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After the second Punic War, feelings against Carthage ran high in Rome.  The Roman army under Scipio Aemilianus was sent to raze the city, sell the survivors into slavery, and make the entire land into a Roman province.  The following description is taken from Appian's ROMAN HISTORY, Vol 1 (trans. Horace White). 

Appian of Alexandra: "The Destruction of Carthage"

 Then came new scenes of horror.  The fire spread and carried everything down, and the soldiers did not wait to destroy the buildings little by little, but pulled them all down together.  So the crashing grew louder, and many fell with the stones into the midst of the dead.  Others were seen still living, especially old men, women and young children who had hidden in the inmost nooks of the houses, some of them wounded, some more or less burned, and uttering horrible cries.  Stll others, thrust out and falling from such a height with the stones, timbers, and fire, were torn asunder into all kinds of horrible shapes, crushed and mangled.  Nor was this the end of their miseries, for the street cleaners who were removing the rubbish with axes, mattocks, and boathooks, and making the roads passable, tossed with these instruments the dead and living together into holes in the ground, sweeping them along like sticks and stones or turning them over with their iron tools, and man was used for filling up a ditch. 
. . . Horses ran over them, crushing their faces and skulls, not purposely on the part of the riders, but in their headlong haste . . . all together made everybody frantic and heedless of the spectacle before their eyes.   

 Six days and nights were consumed in this kind of turmoil, the soldiers being changed  so that they might not be worn out with toil, slaughter, want of sleep, and these horrid sights.

 Scipio, beholding this city, which had flourished 700 years from its foundation and had ruled over so many lands, islands, and seas, as rich in arms and fleets, elephants and money as the mightiest empires, but far surpassing them in hardihood and high spirits . . . now come to an end in total destruction--Scipio, beholding this spectacle, is said to have shed tears and publicly lamented the fortune of the enemy.  After meditating by himself a long time and reflecting on the inevitable fall of cities, nations, and empires, as well as of individuals, upon the fate of Troy, that once proud city, upon the fate of the Assyrian, the Medean, and afterwards the great Persian empire, and most recently of all, of the splendid empire of Macedon, either voluntarily or otherwise the words of the poet [Homer] escaped his lips:

 The day shall come in which our sacred Troy
 And Priam, and the people over whom
 Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all.

Being asked by Polybius in familiar conversation (for Polybius had been his tutor) what he meant by using these words, Polybius said that Scipio did not hesitate frankly to name his own country, for whose fate he feared when he considered the mutability of human affairs.  And Polybius wrote this down just as he heard it.