the city. The Carthaginians suffered frightfully from
hunger and their forces were greatly reduced. In the spring of 146 B. C.
the Romans forced their way into the city and captured it after desperate
fighting in the streets and houses. The handful of survivors were sold
into slavery, their city levelled to the ground and its site declared
accursed. Out of the Carthaginian territory the Romans created a new
province, called Africa. The last act in the dramatic struggle between the
two cities was ended.

III. WAR WITH MACEDONIA AND THE ACHAEAN CONFEDERACY: 149-146 B. C.

*The Fourth Macedonian War: 149-148 B. C.* The mutual rivalries among the
Greek states, which frequently evoked senatorial intervention, and the
ill-will occasioned by the harshness of the Romans towards the anti-Roman
party everywhere, caused a large faction among the Hellenes to be ready to
seize the first favorable opportunity for freeing Greece from Roman
suzerainty.

Relying upon this antagonism to Rome, a certain Andriscus, who claimed to
be a son of Perseus, appeared in Macedonia in 149 and claimed the throne.
He made himself master of the country and defeated the first Roman forces
sent against him. However, he was crushed in the following year at Pydna
by the praetor Metellus, and Macedonia was recovered. The four republics
were not restored but the whole country was organized as a Roman province
(148 B. C.).

*The Achaeans assert their independence.* The Achaean Confederacy was one
of the states where the feeling against Rome ran especially high. There
the irksomeness of the Roman protectorate was heightened by the return of
the survivors of the political exiles of 167, 300 in number. The
anti-Roman party, supported by the extreme democratic elements in the
cities, was in control of the Confederacy when border difficulties with
Sparta broke out afresh in 149 B. C. The matter was referred to the Senate
for settlement, but the Achaeans did not await its decision. They attacked
and defeated Sparta, confident that the hands of the Romans were tied by
the wars in Spain, Africa and Macedonia.

*The dissolution of the Confederacy: 146 B. C.* The Roman Senate
determined to punish the Confederacy by detaching certain important cities
from its membership. But in 147 the Achaean assembly tempestuously refused
to carry out the orders of the Roman ambassadors, in spite of the fact
that the Macedonian revolt had been crushed. Their leaders, exp