Daily History Challenge · No. 56 · Sunday 23 August 2026 · Gauntlet
Puzzle No. 56: Gauntlet
The Sunday Gauntlet: three before or after calls, four events to order and a final When? on Destruction of Carthage and Corinth; Roman Mediterranean hegemony.
Act 1: Chain, against UN Adopts CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979 CE)
Before UN Adopts CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
Before UN Adopts CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
Before UN Adopts CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
Act 2: Order, earliest first
Act 3: When?
In a single year Rome obliterated two of the Mediterranean's most storied cities, announcing its supremacy over both the western and eastern halves of the sea. Ending the Third Punic War, Scipio Aemilianus stormed Carthage after a prolonged siege; over six days the Romans systematically destroyed the city, killing much of its population and enslaving some 50,000 survivors, and annexed its territory as the province of Africa. In the same year Lucius Mummius sacked Corinth, crushing the Achaean League: its defenders were killed, its people enslaved, and the wealthy Greek city was levelled, completing the subjugation of mainland Greece begun by the defeat of Macedon at Pydna in 168 BCE. These twin destructions, deliberately exemplary in their brutality, demonstrated Rome's willingness to annihilate rivals and turned the Mediterranean into effectively a Roman sphere. The flood of wealth, slaves and Greek culture that followed transformed Roman society and economy, widening the gap between rich and poor and helping to generate the social tensions that would soon convulse the Republic.