Punic Wars

The Punic Wars (from Latin Poeni = Punier ) are a series of three wars of antiquity (264 to 146 BC) between the sea and trading power Carthage and the young Roman Empire , which emerged victorious from this conflict.

Overview

• The First Punic War was between 264 and 241 BC. BC mainly with naval forces and led in Sicily.
• The Second Punic War took place between 218 and 202 BC. Chr. And became famous through Hannibal's crossing of the Alps . Here the Romans suffered in the battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Their worst defeat ever.
• The Third Punic War took place between 149 and 146 BC. And ended with the complete destruction of Carthage.

course

The Carthaginians, called Poeni (Punians) by the Romans , were a long-established seafaring people who lived in the middle of the 3rd century BC. BC controlled the western Mediterranean . Carthage, located in what is now Tunisia , was initially a colony of the Phoenician city ​​of Tire . When Tire came under pressure due to the expansion of the Assyrians , Babylonians and Persians , Carthage succeeded in the 6th century BC. To take over most of the Phoenician colonies and to become the new mother city and protective power for them. Early on, the city controlled the west of Sicily with the impregnable fortress Lilybaion , among other things , without ever gaining the entire island. Before the middle of the 3rd century BC The relationship between Rome and Carthage was a cooperative one, which can be seen from several treaties.

Ruins of Roman Carthage ( Antoninus-Pius-Thermen )

When Rome saw an opportunity to achieve a bridgehead in Sicily, Carthage opposed it because it saw its own possessions in the west of the island endangered. This initial local conflict expanded into a struggle for hegemony in the western Mediterranean during the First and Second Punic Wars . It lasted 43 years and was pursued energetically and with great use of resources by both sides.

Although Rome was on the verge of defeat several times, it won both wars due to its ultimately superior reserves of man and material, whereas Carthage emerged noticeably weakened. After the final triumph at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. Carthage lay on the ground and in fact saw itself reduced to the status of a Roman vassal state , which was no longer allowed to pursue an independent foreign policy. At the same time, the Roman conservatives under Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder , in particular, are said to fear a resurgence of the enemy and give Carthage's North African rivals massive advantages. In addition, the city's wealth beckons. Finally, the Romans finally eliminated the Carthaginian state in the Third Punic War . They destroyed 146 BC The city itself (that the Romans sprinkled salt on the fields to make them sterile, however, is a modern legend) and established the new province of Africa . The city of Carthage was re-founded about a century later under Gaius Julius Caesar and experienced a renewed bloom in the following centuries as part of the Roman Empire , which lasted until the end of antiquity .

swell

Reports on the Punic Wars include:

• the Roman historian Titus Livius
• the Greek historian Polybios
• the Greco-Roman historian Appian
• the Greco-Roman historian Cassius Dio
• the Roman biographer Cornelius Nepos
• the Greek biographer Plutarch

literature

• Nigel Bagnall: Rome and Carthage. The struggle for the Mediterranean . Siedler, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-88680-489-5 .
• Markus Gerhold: Rome and Carthage between war and peace. Legal historical study of the Roman-Carthaginian relations between 241 BC BC and 149 BC Chr. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-631-39598-1 .
• Adrian Goldsworthy : The Punic Wars . Cassell, London 2000, ISBN 0-304-35284-5 .
• Dexter Hoyos (Ed.): A Companion to the Punic Wars . Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford 2011, ISBN 1-4051-7600-8 .
• Klaus Zimmermann : Rome and Carthage . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-534-15496-7 .
• Klaus Zimmermann: Carthage - the rise and fall of a great power . Theiss, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-8062-2281-4 .

Web links

• Carthage's history ( Memento of July 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
• Frank Westenfelder: The mercenary war. The rebellion of the veterans of the Punic War on www.kriegsreisen.de (accessed August 30, 2016)