In 203 B.C., Hannibal’s forces were forced to abandon the struggle in Italy in order to defend North Africa, and the following year Scipio’s army routed the Carthaginians at Zama. Hannibal’s daring invasion of Rome reached its height at the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C., where he used his superior cavalry to surround a Roman army twice the size of his own and inflict massive casualties.Īfter this disastrous defeat, however, the Romans managed to rebound, and the Carthaginians lost hold in Italy as Rome won victories in Spain and North Africa under the rising young general Publius Cornelius Scipio (later known as Scipio Africanus). The Second Punic War saw Hannibal and his troops–including as many as 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry and a number of elephants–march from Spain across the Alps and into Italy, where they scored a string of victories over Roman troops at Ticinus, Trebia and Trasimene. Two years later, he marched his army across the Ebro River into Saguntum, an Iberian city under Roman protection, effectively declaring war on Rome. Upon Hasdrubal’s death in 221 B.C., Hannibal took command of Carthaginian forces in Spain. According to Polybius and Livy in their histories of Rome, Hamilcar Barca, who died in 229 B.C., made his younger son Hannibal swear a blood oath against Rome when he was just a young boy.
Over the next decades, Rome took over control of both Corsica and Sardinia as well, but Carthage was able to establish a new base of influence in Spain beginning in 237 B.C., under the leadership of the powerful general Hamilcar Barca and, later, his son-in-law Hasdrubal. How the Forward Pass Saved Football Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.) At the end of the First Punic War, Sicily became Rome’s first overseas province. the Roman fleet was able to win a decisive victory against the Carthaginians at sea, breaking their legendary naval superiority. Though its invasion of North Africa that same year ended in defeat, Rome refused to give up, and in 241 B.C. and a major victory in the Battle of Ecnomus in 256 B.C. Over the course of nearly 20 years, Rome rebuilt its entire fleet in order to confront Carthage’s powerful navy, scoring its first sea victory at Mylae in 260 B.C. While Carthage supported Syracuse, Rome supported Messina, and the struggle soon exploded into a direct conflict between the two powers, with control of Sicily at stake. In 264 B.C., Rome decided to intervene in a dispute on the western coast of the island of Sicily (then a Carthaginian province) involving an attack by soldiers from the city of Syracuse against the city of Messina. A friend of and mentor to Scipio Aemilianus, he was an eyewitness to the siege and destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. Though Carthage had clashed violently with several other powers in the region, notably Greece, its relations with Rome were historically friendly, and the cities had signed several treaties defining trading rights over the years.ĭid you know? The Greek historian Polybius, one of the main sources of information about the Punic Wars, was born around 200 B.C.
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(The word “Punic,” later the name for the series of wars between Carthage and Rome, was derived from the Latin word for Phoenician.) By 265 B.C., Carthage was the wealthiest and most advanced city in the region, as well as its leading naval power. Tradition holds that Phoenician settlers from the Mediterranean port of Tyre (in what is now Lebanon) founded the city-state of Carthage on the northern coast of Africa, just north of modern-day Tunis, around 814 B.C. Background and First Punic War (264-241 B.C.) In the Third Punic War, the Romans, led by Scipio the Younger, captured and destroyed the city of Carthage in 146 B.C., turning Africa into yet another province of the mighty Roman Empire. In the Second Punic War, the great Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy and scored great victories at Lake Trasimene and Cannae before his eventual defeat at the hands of Rome’s Scipio Africanus in 202 B.C., which left Rome in control of the western Mediterranean and much of Spain. when Rome interfered in a dispute on the Carthaginian-controlled island of Sicily the war ended with Rome in control of both Sicily and Corsica and marked the empire’s emergence as a naval as well as a land power.
By the time the First Punic War broke out, Rome had become the dominant power throughout the Italian peninsula, while Carthage–a powerful city-state in northern Africa–had established itself as the leading maritime power in the world. and ending in Roman victory with the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. The three Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome took place over nearly a century, beginning in 264 B.C.