The Punic wars are one of the most dramatic wars there has been in history. The Punic wars were way back during the classical period and were between Rome and Carthage. Rome and Carthage were the two greatest powers at the time, and the impact of the war between them is still going on today, thousands of years later.
The thing is, after these wars, Rome became the dominant power in the world or at least the western, not-America world for the next years of history. Punic comes from the word Phoenician, which were the original settlers of Carthage.
When the war began, Rome controlled most of what is Italy today, and Carthage controlled most of northern Africa and a part of Spain, as well as a series of islands in the Mediterranean, which are the main source of the conflict. The first war was over Sicily, lasted over 20 years, involved over a million soldiers, and caused both civilizations to lose about a fifth of their male population.
In this war, the Carthaginians slowly lost land as Rome engaged in a series of naval strategies that they completely mismanaged, which is why the war was pretty even at first. However, later on, Rome got the whole navy part learned and begun to win at sea too, so Carthage dropped out of the war-making Rome victorious. After he died, his son in law took over the army and territory he had gained and made a treaty with the Romans that established the limits for the Spanish Carthaginian territory.
This treaty was the cause of the second war. The continuing fidelity to the Romans both of their Italian kin and most of their other allies, however different their customs, is the decisive fact of Hannibal's war in Italy.
This story is told along with those of the First and Third Punic Wars free of voguish political posturing in Dexter Hoyos's Mastering the West: Rome and Carthage at War —the author being himself the acknowledged master of this subject in the current generation.
The calculus is this: In his victories of B. No major modern state has ever suffered anything approaching such losses. Yet, against the general expectations of those who did not know her well, Rome did not sue for peace, and in the year after Cannae, put 75, men into the field. In and B. Rome's ability to recruit such numbers from her own men and her allies is the reason she eventually won the war: Hannibal was kept in check in Italy, other Roman possessions were strongly garrisoned, and Carthage's ally Philip V of Macedon was stymied in Greece, while the Romans still had ample forces to defeat the Carthaginians in Spain, to capture Carthage's mighty ally Syracuse in Sicily, and eventually to invade North Africa, compelling Carthage to recall Hannibal to defend his homeland.
During the 16 years Hannibal remained in Italy, Carthage made fitful attempts to reinforce him with new-hired mercenaries and shiny new elephants. But the need to do so shows that Hannibal, despite his victories and charisma, simply could not— unlike the Romans—recruit on a large scale for years among the inhabitants of Italy. Over time his forces diminished and dwindled, and the Romans increasingly constrained his movements. History Vault. Background and First Punic War B.
Recommended for you. Trojan War. Peloponnesian War. Hannibal Ambushes the Romans. Hannibal the Child Soldier. Hannibal In B. Trojan War The story of the Trojan War—the Bronze Age conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece—straddles the history and mythology of ancient Greece and inspired the greatest writers of antiquity, from Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles to Virgil.
Peloponnesian War The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from to B. Julius Caesar Julius Caesar was a renowned general, politician and scholar in ancient Rome who conquered the vast region of Gaul and helped initiate the end of the Roman Republic when he became dictator of the Roman Empire. Marcus Tullius Cicero Greek philosophy and rhetoric moved fully into Latin for the first time in the speeches, letters and dialogues of Cicero B.
In his view armies fought until it became clear to the political leadership of the losing side there was nothing more to be gained by further combat. Hannibal had essentially grown up in military service, and following the BC assassination of his brother-in-law Hasdrubal, who had replaced Hamilcar, Hannibal took charge of the Carthaginian army.
He soon proved a brilliant field commander who applied his intellect and martial skills to the singular end of winning battles. Again, however, battles are the means to a strategic end, not ends in themselves. Hannibal, a sworn enemy of all things Roman, lost sight of that fact when he launched the Second Punic War — BC. To achieve it, he marched the bulk of his army in Iberia across southern Gaul present-day France and, famously, over the Alps into the Roman heartland.
Hannibal approached his operations in Italy not as one campaign in a larger war but as the only campaign in the only war. He seemed to believe that if he won enough battles, he would win Italy, and if he won Italy, victory would be his.
Ultimately, however, his confusion of tactics with strategy caused him to commit a number of operational failures that led to his defeat in Italy. And his loss there was to have dire consequences for Carthage. Wars evolve within the cultural contexts adversaries bring to the conflict. Battles were means to the larger political ends of conquest, occupation and economic exploitation. Romans fought wars until decisively won.
Only then did negotiations follow. The antagonists then entered into negotiations and reached a settlement of a commercial or geographic nature. Hannibal believed his battlefield victories would force Rome to the negotiating table.
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