Ancient Rome · 264–146 BCE
The Punic Wars: Why Rome and Carthage Fought Three Times
In short
- Rome fought Carthage three times between 264 and 146 BCE: first over Sicily, then over Spain and Italy, finally to destroy it.
- Hannibal won at Cannae, but Rome survived because most of its allies stayed loyal and it refused to negotiate.
- Victory made Rome master of the Mediterranean and flooded Italy with wealth and slaves, with consequences at home.
On 2 August 216 BCE, by the Roman calendar, a Carthaginian army closed around a larger Roman one at Cannae in southern Italy and destroyed it. When Hannibal sent an envoy to discuss terms, Rome refused even to let him into the city.
Two powers, one island
Carthage, in modern Tunisia, had been founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre; Romans called them Poeni, hence “Punic”. It was rich, had a powerful navy and controlled the western half of Sicily. Rome was a land power that had just completed its conquest of the Italian peninsula.
In 264 BCE both were drawn into a quarrel at Messana, across the strait from Italy, and it grew into a 23-year war. Rome had almost no navy, so, according to Polybius, it built a fleet by copying a stranded Carthaginian warship, and added boarding bridges that turned sea battles into infantry fights. Rome won in 241 BCE and took Sicily, its first province.
Three years later, while Carthage was fighting a revolt of its own unpaid mercenaries, Rome seized Sardinia and Corsica too. Even Polybius, an admirer of Rome, called this unjust, and saw it as a root of the next war.
Hannibal's gamble
Carthage rebuilt its strength in Spain under the Barca family. Hannibal later said his father Hamilcar had made him swear, at the age of nine, never to be a friend to Rome. In 218 BCE, aged about 29, he marched from Spain over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Italy, arriving, by Polybius's count, with about 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry.
He won three crushing victories: at the Trebia river in 218, at Lake Trasimene in 217 and at Cannae in 216, where he let the Roman centre push forward, then closed his wings around it. Ancient writers put the Roman dead at Cannae between about 48,000 (Livy) and 70,000 (Polybius).
Why Rome did not break
Hannibal's plan depended on Rome's allies deserting it. Some did, above all the great city of Capua. But most of the Latin colonies and central Italian allies held firm, and that gave Rome a deep reserve of soldiers: Polybius counted more than 700,000 Roman and allied men fit to fight a few years before the war.
After Cannae, Rome refused to ransom its prisoners and returned to the strategy of Fabius Maximus, nicknamed “the Delayer”: shadow Hannibal, avoid battle, deny him victories. Livy reports a Carthaginian officer's verdict after Cannae: “You know how to win a victory, Hannibal; you do not know how to use one.” Historians still debate whether a march on Rome could have worked.
Scipio takes the war to Africa
Rome's answer was a general who learned from Hannibal. Publius Cornelius Scipio captured New Carthage, Carthage's base in Spain, in 209 BCE, and invaded Africa in 204. Carthage recalled Hannibal to defend the city.
At Zama in 202 BCE, Scipio's troops opened lanes for Hannibal's elephants to charge harmlessly through, and the cavalry of his Numidian ally Masinissa won the day. Carthage gave up all but ten of its warships, agreed to pay 10,000 talents over fifty years and promised to wage no war outside Africa, and none inside it without Rome's permission. Scipio took the name Africanus.
Carthage must be destroyed
Carthage recovered so fast that it offered to pay off its war debt early, which alarmed some Romans. The senator Cato the Elder ended his speeches, whatever the subject, with the demand that Carthage be destroyed. Once he showed the Senate fresh figs, picked, he said, in Carthage only days before. The neat Latin slogan “Carthago delenda est” is a later polish of what the ancient sources report.
When Carthage fought back against Masinissa's raids in 150 BCE without permission, Rome had its excuse. It demanded hostages and weapons, then ordered the Carthaginians to abandon their city and move inland. They refused. After a three-year siege, Scipio Aemilianus took the city in 146 BCE and about 50,000 survivors were enslaved. Contrary to popular myth, no ancient source says Rome sowed the ground with salt.
In their own words
“A glorious moment, Polybius; but I have a dread foreboding that some day the same doom will be pronounced on my own country.”
Polybius, Histories 38.21 (Scipio Aemilianus watching Carthage burn), later 2nd century BCE
Polybius was standing beside Scipio as Carthage burned in 146 BCE. His account survives only in fragments; Appian (Punica 132) preserves a fuller version in which Scipio weeps and quotes Homer on the fall of Troy. Translation after W. R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library).
Why it happened
- Rival ambitions in Sicily drew Rome and Carthage into war in 264 BCE.
- Rome's seizure of Sardinia in 238 BCE and Carthage's rebuilding in Spain fed a second war.
- Carthage's quick recovery after 201 BCE, and Roman fear of it, led to the third war.
What happened next
- Rome gained its first overseas provinces and mastery of the western Mediterranean.
- Captives and plunder flooded Italy, fuelling the slave-worked estates and land crisis the Gracchi tried to fix. Read the story →
- Carthage was refounded as a Roman colony and became one of the empire's great cities, until the Vandals took it in 439 CE. Read the story →
Why it still matters
Cannae became the textbook model of encirclement. Before 1914, the former German chief of staff Alfred von Schlieffen wrote a series of studies simply titled “Cannae”, and Germany's opening campaign in the West tried to envelop the French army on a continental scale, until it stalled on the Marne.
Key people
- Hannibal Barca
- Carthaginian general who invaded Italy over the Alps and won at Cannae
- Fabius Maximus
- Roman commander whose strategy of delay wore Hannibal down
- Scipio Africanus
- Roman general who defeated Hannibal at Zama; grandfather of the Gracchi
- Cato the Elder
- Senator who campaigned for Carthage's destruction
- Scipio Aemilianus
- Adoptive grandson of Africanus who destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE
Key terms
- Punic
- From the Latin Poeni, “Phoenicians”: the Roman name for the Carthaginians.
- Province
- Territory outside Italy governed by a Roman magistrate and taxed by Rome; Sicily became the first in 241 BCE.
- Double envelopment
- Attacking an enemy army on both flanks at once to surround it, as Hannibal did at Cannae.
- Talent
- A unit of weight, about 26 kg, used to count large sums of silver.
Test yourself
What did Rome gain when the First Punic War ended in 241 BCE?
- Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica together
- Sicily; Sardinia was seized three years later
- The silver mines of southern Spain
- Carthage's whole fleet and its harbour
Show the answer
Sicily; Sardinia was seized three years later. The peace of 241 BCE gave Rome Sicily and a large indemnity. Rome took Sardinia and Corsica in 238 BCE while Carthage was fighting its own mercenaries, an act even Polybius called unjust.
The full lesson in the app ends with 5 questions like this one.
Connected stories
- The Birth of the Republic: According to Polybius, Rome's first treaty with Carthage dates to the Republic's first year.
- The Gracchi and the Crisis of the Republic: Conquest filled Italy with slaves and big estates, the crisis the Gracchi tried to fix.
- The Fall of the Western Roman Empire: Ammianus compared the disaster at Adrianople in 378 CE to Cannae, and in 439 the Vandals took Roman Carthage.
Frequently asked questions
What caused the Punic Wars?
Rival ambitions in Sicily drew Rome and Carthage into war in 264 BCE. Rome's seizure of Sardinia in 238 BCE and Carthage's rebuilding in Spain fed a second war. Carthage's quick recovery after 201 BCE, and Roman fear of it, led to the third war.
What were the results of the Punic Wars?
Rome gained its first overseas provinces and mastery of the western Mediterranean. Captives and plunder flooded Italy, fuelling the slave-worked estates and land crisis the Gracchi tried to fix. Carthage was refounded as a Roman colony and became one of the empire's great cities, until the Vandals took it in 439 CE.
What did Rome gain when the First Punic War ended in 241 BCE?
Sicily; Sardinia was seized three years later. The peace of 241 BCE gave Rome Sicily and a large indemnity. Rome took Sardinia and Corsica in 238 BCE while Carthage was fighting its own mercenaries, an act even Polybius called unjust.
What is the main primary source for “The Punic Wars: Rome Against Carthage”?
Polybius, Histories 38.21 (Scipio Aemilianus watching Carthage burn) (later 2nd century BCE). Polybius was standing beside Scipio as Carthage burned in 146 BCE. His account survives only in fragments; Appian (Punica 132) preserves a fuller version in which Scipio weeps and quotes Homer on the fall of Troy. Translation after W. R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library).
Sources
- Polybius, Histories, Books 1, 3, 15 and 38
- Livy, History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita), Books 21–30
- Adrian Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (2000; reissued as The Fall of Carthage)
- R. T. Ridley, To Be Taken with a Pinch of Salt: The Destruction of Carthage, Classical Philology 81 (1986)
Images are credited under each picture. Paintings and photographs come from public collections via Wikimedia Commons; scenes with no surviving image are marked as illustrations.
