Warmatrix

The Punic Wars was a series of three wars in which the cities of Rome and Carthage fought over control of the central Mediterranean sea and its trade routes. The Romans won and the military and political changes prompted by the war set them on the path towards the mighty Roman empire.
At the start of the first war, Rome was about five centuries old and had grown from a humble town on the river Tiber to a sizeable republic that dominated central and southern Italy. It was a cluster of the central city, allies and client states and had developed a strong and aggressive army. On the other side of the Mediterranean, Carthage, founded by Phoenician settlers, was an equally powerful city state, grown rich on naval trade. Its territory encompassed a stretch of the north African coast, Corsica and part of southeastern Iberia. It did not maintain a large standing army, but employed many mercenaries and had a powerful fleet.
The First Punic War began in 264 BCE when the Mamertines of Messina enlisted the aid of the Carthaginians against their rival, the Greek city of Syracuse on the east coast of Sicily and then betrayed them by switching to the Romans. Soon the two powers were at each others throats. The Romans scored the first victory in the Battle of Agrigentum. With a bloody nose the Carthaginians decided to evade fighting with the tough Roman legions and concentrate on sea warfare instead. Initially they were stronger, but the Romans created a fleet of quinqueremes in a very short time. They mixed conventional ramming tactics with boarding, to make their strong infantry fight on ships much like on land. The tide of war swung back and forth, both sides losing at least as many ships to storms as to battles. But Rome gradually got the upper hand and after more than two decades of fighting had all but driven the Carthaginians from Sicily. In 241 BCE, a peace treaty was signed. The victorious Romans had the Carthaginians evacuate Sicily and pay an indemnity of 3,200 talents over 10 years.
However the peace was uneasy. When Carthage was faced with a rebellion of its mercenaries in 238 BCE, Rome quickly seized Sardinia and Corsica. Carthage could do nothing but acknowledge the conquest, while internally two different factions quarrelled with each other. The city bided its time, strengthening its finances and conquering territory in southern Iberia. Rome feared an alliance between Carthage and the Gauls and pre-emptively eliminated that threat by conquering the Po valley in northern Italy. This lulled them into a false sense of security.
The Carthaginians, now with the war faction firmly in control, had not forgotten the damage the Romans had inflicted on them. In 219 BCE they were strong enough to go back to war, the second of the three. The famous general Hannibal Barca marched from Iberia across the Pyrenees and Alps into Italy. He was a brilliant general and defeated the Roman army many times, until his very name inspired fear. But despite his successes in battle he was unable to pry the Roman system of alliances apart or to drain the vast pool of manpower that was Italy. The Romans fought him in a war of attrition, in Italy, Iberia and Gaul. They reorganized their army in terms of structure, tactics, equipment and leadership and finally were able to take the fight to Carthaginian soil. At the battle of Zama in 202 BCE the first truly capable Roman general Scipio, afterwards called Africanus, defeated Hannibal and his troops. Carthage was heavily fined, stripped of its walls and almost its entire fleet.
Though their enemy was now almost powerless, the Romans still mistrusted them. Cato the Elder, an influential Roman senator, ended every speech in the senate with the statement "Carthago delenda est" - 'Carthage must be destroyed'. When the Numidian king Massinissa, an ally of Rome, started harassing the Cathaginians and they responded in force, the Romans had their excuse to intervene. The Third Punic War began. Carthage defended itself desperately, holding out for three years, before finally collapsing in 146 BCE. The citizens were sold off into slavery and the city razed to the ground. It was rebuilt many years later, as a Roman colony, not a Carthaginian.
The three Punic Wars made sure that Rome, not Carthage, established a Mediterranean empire that would echo its influence through the centuries. The Punic Wars and simultaneous conflicts with the Gauls and the Greeks forced it to professionalize its army and transform its politics into those of an imperialist state, where conquest brought wealth and fame, prompting for more conquest.