1st Punic War – 264-241 BC

Hamilcar Barca

Upshot

• Carthage loses Sicily, and other islands• Carthage pays indemnity• Carthage focuses more on Spanish holdings

(Hamilcar Barca et fam.)• Roman control now goes far south on the

peninsula• Rome can turn attention north, up to the foot of

the Alps, alarming Gauls (cf. Marcellus in combat)

2nd Punic War – 218-201Fabius Maximus’ time

• Hannibal Barca enters Italy• Spends 15 years moving up and down the peninsula• Hannibal recalled to Africa and defeated

by Scipio Africanus at Zama in 202

Crossing Alps

•

2nd Punic War Campaigns

Upshots of Carthage’s surrender• Carthage gives up all claims to

Spain• the immediate territory of

Carthage would remain free• all elephants were to be

ceded to the Romans • Carthage could keep only

ten warships • Carthage could not make

war without Roman consent • Carthage would pay 10,000

talents in 50 annual installments

Scipio Africanus

3rd Punic War – 149-146

• Massinissa, King of Numidians in north Africa, Roman ally, attacked Carthaginian territory

• Carthage responded, but was defeated• Rome took it as a violation of the terms ending 2nd

Punic War and invaded Carthage. This was an excuse for the Senate.

• Campaign came under leadership of Scipio Aemilianus Africanus (Younger) grandson of first Scipio Africanus

Carthage itself was taken• Then came new scenes of horror. The fire spread and carried

everything down, and the soldiers did not wait to destroy the buildings little by little, but pulled them all down together. So the crashing grew louder, and many fell with the stones into the midst of the dead. Others were seen still living, especially old men, women and young children who had hidden in the inmost nooks of the houses, some of them wounded, some more or less burned, and uttering horrible cries. Still others, thrust out and falling from such a height with the stones, timbers, and fire, were torn asunder into all kinds of horrible shapes, crushed and mangled.

• Nor was this the end of their miseries, for the street cleaners who were removing the rubbish with axes, mattocks, and boathooks, and making the roads passable, tossed with these instruments the dead and living together into holes in the ground, sweeping them along like sticks and stones or turning them over with their iron tools, and man was used for filling up a ditch. . . . Horses ran over them, crushing their faces and skulls, not purposely on the part of the riders, but in their headlong haste . . . all together made everybody frantic and heedless of the spectacle before their eyes.

• Six days and nights were consumed in this kind of turmoil, the soldiers being changed so that they might not be worn out with toil, slaughter, want of sleep, and these horrid sights. -Appian

Carthage Destroyed

• Carthage burned seventeen days before it was entirely consumed. Then the plough was passed over the soil to put an end in legal form to the existence of the city. Houses might never again be built and corn might never again be sown upon the ground where it had stood.

Turner’s Destruction of Carthage