The greatness of Carthage had been, undoubtedly, the cause of that littleness of feeling which had been manifested towards it by Cato, who could not bear the idea that there should exist a city rivalling in grandeur the place he inhabited. The walls, which were triple, were divided into two stories, the upper for men, and the lower for brutes; the former comprising barracks for soldiers, and the latter being fitted up as stables for elephants.
The chief glory of the place was, however, to be found in its aqueducts, which ran in a long line of seventy miles, and of which the people had more reason to be proud than of even a still longer line of ancestors. That a place surrounded almost by aqueducts should have been destroyed by fire, is an extraordinary fact, though it is possible that turncocks may have been neglectful, and if called upon to turn the water on, they may have turned it off in favour of some more agreeable engagement.
There were not so many spoils as had been expected, for everything was spoilt by the mischief that had been done, and though there had been plenty of gold, the fearful amount of violent change had so scattered the gold, that there was not so much remaining as there otherwise would have been. With a touch of that honour which the proverb says is to be found among thieves, Scipio called upon the places formerly plundered by Carthage to reclaim their goods; and the people of Agrigentum demanded a brazen Bull they had once used as an instrument of torture, though the invention was so discreditable to humanity, that its inventors ought to have been ashamed to ask for it back again. Among the prizes secured by the Romans, was a very small parcel of books, including a little work on agriculture, by Mago, which had taught the Carthaginians to till the earth, though not how to keep their ground, for they had lost every foot of it.
Carthage became a province of Rome, under the name of Africa, and Scipio, who subsequently styled himself Africanus, enjoyed one of those triumphs, which were in fact disgraces to the object they were designed to honour. Part of the "triumph" consisted in the barbarity of throwing as food to lions the fugitives that had fallen into his hands, and games were celebrated, in which death to the conquered was the chief sport to the conqueror.