Scipio takes command

Public demand in Rome makes Scipio Aemilianus consul for 147 BC, although at 36 or 37 he is below the legal age, and gives him sole command in Africa. Early in the year Lucius Hostilius Mancinus, who commands the fleet, forces his way through a sally port with 3,500 men, most of them sailors. Scipio sails over from Utica during the night and takes them off as the Carthaginians counterattack.

Plan of Carthage and its isthmus in Reginald Bosworth Smith’s Rome and Carthage, 1889Wikimedia Commons, Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions (Rome and Carthage, the Punic wars; (1889) (14769856391).jpg)

Scipio restores discipline and leads a night assault on Megara, the large suburb of gardens and villas inside the walls. 4,000 Romans get in, but he withdraws them before daylight. Hasdrubal has Roman prisoners tortured to death on the walls in view of the Roman army and puts to death the councillors who object. Scipio then closes the land side of the city with a fortified line across the isthmus.

Sources

Appian, The Punic Wars, 112 to 120.
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage (2006).

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