The Punic Wars & the Conquest of the Mediterranean

1. Carthage — The Great Rival

Before the Punic Wars, the dominant power of the western Mediterranean was Carthage, the great Phoenician-founded city on the coast of North Africa (near modern Tunis). By the third century BC Carthage was the richest city in the Mediterranean, ruling a trading empire that stretched across North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, Corsica and western Sicily, and commanding a formidable navy and a professional mercenary army. Rome and Carthage had once been treaty partners, but the collision of their interests over the island of Sicily — the "granary" contested between them — made war inevitable. The three wars fought between Rome and Carthage (264–241, 218–201, 149–146 BC) are known as the Punic Wars (from the Latin Punicus, "Phoenician"). Rome won all three; in doing so it destroyed its greatest rival and became the supreme power of the Mediterranean (World History Encyclopedia, "Punic Wars," worldhistory.org/Punic_Wars/).

2. The First Punic War (264–241 BC) — Rome Becomes a Naval Power

The First Punic War began in 264 BC when Rome, called in by the Mamertines of Messana in Sicily, intervened against the Carthaginians and their ally the tyrant Hiero II of Syracuse. Rome, a land power with almost no navy, had to learn sea-fighting from scratch; it built fleets and invented the corvus (a boarding bridge) to turn naval battles into land battles, and so won a series of victories, including the crushing victory at the Battle of Ecnomus (256 BC) and a great triumph won by Regulus in Africa. But the war dragged on through Roman disasters (Regulus was captured and killed; a storm destroyed a Roman fleet) until, finally, the Roman naval victory at the Aegates Islands (241 BC) forced Carthage to sue for peace, surrendering Sicily, which became the first Roman province. The war made Rome a naval power and gave it Sicily — but at enormous human cost, and it left an unhealed wound in Carthage that would reopen (World History Encyclopedia, "Punic Wars," worldhistory.org/Punic_Wars/).

3. The Barcids and the Rise of Hannibal

To recover, Carthage turned to the Barcid family, warlords who conquered and developed a new empire in Spain (southern Iberia). Hamilcar Barca (l. 275–228 BC), the hero of the First Punic War, led the conquest of Spain; and, according to tradition, he made his young son Hannibal swear an oath of eternal enmity to Rome. After Hamilcar’s death and that of his successor, Hannibal (247–183 BC), at the age of about 26, assumed command in Spain (221 BC) and prepared for the inevitable war. His attack on the Roman-allied city of Saguntum in Spain (219 BC) was the decisive provocation: Rome demanded that Carthage surrender Hannibal, Carthage refused, and in 218 BC the Second Punic War began (World History Encyclopedia, "Hannibal," worldhistory.org/hannibal/).

4. Hannibal’s Crossing of the Alps and the Great Italian Victories (218–216 BC)

Hannibal’s plan was audacious and brilliant: invade Italy itself, overland, through Spain and Gaul and over the Alps, and rouse the Italian allies against Rome. In the autumn of 218 BC he crossed the Alps with his mixed army — reportedly including war-elephants — at terrible cost, and descended into Italy. He won a rapid series of victories: at the Ticinus (Nov 218 BC) and the Trebia (Dec 218 BC) against the consul Scipio and his colleague, and then, ambushing the Roman column as it marched along the shore of Lake Trasimene, won the Battle of Lake Trasimene (217 BC), where the consul Flaminius was killed. The Romans, desperate, appointed Fabius Maximus as dictator; his strategy of refusing battle — "delaying" (“cunctando”) — gave him the name Fabius Cunctator and saved Rome from annihilation, but his caution was unpopular, and in 216 BC the Romans risked a full-scale battle with an enormous army at Cannae (World History Encyclopedia, "Hannibal," worldhistory.org/hannibal/).

The Battle of Cannae (2 August 216 BC) was Hannibal’s masterpiece and the worst defeat in Roman history. Massing up to 80,000 Romans against perhaps 50,000 Carthaginians, Hannibal allowed his centre to bend backward, then closed his stronger wings around the Roman column in a double envelopment, surrounding and annihilating it. Of the Roman army, perhaps 50,000–70,000 were killed, including the consuls Aemilius Paullus and many senators. It was a battle whose double-envelopment tactics are still studied by military academies. Yet even this catastrophe did not break Rome: the Italian allies, to Hannibal’s disappointment, largely remained loyal, and Rome, refusing to despair, rebuilt its forces and resolved never to treat with the enemy on Italian soil. "Hannibal ad portas!" ("Hannibal is at the gates!") became the Roman cry of alarm, but the city held (World History Encyclopedia, "Hannibal," worldhistory.org/hannibal/).

5. The Long War and the Stalemate (215–207 BC)

Unable to take the walls of Rome itself, Hannibal spent years campaigning in southern Italy, seeking to detach its allies. Rome, under the prudent leadership of Fabius and the bold Marcellus (who captured Syracuse in 212 BC, where the great engineer Archimedes was killed), used the classic Italian strategy of refusing battle in the field while retaking cities one by one. Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal brought a second Carthaginian army over the Alps to join him in 207 BC, but it was intercepted and destroyed at the Battle of the Metaurus, where Hasdrubal was killed and his severed head was thrown into Hannibal’s camp — the moment Hannibal knew his Italian campaign was finished. Meanwhile the young Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio (later Africanus) conquered Carthaginian Spain (210–206 BC), capturing Carthago Nova and winning the Battle of Ilipa, and then, persuading the Senate to let him invade Africa, landed in North Africa in 204 BC, forcing the recall of Hannibal from Italy to defend Carthage itself (World History Encyclopedia, "Punic Wars," worldhistory.org/Punic_Wars/).

6. Zama and the End of the Second Punic War (202 BC)

The two greatest generals of the age met at the Battle of Zama (19 October 202 BC), in North Africa. Scipio, having studied Hannibal’s tactics, arranged his infantry in columns with gaps that let Hannibal’s charging war-elephants pass through harmlessly, then closed with the Massilian cavalry and his Numidian horsemen to envelop the Carthaginian army, which he destroyed. Carthage, defeated, surrendered its fleet, its war-elephants, its empire in Spain and its independence, and Hannibal fled into exile (he later served the Seleucid king Antiochus III and finally took his own life by poison in 183 BC rather than fall into Roman hands). Scipio’s victory earned him the title “Africanus.” Rome had proven, against the greatest general of antiquity, that its resources, its allies and its citizen-army could wear down and destroy even the most brilliant enemy (World History Encyclopedia, "Zama," worldhistory.org/zama/).

7. The Conquest of the East — The Macedonian and Syrian Wars

Carthage’s defeat removed the only power that could check Rome. In the east, the Hellenistic kingdoms of the successors of Alexander were at war among themselves, and Roman intervention decided the outcome. Rome defeated Philip V of Macedon in the First and Second Macedonian Wars (215–205, 200–197 BC), and at the Battle of Cynoscephalae (197 BC) the Roman legion crushed the Greek phalanx; the consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus proclaimed the "freedom" of Greece at the Isthmian Games (196 BC). Against the Seleucid king Antiochus III, invited to Europe by the exiled Hannibal, Rome won victories at Thermopylae (191 BC) and Magnesia (190 BC) and imposed the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC), breaking Seleucid power in Asia Minor. In a third war, the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BC), Rome destroyed the Antigonid kingdom of Macedon for good at the Battle of Pydna (168 BC), where King Perseus was defeated and captured. Rome now bestrode the eastern Mediterranean, and Greek, Macedonian and Seleucid power lay broken at its feet (World History Encyclopedia, "Roman Republic," worldhistory.org/Roman_Republic/).

8. The Third Punic War and the Destruction of Carthage (149–146 BC)

The old great rival had not finished arousing suspicion. Despite Carthage’s disarmament and dependence, the relentless Roman senator Cato the Elder ended every speech with the cry, “Carthago delenda est” (“Carthage must be destroyed”). Rome, provoked by a Carthaginian war against the Numidians, demanded terms so severe that Carthage chose war. In the Third Punic War (149–146 BC) Rome besieged Carthage; after a three-year siege the city was stormed by Scipio Aemilianus (adopted grandson of Africanus) in 146 BC, burned, its walls razed, its inhabitants enslaved, and its site, so legend says, ploughed with salt. Simultaneously, in the same year 146 BC, Rome suppressed the Greek Achaean League and sacked Corinth, its chief city. With Carthage in Africa and Corinth in Greece destroyed, Rome’s conquest of the Mediterranean world was complete: from the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar) to Syria, the Mare Nostrum ("our sea") lay under Roman rule. The Republic, however, had swallowed more than it could easily digest — the vast wealth and the new provinces it acquired would corrode its institutions and plunge it into a century of civil war, the subject of the next volume (World History Encyclopedia, "Punic Wars," worldhistory.org/Punic_Wars/).

8b. The Roman Navy and the Invention of the Corvus

The First Punic War forced an astonishing transformation: a purely land power had to become a naval power almost overnight to rival Carthage. Rome had almost no warships; Carthage had the finest navy in the Mediterranean. The Romans met the challenge in typically pragmatic fashion — they either copied a captured Carthaginian trireme or adapted their own design, built a fleet of some 100–200 ships in a matter of months, and trained their landsmen as rowers on specially-built benches ashore. Their decisive invention was the corvus (“raven”), a hinged boarding-bridge fitted to the bow: when the Roman ship closed with an enemy, the corvus was dropped onto the enemy deck, its spike anchoring it, and Roman marines swarmed over to fight — in effect, turning the sea battle into a land battle, at which the Romans excelled. The corvus won the great naval victories of the war, including Mylae (260 BC), where the consul Gaius Duilius defeated the Carthaginian fleet, and Ecnomus (256 BC), one of the largest naval battles ever fought. But the corvus also made ships top-heavy and unstable in rough seas — a factor in the terrible storm losses — and it was later abandoned as Roman seamanship improved. Nonetheless the lesson was set: Rome could build a navy when it must, and henceforth control of the sea was central to Roman power, culminating in the decisive sea victories at Agathocles, the Aegates, and eventually Actium (World History Encyclopedia, "Roman Navy," worldhistory.org/Roman_Navy/).

8c. The Barcids and the Conquest of Spain

After the First Punic War, Carthage turned to a family of warlords, the Barcids, to rebuild its fortunes in the west. After crushing a great mercenary revolt at home (the "Truceless War," 241–237 BC), Hamilcar Barca (c. 275–228 BC) led an army to southern Spain (Iberia), where, in a land rich in silver and tin and well-stocked with warlike peoples, he carved out a new Carthaginian empire. He was succeeded by his son-in-law Hasdrubal the Fair (executed 221 BC), who founded the city of Carthago Nova (New Carthage, modern Cartagena) as his capital and made a treaty with Rome fixing the Ebro as the northern limit of Carthaginian power. On his death the young Hannibal (c. 247–183 BC), son of Hamilcar, took command in 221 BC. Spain gave Carthage the wealth, the silver and the superb soldiers with which Hannibal planned to invade Italy, and its conquest explains how Carthage, defeated at sea, could threaten Rome on land. Hannibal’s attack on the Roman-allied city of Saguntum (south of the Ebro) in 219 BC was the flashpoint: Rome demanded his surrender, Carthage refused, and the Second Punic War began. The Barcid empire in Spain was thus the springboard of the greatest military adventure in ancient history — and its eventual loss to the young Scipio (who captured Carthago Nova in 209 BC) was one of the decisive blows that brought Carthage down (World History Encyclopedia, "Hannibal," worldhistory.org/hannibal/).

8d. The Aftermath of the Punic Wars — The Seeds of Empire and Decline

The Punic Wars ended Carthage as a rival, but their legacy for Rome was double-edged. Territorially, Rome gained the provinces of Sicily (241 BC), Sardinia and Corsica (238 BC), Spain (divided into two provinces after 197 BC), and Africa (from 146 BC, with Carthage destroyed), together with the conquests in Greece, Macedonia and Asia in the parallel eastern wars. The wealth that poured into Rome — indemnities, booty, slaves, taxes from the provinces — enriched the state and its nobles enormously, and made possible the great public works, Greek art and luxury of the 2nd century BC. But it also created the conditions of the Republic’s decay: the ruin of the small Italian farmers and the growth of latifundia; the flood of cheap slave labour; the emergence of a super-rich senatorial class and an impoverished, displaced citizen body; and a political system strained by managing a world empire. The destruction of Carthage especially — and the ruthless temperament it displayed — foreshadowed the violence of the late Republic. In the words of the Greek historian Polybius (who witnessed the fall of Carthage), the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean world, for all its glory, set the stage for the internal conflicts that would, within a century, tear the Republic apart — the story of the next volume (World History Encyclopedia, "Punic Wars," worldhistory.org/Punic_Wars/).

9. Selected Sources & Further Reading

Hannibal, you know how to gain a victory, but not how to use one.— the Carthaginian general Maharbal to Hannibal after Cannae (reported by Livy; trans. Robert Fagles–style rendering)