<P> After the main Roman expedition landed at Utica, consuls Manius Manilius and Lucius Marcius Censorius launched a two - pronged attack on Carthage, but were eventually repulsed by the army of the Carthaginian Generals Hasdrubal the Boeotarch and Himilco Phameas . Censorius lost more than 500 men when they were surprised by the Carthaginian cavalry while collecting timber around the Lake of Tunis . A worse disaster fell upon the Romans when their fleet was set ablaze by fire ships which the Carthaginians released upwind . Manilius was replaced by consul Calpurnius Piso Caesonius in 149 after a severe defeat of the Roman army at Nepheris, a Carthaginian stronghold south of the city . Scipio Aemilianus's intervention saved four cohorts trapped in a ravine . Nepheris eventually fell to Scipio in the winter of 147 - 146 . In the autumn of 148, Piso was beaten back while attempting to storm the city of Aspis, near Cape Bon . Undeterred, he laid siege to the town of Hippagreta in the north, but his army was unable to defeat the Punics there before winter and had to retreat . When news of these setbacks reached Rome, he was replaced as consul by Scipio Aemilianus . </P> <P> The Carthaginians endured the siege, starting 149 BC to the spring of 146 BC, when Scipio Aemilianus successfully assaulted the city . Though the Punic citizens offered a strong resistance, they were gradually pushed back by the overwhelming Roman military force and destroyed . </P> <P> Many Carthaginians died from starvation during the later part of the siege, while many others died in the final six days of fighting . When the war ended, the remaining 50,000 Carthaginians, a small part of the original pre-war population, were sold into slavery by the victors . Carthage was systematically burned for 17 days; the city's walls and buildings were utterly destroyed . The remaining Carthaginian territories were annexed by Rome and reconstituted to become the Roman province of Africa . </P> <P> The notion that Roman forces then sowed the city with salt to ensure that nothing would grow there again is almost certainly a 19th - century invention . Contemporary accounts show that the land surrounding Carthage was declared ager publicus and that it was shared between local farmers, and Roman and Italian ones . North Africa soon became a vital source of grain for the Romans . Roman Carthage was the main hub transporting these supplies to the capital . </P>

What happened at the end of the third punic war