• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

BC 264-BC 146 Punic Wars

The long list of Roman annalists begins at the moment when the great struggle with Carthage had for the first time brought Rome into direct connexion with the historic peoples of the ancient world, and when Romans themselves awoke to the importance of the part reserved for Rome to play in universal history. To write the annals of Rome became at once a task worthy of the best of her citizens. Though other forms of literature might be thought unbecoming to the dignity of a free-born citizen, this was never so with history. On the contrary, men of high rank and tried statesmanship were on that very account thought all the fitter to write the chronicles of the state they had served. And history in Rome never lost either its social prestige or its intimate and exclusive connexion with the fortunes of the Roman people.

As the last 125 years of the existence of the Roman state had been spent in the gradual conquest of the Italic nations, so the next 180 years (AUC 490-620, or BC 264-134) were spent in a series of conquests, by which various foreign countries were reduced to the condition of mere provinces of Italy. This series of conquests may be designated generally by the title of the Punic Wars, and the Wars with the Greek States.

The first foreign people with which the Romans came into collision were the Carthaginians — a people of Phoenician lineage, who, settling in that part of Africa now called Tunis, and building a city there, about a century before Rome was founded, had in the interval become a great commercial nation, with ships sailing to all parts of the Mediterranean, and with colonies along the coasts of Algiers, in Sardinia and Corsica, and even in Spain. They had recently gained a footing in Sicily, and now shared it with the Greeks of Syracuse; and it was on this rich island as a battlefield that the Romans first came into conflict with the merchant-people of Africa.

The war thus begun, the First Punic War, lasted twenty-three years (AUC 490-518, or BC 264-241). During it the Romans first learned to build ships of war, and to fight naval battles ; and they were soon able to defeat the. Carthaginians on their own element. On land they were sure of victory against mere mercenaries, collected, as these were, from all nations, and commanded by Carthaginian generals of ordinary capacity. In 249 BC however, the Carthaginians sent over the great Hamilcar Barca to command their forces in Sicily; and his efforts checked the Romans, who, meanwhile, had invaded Africa, and been repulsed. A victory or two, however, gained by the Romans over other generals than Hamilcar, disposed the Carthaginians for peace, who accordingly agreed (BC 241) to evacuate Sicily, and to pay the victors a large stun of money.

The Romans then made themselves masters of Sicily ; and shortly afterwards they found a pretext for wresting Corsica and Sardinia from the Carthaginians. For twenty-two years after these conquests (BC 241-219) the Romans were engaged in wars with the Cisalpine Gauls and other nations in the north of Italy, the effect of which was to extend their dominion to the foot of the Alps. Beyond the Alps, also, Illyria, a country skirting the east coast of the Adriatic, was at this time annexed to the dominions of the Commonwealth.

Hannibal Barca, the son of Hamilcar, and then only twenty-six years of age, was appointed to the command. The by him of Saguntum, an independent Spanish town, which had claimed the assistance of the Romans, led to the Second Punic War (BC 218-201). Crossing the Pyrenees, the young Carthaginian general, the greatest military commander probably, and certainly one of the ablest men the world ever saw, pushed his way through the Gallic tribes, and effecting the passage of the Alps, descended into Italy. Rousing the Cisalpine Gauls, and defeating in several successive battles the Roman generals sent against him, he made his way into the south of Italy (BC 217) ; and having in the following year inflicted on the Romans at Cannes the greatest defeat they had ever received, he remained in Italy fifteen years (BC 217—202), moving hither and thither, keeping seven or eight Roman generals, and among them the wary Fabius and the bold Marcellus, continually employed, scattering the Romans like chaff wherever he appeared, exhausting the finances of the state, and detaching the Italian, nations from their allegiance.

Scipio passed over from Spain into Africa, and defeating the Carthaginians in several battles, compelled them to recall their greatest man for the defense of his native city. In BC 202, or the year of the city 552, Hannibal quitted Italy, where he had spent the best period of his life. Not long after his landing in Africa, he was defeated by Scipio at Zama, and his countrymen were obliged in consequence to agree to a peace on very severe terms.

The Second Punic War concluded, and Italy once more pacified, the Romans made war on Philip III. king of Macedonia, and virtual ruler of all the Greek states, who had offended them by entering into a treaty with Hannibal. The war was protracted over seventeen years (b. C. 214197,) but ended in the reduction of Macedonia, and the proclamation by the Romans of the independence of the other Greek states. Seized with a desire to assume the place which the Macedonian king had been unable to maintain, Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, and representative therefore of the Greek empire in Asia, crossed into Greece, where he joined the JEtolians against the Romans. Defeated, however, in Greece, and forsaken by the JEtolians, he was pursued into Asia, and after the loss of a great battle at Magnesia, obliged to submit to the Romans, who thus became virtual masters of the various kingdoms and states of Asia Minor (BC 188).

The whole circuit of the Mediterranean in their power, and their ships respected in all its ports, as belonging to the ' sovereign people of Italy, the Romans at length executed their long-cherished project, and pounced upon Carthage (BC 149), whose existence, even in its fallen condition of a mere commercial capital, they could not tolerate. Hannibal had been dead more than thirty years ; but under such generals as they had, the wretched Carthaginians offered a desperate resistance to the Roman commanders. After a horrible siege, the city, containing a population of 700,000, was taken and sacked by Scipio AEmilianus, the adopted son of the son of the great Scipio (BC 146). The houses were raged to the ground, and the province of Africa was the prize of this third Punic War. The fall of Greece was cotemporary with that of Carthage.