- 05 Apr 2017 21:21
#14793906
At the end of the Third Punic War, Carthage was destroyed by a Roman army under the command of Scipio Africanus. In the words of the Roman historian Polybius:
The irony of course, is that what happened before to others, can happen in the future to those who were the usurpers of the past.
At the end of the Third Punic War, Carthage was destroyed by a Roman army under the command of Scipio Africanus. In the words of the Roman historian Polybius:
Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said:
A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,
And Priam and his people shall be slain.
And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human. Polybius actually heard him and recalls it in his history.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Marx (Groucho)