1. PUNIC WARS

2.  The greatest naval power of the
Mediterranean in the third century BCE was
the North African independent city of
Carthage.
 The Carthaginians were originally
Phoenicians and Carthage was a colony
founded by the Phoenician capital city of
Tyre in the ninth century BCE
 Carthage was powerful in the western
Mediterranean, had a powerful navy and
trading connections and territories in Spain,
north Africa, Sardinia, Corsica

3.  Carthage was a formidable power; it
controlled almost all the commercial trade
in the Mediterranean, had subjected vast
numbers of people all whom sent soldiers
and supplies, and amassed tremendous
wealth from gold and silver mines in Spain.
 The Romans had had some contact with
Carthage. They were perfectly aware of the
Carthaginian heritage: they called them by
their old name, Phoenicians. In Latin, the
word is Poeni, which gives us the name for
the wars between the two states, the Punic
Wars.

4.  Rivalryand tension led to three lengthy
conflicts called the Punic Wars, named
after puniqus, Latin for Phoenician

5. Punic Wars: Three
Punic Wars (Rome vs.
Carthage)

6. Why was a war with Carthage
inevitable?

7.  Roman republic’s first territorial
interest outside of Italy was Africa.
 Target was the Phoenician city of
Carthage, great naval power with
outposts on Mediterranean islands
of Sicily and Sardinia.
 Rome desired Carthage because:
1. Carthage controlled much of
Sicily (island rich in wheat).
2. Navy posed a threat to west

8. The Romans greatly feared the
Carthaginians and wanted build
as large a buffer zone as soon as
possible between them and the
Carthaginians. By gaining Sicily,
the Romans had expelled the
Carthaginians from their back
yard; they now wanted them out
of their front yard, that is, the
islands of Corsica and Sardinia
west of the Italian peninsula.

9. The First Punic War ( 264 BC - 241 BC
E)
 Fought partly on land in Sicily and
Africa , but was primarily a naval war.
 Carthage underestimated Rome and
allowed a large part of its force to be
withdrawn to another campaign in
Africa
 The struggle was costly to both powers,
but Rome was victorious — it
conquered the island of Sicily. The
effect of the war destabilized Carthage
so much that Rome was able to seize
Sardinia and Corsica a few years later.

11.  Rome developed a navy in a short time and
proved to be tactically superior
 Rome improved naval technology by
designing a hook that attaches to enemy
boats so troops could fight along the deck.
 Carthaginians agreed to pay Rome 3300
talents of silver and surrender Sicily.
 Romans took many slaves in Carthage,
meaning their free men were able to fight
abroad while slaves worked the land

12.  Following its defeat in the First
Punic War, Carthage rebuilt its
strength by expanding its empire in
Spain. Growing increasingly
anxious, the Romans had imposed
a treaty on Carthage not to expand
their empire past the Ebro river in
Spain. However, when a small city
in Spain, Saguntum, approached
Rome asking for Roman friendship
and alliance, the Romans couldn't
resist having a friendly ally right in
the heart of the Carthaginian
Iberian empire.

14. 221 BC, Hannibal assumed
command over Carthaginian
Spain (at age 25)
At first, Hannibal gave the
Saguntines wide berth for he
wished to avoid coming into
conflict with Rome. But the
Saguntines were flush with
confidence in their new alliance
and began playing politics with
other Spanish cities. Hannibal,
despite direct threats from
Rome, attacked Saguntum and

15.  Romans attempted diplomacy
 Demanded that Carthage dismiss
Hannibal and send him to Rome -
Carthage refused.
 Carthage was still a powerful
opponent - had created a powerful
empire in Spain with a large army.
 Hannibal marched out of Spain
and across Europe and, in
September of 218 BCE, he crossed
the Alps with his army and entered
Italy on a war of invasion.

16. 2 nd
Punic War
 218 BCE – 202 BCE
 Romans became
suspicious of
Carthage’s growing
influence in western
Mediterranean
 Hamilcar Barca
(Carthaginian general
in First Punic War),
conquered parts of

17. Hannibal takes ambitious
journey from Spain with
40 000 troops , 8000
cavalry, and 60 elephants
over Alps;
During the crossing of the
Alps, he lost half his
infantry, 2000 cavalry and

18.  Although his army was tired from the
journey, he literally smashed the
Roman armies he encountered in
northern Italy.
 Within two months, he had conquered
the whole of northern Italy, with the
exception of two cities.
 A horde of 50 000 Gauls from the
north to help him
 Hannibal’s victory over Rome, would
be guaranteed if he could convince
Roman allies and subject cities to join
Carthage.

19.  The Romans were divided as to
whether they could beat Hannibal in
open warfare and they knew that he
and his army were alone and far from
any supplies. Despite Hannibal's
certainty that Roman allies would join
him, the allies remained faithful to
Rome. So on the eve of his invasion of
Rome, Hannibal steered south.
 The Romans, desperate because of
their losses, asked Quintus Fabius
Maximus to become absolute dictator
of Rome. Fabius determined to avoid
open warfare at any cost and simply
shadowed and harassed the
Carthaginian army until they were weak

20. Fabius, Roman military
leader at the time,
believed Hannibal lacked
the equipment for a
prolonged siege on Rome
and that a delay in battle
would seriously reduce
the Carthaginian food

21.  His instinct was to wait out
Hannibal; he was hated for this
policy—the Romans called him
"The Delayer" and eventually
removed him from power.
 But when Hannibal marched into
Cannae in southern Italy and
started decimating the countryside
in 216 BC, the two inexperienced
consuls who had replaced Fabius as
generals of the army sent an army
of eighty thousand soldiers against
him. This army, vastly
outnumbering the Carthaginian

22.  216 BCE Roman army marched
against Hannibal at Cannae and
lost.
 Hannibal positioned his infantry in
a crescent-shaped formation that
bulged out in the centre towards
Romans.
 On the wings, he placed his
cavalry.
 As Romans pushed forward, they
pushed Hannibal’s infantry back in

23. Cannae
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=CQNCGqfjaBc&feature=relat
ed

24. The battle had proven that
Fabius was right all along to
avoid direct battles, so the
Romans went back to his
strategy of waiting out
Hannibal. Roman allies in the
south of Italy literally ran to
Hannibal's side; the whole of
Sicily allied itself with the
Carthaginians. In addition, the
king of Macedon, Philip V, who
controlled most of the mainland

25.  The situation looked bad for the
Romans; however, none of the central
Italian allies had gone over to
Hannibal's side after Cannae. The
Romans had been chastened by their
defeat and absolutely refused to go
against Hannibal, whose army moved
around the Italian countryside
absolutely unopposed.
 Hannibal, however, was weak in
numbers and in equipment. He didn't
have enough soldiers to lay seige to
cities such as Rome, and he didn't have
either the men or equipment to storm
those cities by force. All he could do

26. Devastating defeat: 25 000
men were killed.
Southern Italian towns
surrendered to Hannibal out
of fear!
As Hannibal marched south
to regroup and get food,
Roman army recovered from
their losses.

27. In211, he marched right
up the walls of Rome, but
he never laid siege to it.
So confident were the
Romans, that on the day
that Hannibal marched
around the walls of Rome
with his cavalry, the land
on which he had camped
was sold at an auction in

29.  The Romans, however, very shrewdly
decided to fight the war through the
back door. They knew that Hannibal
was dependent on Spain for future
supplies and men, so they appointed a
young, strategically brilliant man as
proconsul and handed him the
imperium over Spain. This move was
unconstitutional, for this young man
had never served as consul.
 His name: Publius Cornelius Scipio
(237-183 BC). Scipio, who would later
be called Scipio Africanus for his
victory over Carthage (in Africa), by
206 BCE had conquered all of Spain,
which was converted into two Roman

30.  Scipio then crossed into Africa in 204
BC and took the war to the walls of
Carthage itself. This forced the
Carthaginians to sue for peace with
Rome; part of the treaty demanded that
Hannibal leave the Italian peninsula.
 Hannibal was one of the great strategic
generals in history; all during his war
with Rome he never once lost a major
battle, although he had lost a couple
small skirmishes. Now, however, he
was forced to retreat; he had, despite
winning every battle, lost the war.
When he returned to Carthage, the
Carthaginians took heart and rose up
against Rome in one last gambit in 202

31. At Zama in northern
Africa, Hannibal, fighting
against Scipio and his
army, met his first defeat.
Rome reduced Carthage
to a dependent state;
Rome now controlled the
whole of the western
Mediterranean including
northern Africa.

32.  The Second Punic War turned
Rome from a regional power into
an international empire: it had
gained much of northern Africa,
Spain, and the major islands in the
western Mediterranean. Because
Philip V of Macedon had allied
himself with Hannibal and started
his own war of conquest, the
second Punic War forced Rome to
turn east in wars of conquest
against first Philip and then other
Hellenistic kingdoms. The end
result of the second Punic War, in

33.  This was the defining historical
experience of the Romans. They
had faced certain defeat with
toughness and determination and
had won against overwhelming
odds. Their system of alliances had
held firm; while Hannibal had
depended on the allies running to
his side, only the most remote
Roman allies, those in the south
and Sicily, left the Roman alliance.
 For the rest of Roman history, the
character of being Roman would be
distilled in the histories of this

34. The Second Punic War ( 218 BC - 202 BC)
 Carthaginian general Hannibal departs from Spain,
crosses the Alps to invade Italy from the north
 Hannibal is successful in several battles, but never
manages to effect a political break between Rome
and her allies in the Italian cities
 Hispania, Sicily and Greece were also key theatres,
Rome emerging victorious in all three. Eventually,
the war was taken to North Africa, under the
control of the brilliant Roman stragegist, the
general Scipio
 Carthage was annihilated at the Battle of Zama, its
territories everywhere outside of Africa were now
under Roman control and they had to pay an

35.  Inthe years intervening, Rome
undertook the conquest of the
Hellenistic empires to the east. In the
west, Rome brutally subjugated the
Iberian people who had been so vital to
Roman success in the second Punic
War. However, they were especially
angry at the Carthaginians who had
almost destroyed them. The great
statesman of Rome, Cato, is reported
by the historians as ending all his
speeches, no matter what their subject,
with the statement, "I also think that

36. The Third Punic War involved
an extended siege of Carthage
between 149 BC and the spring
of 146 BC, ending in the city's
destruction and the enslavement
of many of its people.
The resurgence of the struggle
can be explained by growing
anti-Roman agitations in
Hispania and Greece, and the
visible improvement of

37. 3 rd Punic
 149
War
BCE – 146
BCE.
 50 years after
Hannibal’s
defeat,
Carthage was
ready for more
and violates
peace treaty by
building up
military.

38.  Carthage had, through the first half of
the second century BC, recovered much
of its prosperity through its commercial
activities, although it had not gained
back much power. The Romans, deeply
suspicious of a reviving Carthage,
demanded that the Carthaginians
abandon their city and move inland
into North Africa. The Carthaginians,
who were a commercial people that
depended on sea trade, refused. The
Roman Senate declared war, and Rome
attacked the city itself.

39.  After a siege, the Romans stormed
the town and the army went from
house to house slaughtering the
inhabitants in what is perhaps the
greatest systematic execution of
non-combatants before World War
II. Carthaginians who weren't killed
were sold into slavery. The harbor
and the city was demolished, and
all the surrounding countryside was
sown with salt in order to render it
uninhabitable.

40. Rome invades Carthage and
burns it to the ground, steals
many wealthy and luxurious
objects, salts the ground so
nothing will grow!
Anyone not killed was sold
into slavery.

41. North Africa became
province of Rome.
Rome became unrivaled
power and began conquering
Corsica, Sicily, Sardinia,
Spain, Greece, Egypt, Asia
Minor, Macedonia, Gaul,
Syria, Crete, and Bythynia.

42.  http://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=u4F1GN9oCfE