Cato the Elder would end every speech with, ‘Carthago delenda est’; ‘Carthage must be destroyed’. Rome had defeated Carthage in the two previous Punic Wars, but twice the city quickly rebuilt its strength and continued to pose a threat to Rome. Plutarch wrote that “Cato the Elder one time famously dropped a Libyan fig in the Senate, as he shook out the folds of his toga, and then, as the senators admired its size and beauty, said that the country where it grew was only three days sail from Rome.”