You ever heard of Ashurbanipal? If not, you’re about to. The ancient Assyrians didn’t just conquer cities—they made examples of them. Heads on spikes, flayed generals, entire populations deported. And they wrote it all down like a brag sheet on their palace walls. Welcome to the brutal, blood-soaked reality of war in the ancient world—a world where the concept of a war crime didn’t exist, but cruelty knew no bounds.
Assyrians: Masters of Terror
In the 7th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire wasn’t just powerful—it was feared. Their kings, especially Ashurbanipal and Tiglath-Pileser III, orchestrated sieges that didn’t just defeat enemies—they annihilated them. Assyrian reliefs proudly show prisoners impaled, beheaded, and skinned alive, all as public displays to warn others.
After sacking a rebellious city, it was common for them to execute leaders in horrific fashion—sometimes having them flayed and their skins nailed to city gates. Civilians were often deported en masse, and children were not spared. The psychological warfare was as devastating as the military action.
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The Destruction of Babylon (by the Persians and Assyrians)
Babylon, one of the jewels of Mesopotamia, was a repeated target of wrath. The most shocking act may have come from Xerxes I of Persia, who—after a rebellion—leveled parts of the city, melted sacred idols, and desecrated temples, shattering not only the city’s infrastructure but its spiritual soul.
But even before the Persians, the Assyrian King Sennacherib reportedly destroyed Babylon in 689 BCE, flooding it with canals and plundering its gods—something nearly unthinkable in the ancient world. Religious desecration was often a war tactic, meant to break the will of conquered peoples.
Roman Massacres and Crucifixions
Though Rome gave the world law, it also gave it organized brutality. After the Third Servile War, when Spartacus led a rebellion of enslaved gladiators, Crassus crucified over 6,000 prisoners along the Appian Way. The road was lined with their rotting bodies—a message to all who would dare rise against Rome.
Similarly, during the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Roman forces under Titus destroyed the Second Temple and killed tens of thousands. Josephus, a Jewish historian of the time, described rivers of blood and streets filled with corpses—civilians slaughtered in sacred spaces, without regard to age or status.
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Carthage: “Salted Earth”
When Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE at the end of the Third Punic War, the cruelty was legendary. The Romans killed or enslaved nearly every Carthaginian—up to 150,000 people. The myth that they salted the earth may not be factual, but the devastation they inflicted was very real.