The people of Rome depended on the
plunder of its army. Plunder is something taken by force. The Romans
had to keep the army busy, or the
army might have turned on Rome. The Roman army was now big enough
to defeat anything it faced. By 265BC, newly conquered people were
no longer considered Romans. Rome stopped making citizens of the
people they conquered. When Rome conquered a land, it became a province.
Sicily is an island at the southern
tip of Italy. In 265BC, it was richer than any other land in the
area and a perfect target for the Roman army. Sicily was then controlled
by Carthage,
a city on the north coast of Africa in the modern nation of Tunisia.
The Roman army moved into Sicily in 264BC, beginning the first of
the three Punic
Wars between Rome and Carthage. The wars are known as the Punic
Wars because Puncia was the Roman name for Carthage. The Romans
won the first Punic War and forced Carthage to give up Sicily.
A young Carthiginian general named
Hannibal
nearly captured Rome in the second Punic War. The Romans expected
Carthage to attack from the sea, but Hannibal attacked from the
north by land. Hannibal led his army in a daring and difficult journey
over the Alps while riding on elephants. Hannibal defeated the Roman
army but was unable to take the walled city. The two sides fought
for fifteen years, but Carthage recalled Hannibal to defend a Roman
invasion, and the Romans defeated him there in 202BC.
Carthage was no longer in a position
to hurt Rome after the second Punic War, but fifty years later,
Rome's leaders wanted to unify the Roman people by defeating Carthage
forever. A Roman senator named Cato ended every speech with the
cry, "Carthage must be destroyed." Rome defeated Carthage after
three years of war. After a siege in 146BC, the Romans went from
house to house slaughtering the people of Carthage. They sold the
remaining citizens into slavery, burned the harbor, and poured salt
over the Carthaginian farmland. The salt made it impossible for
crops to grow and ensured that Carthage would never again rival
the Eternal City.
