The Rise Of Carthage And The Phoenic Wars

There were three Punic or Carthaginian Wars is Roman history. These were between 264 and 146 BC. These wars were the first great wars of Roman expansion outside Italy. The enemy of Rome had a large empire that stretched along the coast of North America and southern Spain and some parts of Sicily. This empire was known as Carthage. The purpose of these wars was to decide which power would become the dominant force around the Mediterranean Sea.

Carthage was the first real foreign power Rome would come across outside of Italy, its origins from a Tyre colony to the capital of the great commercial empire in northern Africa (Morey, 1901) are lost to the ravages of time. The journey discussed below will be the similarities with Rome in its rise to power, and how Rome was able to become a force of the Sea as well as on land.

Even in the century before the official replacement of the Roman republic by the empire, Rome expanded immensely as a result of the Punic wars. Rome fought the Punic Wars between 264 and 146 BCE against the nearby trade empire Carthage over the nearby island of Sicily, a

Yet when Carthage took Sicily, Rome responded by building 330 ships to fight for their land, starting the First Punic War. Carthage was defeated by Rome in 241 BCE, and had to give up Sicily. Carthage went to war with Rome again when the Carthaginian general Hannibal attacked the city of Saguntum, Rome’s ally. This was the start of the Second Punic War. Hannibal was defeated at the Battle of Zama, meaning Carthage lost against Rome once more. The Third Punic War began when Carthage refused Rome’s demands to have Carthage dismantled and rebuilt further inland. The Roman general Scipio Aemilianus surrounded Carthage with armed forces for three years until it fell and the Romans burned it to the ground. Around 122 BCE, Julius Caesar decided to re-build Carthage, and five years after his death, the city rose again. Power and importance shifted back to Carthage, until the fall of the

Rome was governed by leading figures in a “constantly changing network of mutually dependent relationships” (Cultures of the West, p. 176). The Romans valued simplicity, and placed a high value on families, or “Familia”, where the men were mostly dominant. They arranged their government so that one group of people could not monopolize over power, and that each senate/assembly could be governed by another, which laid groundwork for the way a lot of governments run today. Republican Rome also gave birth to something much bigger in the scheme of territories during this time, being that the Roman Empire saw that they could simply not make peace with any of their neighbors until they had complete control of the Mediterranean sea. This lead to the Punic wars, which were fought over about 80 years between the Romans and the Carthaginians who lived in North Africa. These wars were fought over three main battles, one in 264 BCE over Sicily, one in 218 over Spain, and the last big battle fought in 149 BCE, which ultimately ended in the complete destruction of Carthage and every Carthaginian, besides some who were sold into slavery (Cultures of the West, p. 182). After the victory of the Carthaginians, Rome recognized the power they had now that they controlled the Mediterranean entirely to themselves. The openness and calmness of the waters lead to easy trade of

In 753 B.C.E the mythical brothers, Romulus and Remus, founded Rome on the River Tiber. Initially controlled by the Etruscans, this city state would gain independence from monarchist rule in 509 B.C.E. Through continual wars the Romans would gain control of the Italian peninsula and would finally fight a war against the Carthaginians for supremacy of the western Mediterranean. Through the strengths of its legions Rome would eventually dominate the social and political landscape of the Mediterranean by the second century B.C.E. that would ultimately create social upheaval and power struggles. In the first century B.C.E. powerful individuals had wreaked havoc and bloodshed across the extent of the vast area. Controlled by the city of Rome and

How did the ancient city of Carthage almost become Rome’s equal? Also, how was this state of the city at this time come about in the ancient world? Carthage being a port city and Rome also being so close to the Mediterranean, gave both cities great business and imperial opportunities. In fact, both cities flourished because of their geographical locations to a certain extent. These opportunities and the desire to obtain them would eventually lead the two cities into war and conflict.

After the first Punic War, the Romans gained Sicily, a strategic island. Additionally, the Romans assembled their first navy in order to combat the strength of the Carthaginian navy. Furthermore, the Romans reached the peak of their power as the Roman Republic from the Punic Wars. With this in mind, the Romans made their first push for power through the gain of Sicily and Corsica.

1The first Punic War was from 264-241 BC. In 264 BC, Rome intervened in a dispute on the western coast on the island of Sicily which at that time was a Carthage province. The intervention was about an attack by soldiers from Syracuse against Messina. Carthage supported Syracuse and Rome supported Messina. The control of Sicily was at stake when both Carthage and Rome went into direct conflict. Before the war started, Rome had been rebuilding its entire fleet in order to confront Carthage powerful navy. Rome won its first naval victory at Mylae in 260 BC. At the end of the first Punic War, the Roman fleet indecisive won against the Carthaginians at sea which ended the Carthaginians legendary naval superiority. Sicily became Rome’s first overseas province.

With the introduction of the hoplite phalanx to the Roman army, came a multitude of wars and long drawn out campaigns that the Romans were involved in throughout the republic period. One such campaign or campaigns that set the Roman republic as the uncontested superpower in the Mediterranean was the Punic Wars. Rome fought three wars against Carthage between 264 and 146 BCE. These wars constituted major events in the history of Rome and the Mediterranean basin (Marcel Le Glay 2009) p. 73. Though these wars were fought for reasons such as competing economics, revenge (most notably the Carthaginian general Hannibal), and a fear that could be related in today’s terms of opposing forces such as (the United States and Soviet Union feared each other during the Cold War) the fact is in the end Rome defeated the Carthaginians, not only were the Carthaginians defeated, but the city of Carthage was demolished and the people massacred or sold into slavery so as not to threaten the Romans ever again. In the fall of the city, in obedience to the Senate’s orders the inhabitants were reduced to slavery or forced to emigrate, the town was burnt and soil was

The First Punic War: a Military History by J.F. Lazenby is a book about the war between Rome and Carthage. In the book Lazenby provides all the available information on the war from numerous sources and then shifts through that information in order to come to a conclusion on what likely really happened. To put it in Lazenby’s own words the purpose of the book was to “work out what happened at least in outline, and on this basis arrive at some understanding of why the war broke out, what the basic strategies of the two sides were, and why, in the end, Rome won”(Lazenby pg.19).The book was published in 1996 but remains to be one of the best sources of the history of the Punic War.

Rome and Carthage were both similar, yet different, cities that had their commercial influence in the western mediterranean sea. So it is only natural that these two civilizations eventually clashed with one another in the Punic Wars over the supremacy of the mediterranean sea. Both civilizations had similar governments and power, yet the Romans prevailed over the Carthage and in the process became a naval power. Carthage starts out as a Phoenician colony from Tyre. Unlike the Romans, who became powerful by conquering their neighbors, the Carthaginians became a naval power through commerce.

The Second Punic War (218-201 BC) was an opportunity for the city of Carthage to avenge itself from the loss of the First Punic War (264-241 BC) against Rome over two decades earlier. Similarly, the Second Punic War is comparable to World War II (1939-1945) when Germany attacked Britain and surrounding Europe as an opportunity to avenge itself from the loss of World War I (1914-1918) over two decades earlier. By the First Punic War, Carthage controlled most of North Africa, Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia. Near the time of the Second Punic War, Rome controlled Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and most of Italy. Whoever controlled the land around the Mediterranean regulated trade routes, commerce, politics, religion, and more.

Carthaginians were wealthy and from the North Africans city that was founded by Phoenician’s they had more power, military, and naval experience than the Romans (Backman, Cultures of the West, p.184). Because Carthaginians were trying to expand into Sicily which held just one of Rome’s greatest grain producing cities this unsettled the Romans, who feared being cut off from a great food source (Backman, Cultures of the West, p.184). Though they tried a workable solution of sharing control of the Mediterranean this was not to be. This inability to work together was one of the reasons for the start of the Punic wars, a series of three different wars (Jones, Rome, Podcast 1). In the bloody 3rd war of the Punic wars Rome defeated the Carthaginians (Jones, Rome, Podcast 1). After the Punic wars the Romans had found they had accumulated vast amounts of wealth and land. This put them in an awkward position, because they had no plan in place for this and did not know what to do with it (Backman, Cultures of the West, p.187). This huge wealth also created a problem for Rome, one of greed and corruption which began to take control over Rome (Backman, Cultures of the West, p.187). Senators who amassed wealth begun to become lazy and accustomed to a life of leisure, also the more wealth they got the more they wanted (Jones, Rome, Podcast 1). The next problem for Rome was these greedy senators not only wanted the wealth they wanted power too

The Punic Wars set the stage for the chain of events that were to bring the Roman Empire to the pinnacle of dominance in the Western Mediterranean. Which would subsequently lead to the reduction of Carthage to little more than the wreckage of a once great civilization. It is recognized that both the Romans and Carthaginians were a warring people to begin with. It was very much an inevitable fate that these two expanding empires would ultimately clash. With the nature of the disputes that led to the war: economic opportunity, aggressive expansion, and the exceeding war debt of Carthage: pressure would have been applied by leaders of both sides to seek the more aggressive path to war. The origins of the Punic wars were based solely on the aggressive