Quokk.auend war
submitted by
Deceptichum
https://quokk.au/static/media/posts/ji/SR/jiSRHN5A5CBt1MP.jpg
Context: Formally declaring peace can often slip out of your mind for a couple of thousand years.
Fun (?) fact: the Third Punic War didn’t end because Rome completely destroyed Carthage and carried 50,000 Carthagineans into slavery, leaving no one behind to sign or ratify a treaty (contrary to popular belief, there’s no evidence that the Romans actually salted the earth around Carthage).
Over the next two millennia Carthage would become a Roman city, then an Arab city, then an Ottoman city, then a French colony, and finally the capital of Tunisia; but the war never officially ended until, on February 5, 1985, the mayors of modern Rome and modern Carthage signed a peace treaty, making the Third Punic War the longest completed war in history at 2,134 years in duration.
That was actually pretty near my date of birth. If things had gone slightly differently, I could’ve said that I was born as the longest war in human history came to a close. Sounds like a supervillain origin story (or maybe a superhero?).
…Or at least I would’ve been able to say that until March 12, 1996, when the mayors of Athens and Sparta signed a treaty ending the Peloponnesian War after 2,427 years. Copycats.
This sounds like that scene in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe where the spaceliner is keeping everyone trapped in suspended animation because the civilization collapsed before the lemon-scented paper napkins were loaded so the autopilot is waiting for a new civilization to develop on the planet that can provide the napkins and will only depart on its journey once that’s done.
Douglas Adams did everything first, didn’t he?
How often do mayors really get to sign a peace treaty?