Third Punic War
Fifty-one years after Hannibal and Scipio Africanus faced each other to end the Second Punic War, a new war started when in 151 BCE Carthage declared war against Numidia—causing Rome to declare war against her. By 146 BCE, Scipio Aemilianus (adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus), through six days of slaughter, reduced the Carthaginian population from 500,000 to 55,000 and leveled the city. An atrocity unlike anything known to history. Carthage would never recover, and from then on, imperialism became the frank and the conscious motive of Roman politics.
Source: Durant, Will, The Story of Civilization, Vol. 3: Caesar and Christ, A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325, Simon and Schuster, 1944.
Image by Carole Raddato under CC BY-SA 2.0 license
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!