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by mercurial
3837 days ago
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I did, actually, a long time ago. And you'll find a number of instances of Roman troops cutting civilians to pieces, either after being ordered to, or on their own initiative. Modern estimates of casualties are in hundreds of thousands, which, considering the size of the population at that time, is a significant chunk. That's not mentioning the ethics of invading a country to pay back your creditors. This doesn't make Caesar particularly bloodthirsty by the standards of the time. However, someone like Scipio Africanus behaved in a much more humane way. |
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Carthage was an empire that fielded armies. The Germanic peoples, as in this case, were often migrating and invading, and had a certain culture and way of life that meant the women and children were much more involved politically and militarily. Children were generally not present in significant numbers in Carthagian armies, they often were in German armies.
Given a few years, it was a virtual guarantee Caesar would be fighting the children of these people (assuming that they were not already fighting as well as they could or trying to prevent the retreat of the men). Carthagian children were, on the other hand, not a threat as long as the political situation remained stable.