Carthage must be destroyed. [Delenda est Carthago.]
ATTRIBUTION:
Marcus Porcius Cato The Elder (234–149 B.C.), Roman statesman. Quoted in Parallel Lives, “Marcus Cato,” ch. 27, Plutarch.
The words are supposed to be have been repeated by Cato at the end of every speech he made in the senate, after his visit to Carthage in 175 B.C., when he became obsessed by the military threat posed by the city. It was eventually destroyed by Rome at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 B.C., though refounded a hundred years later, becoming an important center of Roman administration under Augustus.
