Importance of the Punic Wars

In Antiquity there were endless confrontations and military clashes between the most powerful powers that obviously had to do with the can control more and more extensive spaces, with their resources and their inhabitants. One of the most important clashes recorded by historians was the set of clashes in which the Romans and the Carthaginians fought. These fights were called the Punic Wars and they were the ones that allowed Rome to consolidate itself as a Mediterranean power.

Control of the Mediterranean Sea: the center of all combat

To understand the reason for these armed conflicts, we must specify the place that in Antiquity had the Mediterranean Sea. Enclosed between Europe, Asia and Africa, this sea has always been understood as the base of operations for many peoples who used it for both trade with other towns as well as to take advantage of their resources and eventually also go out to conquer new territories.

For the time in which the Punic Wars take place, events that take place between the years 264 and 146 a. C., Rome and Carthage were both economic and military centers of power and therefore the expansion of the former over the territories of North Africa soon became a problem. When the Romans expanded into the south of the Italian peninsula, more specifically Sicily, the Carthaginians they understood that they had to defend their interests in the area and therefore the first of three harsh wars.

The outbreak of the war: its advances and its consequences

By the time the war broke out, both Rome and Carthage divided up their respective territories on the things of the Mediterranean Sea. However, the first war resulted in the victory of Rome, the capture of the island of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, all former Carthaginian possessions.

The second Punic war was the one in which the Carthaginians, under the command of Hannibal, managed to advance to the Alps (having already crossed the Pyrenees) to attack Rome from the northern region. This was so because until now all the action had been concentrated on the sea and therefore the Carthaginian leader thought this maneuver as a diversion. Despite winning the battle, the Romans eventually won again and consolidated, with the third war on the top leaders of the Mediterranean.

While the previous wars took place over possessions of Carthage, the last one broke out in the city of the same name and when the Romans looted and destroyed this powerful urban center, the culture Carthaginian sank in the deepest defeat. It is considered that this event ended up confirming the Roman power that, since then, would reaffirm the policy expansionist over the Mediterranean Sea that would later allow it to become the most powerful empire of the time.

Images: Fotolia. Andrea Izzotti – Sila5775