What is safe to destroy?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Mainly on account of troublemaking - the Romans had a pretty Assyrian approach to that kind of thing. Not like they gave a damn otherwise, and I can't out of hand recall reading of a comparable suppression of Druids on the continent...

Anyways, I'm pretty sure that all the other Punic cities the Romans took didn't get the same "raze to ground and salt the earth" treatment Carthage got singled out for.

The Romans were pragmatically Polytheistic, when encountering a religion they logically assumed they were dealing with either a new God or, more likely, a local varient of one of their own deities or cults. Hence the violent reaction against Atheistic religions like Christianity.

So what the Romans were opposed to was religious sacrifice of citizens rather than humans?

I can understand their reasoning, but that does not change the fact that they did commit human sacrifice. Unless, of course, one argues that enemies/slaves do not count as humans, which simply leads to another form of hypocrisy.

It takes on a very different dimension when you consider that the Romans considered, like the Greeks, that the Polity had a sacred duty to protect it's members. This was something that they considered to be sacred to the Gods who lived within the city. The Carthaginian practice of sacrificing their own children, bastards or not, could only anger the Gods in Roman eyes.

A conviction ultimately borne out by their defeat.