

Rome had wiped out an entire infrastructure — one they could never truly reconstruct, largely because they never really understood how it worked.