The Punic Wars

The three wars between the Romans and the Carthaginians (the Poeni, an alternative name reflecting their Phoenician origins) contrasted with their earlier relations. Rome and Carthage had been trading with each other for centuries, made treaties regulating what their merchants could and could not do in their ports, and had even envisaged allying against their shared enemy Pyrrhus of Epirus. Their first war arose unexpectedly from Rome’s decision to intervene in Sicilian affairs (264 bce); after nearly a quarter of a century it ended in Carthage admitting defeat (241) and giving up its territories in Sicily. Although the Carthaginians replaced Sicily with a lucrative new dominion in southern Spain, and Rome focused its interest on northern Italy’s Cisalpine Gaul and across the Adriatic, mutual suspicions and provocations produced the Second war (218–201). The brilliant Carthaginian general Hannibal’s shattering victories in Italy (218–216) still failed to force Rome to terms; instead, Rome fought on under generals such as Fabius Maximus the “Delayer” (Cunctator) and Marcus Marcellus, until Scipio Africanus—Hannibal’s equal or superior in military genius—first subdued Carthaginian southern and eastern Spain (209–206), then invaded North Africa and defeated Hannibal himself (204–202). The war had drawn in other Mediterranean states, especially Syracuse and Macedon: the latter with fateful implications for Rome’s future power in the Mediterranean east. Defeated Carthage became a secondary power under Roman hegemony. Half a century later, Romans’ animosity was stirred again, inflamed by leaders like Cato the Censor and the Numidian king Masinissa. Carthage was besieged (149–146) and finally sacked by Scipio’s grandson and namesake Scipio Aemilianus: a sight witnessed by Aemilianus’s friend, the Greek politician and historian Polybius. Most of Carthage’s remaining territories became Rome’s provincia Africa. The wars are known primarily through the histories—all incompletely surviving—of Polybius and Titus Livius (Livy), who wrote over a century later. Pro-Carthaginian accounts existed but are lost. Both Polybius and Livy drew on predecessors’ narratives: Livy, for example, partly used that of Polybius. Fragments or shorter narratives survive too from other writers, notably the Greeks Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Appian, and Dio, and the anecdotal Latin authors Valerius Maximus and Julius Frontinus. All ancient writers exercised varying levels of skill in historical writing, enabling modern debates over the wars’ causes, courses, and consequences to flourish; and Hannibal, the sole Carthaginian still remembered today, remains as fascinating in popular imagination as in scholarly literature.