Cyber #25

5/14/20

The Punic Wars (264 - 146 BCE)
Rome vs. Carthage
3 Wars

First Punic War (264 - 241 BCE)

• naval battles for control of the strategically located island of Sicily
• Rome wins this one

Second Punic War (218 - 201 BCE)

• 29-year-old Carthaginian general Hannibal almost does the impossible: taking Rome
• attacks Rome from the NORTH after crossing Iberia (Spain) and the Alps
• lays siege to much of the peninsula for 15 years, but he never can get to Rome

Third Punic War (149-146 BCE)

• Rome wanted to finally remove the threat of Carthage
• Scipio, Tiberius Gracchus, and others mercilessly attacked the city
• Carthage was burned for 17 days; the city’s walls and buildings were utterly destroyed
• when the war ended, the last 50,000 people in the city were sold into slavery
• the rest of Carthage’s territories were annexed, and made into the Roman province of Africa

The Impact The Punic Wars

• slaves poured into Italy (50,000 Carthaginians, 150,000 Greek POWs)
• by the end of the second century BCE there were over a million slaves in Italy
• small farmers lost their land to aristocrats (for little or no money) if they couldn’t pay their debts, sometimes because the men of the farm were fighting battles
• slaves did the work on the farms for the rich
  the big farms became massive estates called latifundia