The development of civilisation in the western Mediterranean lagged far behind the eastern. Neolithic settlements appear to have appeared in Spain, Italy and southern France by about 3000 B.C. Western tribes of Indo-Europeans entered the Italian peninsula around 1700 B.C., followed by iron using people following them at approximately about 1100 B.C. The first Latin tribes are believed to have been established the first Roman settlements on the Avantine and Palatine hills in the 900s B.C., and then possibly combined in the 600s B.C. Latium and Oscan tribes migrated to and settled in the Italian Peninsula that has an excellent climate and soil for farming, and eventually coalesced for mutual defence during warfare with neighbouring clans while expanding to cover seven separate hills as a natural defensive barrier along the Tiber River. It is believed that a Roman kingdom was first established under the reign of Romulus in 753 B.C., which continued expanding thereafter in coordination with the Sabine Italic tribe, which initiated the establishment of an early Roman cilivisation under seven kings in its early history.
The Italian peninsula was invaded by Etruscans from 800 B.C. to 500 B.C., whose civilization composed the first to emerge in Italy in the form of separate cities in present-day northern Italy as far south as the Po Valley. They probably came from western Asia Minor or the Aegean islands, and brought skills of the eastern Mediterranean into Italy, including stone masonry, metal working and pottery manufacture, and also brought civilization with them. They planted a series of city state colonies through modern Tuscany, subduing the native population as well as Greek colonists who had settled in Italy, and., they were able to extend their power over more than half of Italy from Campania in the south to the Po Valley in the north by 500 B.C.
The early Etruscans came to be called Romans after their major population centre, as the hilltop villages that merged to become the city of Rome were taken over from the Latin tribes around 620 B.C. As a result, Rome first entered civilization under its Etruscan kings as it became an important commercial centre for trade, carrying agricultural produce from its environs to throughout Etruscan territory in exchange for the products from Etruscan and Greek workshops. Their government composed of a king, a senate that was called together by the king to advise him, and the curiate assembly of all citizens, constituting those liable for military service, which met when they were summoned by the king. Early Rome was said to have been ruled by seven kings from its earliest history over the span of 273 years, beginning with Romulus, while the last three were of Etruscan descent – Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus, who came to the throne in 534 B.C., and became the last of its kings. The native Latin tribes revolted against him and led to his overthrow, and Rome was declared a republic by a senate in 509 B.C., ruled by its people under two consuls serving for annual terms, beginning with Brutus and Collantius. They were elected by a body of wealthy aristocratic patrician senators who were descendants from the early days of the republic, whereas the majority of the population, known as the plebeians, who did not own property, were excluded from military and political activity, until they eventually became eligible to become elected as consuls.
There were three major political components of the republic. The aristocracy, or patricians, came into control of the government, and agreed that two of their number should be elected as heads of the state replacing the king. These two magistrates, called consuls, were to have the same powers, were only to serve for a year, and were then to give way to two others. This practice of shared power was to ensure that magistrates would consult with each other before making decisions, and that no individual could achieve supreme power as they could veto each other. Then there was the senate, which was a collection of citizens who served as the legislative branch of the government as well as an advisory body composed of roughly three hundred important magistrates that was largely under the control of the patricians. To choose the consuls, annual elections were held in an Assembly of Centuries (comitia centuriata) composed of landowners who were wealthy enough to provide armed military service. Lastly, there was the Assembly of Tribes (comitia tributa), which contained all citizens, and approved or rejected laws and decided issues of war and peace. The ideal was that no one group could seize power, but this system was shown to have flaws.
The plebeians became dissatisfied with the government of the patricians as they became oppressive. They thus threatened to leave the city and set up their own independent state in 494 B.C. Meanwhile, the patricians were unable to get on without the help of the people as soldiers in their frequent wars, who eventually were able to gain a measure of political equality by threatening to refuse to serve in the military. They therefore agreed to give the people a larger share in the government by allowing them to elect a group of new officials called tribunes in their own assembly. The tribunes had the right to veto any official of the government, even of the consuls themselves, which was a considerable check on the powers of the legislative branch. Moreover, when any citizen was treated unjustly by a consul, he had only to appeal to one of the tribunes, and they could rescind the consul’s unjust actions and even save a citizen from an illegal death sentence. The consuls were the commanding generals of an army of Roman citizens in war, they had charge of the public funds in the treasury, and they were the judges in all law cases. It was difficult to combine these duties, and the consuls were often obliged to be absent from Rome for long periods while leading the army, and at such times, they were unable to give attention to law cases, and citizens settling a lawsuit could be obliged to be delayed until the war was over.
Establishing the security of the early republic by subduing threats from hostile neighbours later led to creating fundamental political structures for governmental functions in the territories under Roman control. It thus became gradually became necessary to create new government officials for various types of administrative matters. Several other ordinary governmental functions, such as that of the treasury, demanded more time than the consuls could possibly give it, and found it difficult to carry on the volume of business that the government required. This situation made it necessary to create new officials for various responsibilities of a state apparatus. Treasury officials called quaestors were appointed to take care of government finances. Censors were required to keep a list of the people, to assess the amount of taxes each citizen owed, to determine voting rights, and look after their daily conduct and see that nothing improper was permitted. In times of great national danger, it was customary to appoint some revered and trustworthy leader as the supreme ruler of the state. He was called the dictator, and he could hold his power for six months. Meanwhile, the consuls had great power and influence in all government matters, but they were much influenced by the patricians in the senate that assisted with important public questions, such as making new laws. Patricians initially enjoyed the exclusive right to serve as consuls, to sit in the senate, and to hold almost all of the offices created to execute governmental functions.
While the tribunes could protect the people from certain injustices, the people demanded that the existing laws be put into writing in order that they might now by what skill they were being judged, which was forced upon the patricians who had to compromise with the plebeians who could serve in the military and contribute to meeting military pressure from Rome’s hostile neighbours. The earliest Roman laws were put into writing, following the precedent that Solon had set in Athens, and engraved them upon twelve wooden tablets in 451 B.C., by which every citizen became equal under the rule of law. They were placed throughout the republic so that the law could be fairly applied to everyone, thus recognising the right of all free citizens. Since fairness and equality could be subjective, the Romans created the position of praetor, or judge, to assist the consul, and act as a moderator to decide legal cases. The number of such judges gradually increased, and the law codes later developed along with the republic, leading to the creation of three different types of laws: civil laws, which were for the citizens of the Roman republic; law for the non-citizens of the republic; natural laws that governed all humans. The law also was superior to people, and the concept of guilt was based on verifiable evidence.
The population also demanded the right to share in the making of new laws and established assemblies of the people in which they might pass new laws, rather than this power merely residing in the hands of the Senate. These included the comitia curiata, which was composed of groups of families or brotherhoods, each called a curia. They were superseded by the assembly of centuries, composed of units of a hundred soldiers called the comitia centuriata who were soon electing the consuls. At the same time, there arose another assembly to give the people an opportunity to transact their own plebeian public affairs, which was composed of tribes based on geographical residence, called the comitia tributa, that were presided over by their own ten tribunes of the people to protect them against arbitrary acts of the regular magistrates by using the power to veto the act of any magistrate, if all ten were unanimously agreed, and to call meetings of the people or to pass resolutions.
These latter two assemblies of the people became the lawmaking bodies of the Roman state by voting on laws that were proposed by the Senate. Over the course of two hundred years, new laws also increased the rights of the people to hold office. In 367 B.C., plebeians were admitted to magistracies, which had previously been reserved exclusively for men of patrician family, and could later be admitted into the senate, as well as there had to be one consul who was a plebeian. The resolutions of the comitia tributia were recognised in 287 B.C. as having the force of law, even without the approval of the Senate or the comitia centuriata. Roman citizens eventually elected their plebeian neighbours as censors and quaestors, as judges, and eventually as consuls and as members of the Senate, which was composed of the three hundred men of Rome who had the most experience in government and public affairs. Their combined influence became stronger than that of the consuls themselves, who were then obliged to carry on the government according to instructions from the Senate, whose members held their positions for life. Hence, compromise was reached as the lower orders could be assimilated into the patrician class, which satisfied most citizens and stability was maintained within the republic.
The Roman republic initially only included the city and its neighbouring regions, before the influence of this united patrician-plebeian state began to be extended, with Roman legions commanded by patricians but composed of property-owning Romans. On the other side of the Tiber River, the Etruscans continued living across this river. On the other side of the river, there were the lands of the combined Latin tribes that surrounded Rome, and were loosely united to Rome by treaty for mutual defence under Rome’s leadership in exchange for about the same privileges as Roman citizens, including the right to vote in political processes. The Roman republic struggled to survive, while always being threatened by its neighbours, especially the Etruscans until their power was weakened. In 474 B.C., the Greek fleet at Syracuse utterly destroyed the Etruscan fleet, and the Etruscans were later attacked by the Gauls who were pouring over the Alpine passes into the valley of the Po and destroying the Etruscan cities of the north. This weakening of the Etruscans allowed the Romans to conquer and take possession of a fringe of new territory on all sides against the Etruscans and other hostile Italic tribes. The territory the Romans had gained served as established protection against their enemies by approximately 400 B.C.
There were three main forms of Roman conquest. Conquered territories were annexed outright into its sphere of influence, as marked by territories and the inhabitants therein. Another method was planting colonies of citizens, or granting citizenship to the absorbed neighbouring conquered peoples in the new territories, to consolidate their influence, which were connected through newly-built roads. Roman peasants, who were under obligation to fight for Rome and who had a voice in the government, thus pushed into the new and enlarging Roman territory, and also acquired shares of conquered land, which created still more peasant soldiers. Hence, Rome grew in size and strength, as it had an increasing body of loyal peasant soldiers serving in an army that was based on property. The most common approach was forming alliances with defeated neighbouring peoples, in exchange for providing the Romans with their requirements, such as soldiers, equipment and ships.
Inducting military manpower resources were always remained necessary for the defence and expansion of the republic during endemic warfare, until the Roman republic would eventually consolidate its power in 409 B.C. The Roman republic would continue expanding through subduing the coalition of the tribes constituting the Latin League that had been constituted in 340 B.C., which would continue the expansion of Roman influence. Rome completely subdued these neighbouring Latin tribes by 338 B.C., followed by the Roman Senate proceeding to make separate treaties with each of the Latin tribes that reduced them to dependence on Rome.and then subduing the Etruscans in 396 B.C., against whom they had fought for control over fertile land and a lucrative salt trade. Competition between Celtic Gauls to the north of Rome and the growing Roman republic reached its peak when they had been overrunning the territory of the Etruscans from 390 B.C. Senones Gauls led by Brennus had established their influence in northern regions of the Italian Peninsula by the beginning of the fourth century B.C., while the Etruscan regions served as a temporary buffer between them. finally reached the lower Tiber, completely defeated the Roman army, and sacked the city in 387 B.C., and occupied it for several months. These Gauls were later expelled from Rome by Roman reinforcements from outside the city led by Marcus Furius Camillus, and returned northward, where they settled in the valley of the Po. Their advance weakened Rome’s Etruscan enemies, but the Gauls still remained a serious danger, which provided the impetus for Roman administrators to reinforce their defences against future threats to its continued stability. As Rome recovered from this disaster, Latin tribes became alarmed at its growing power, and endeavoured to break away from the control of Rome.
Another dangerous foe, a group of Italic tribes called the Samnites, had been taking possession of the southern-central Apennine mountains. They engaged in three wars against the Romans who sought to continually defend its borders through expanding them from 326 B.C. The Samnites were also able to join forces with Rome’s enemies, the Etruscans and the Senone Gauls, until the Roman army met and defeated them by applying superior tactics in the decisive battle of Sentinum in 295 B.C. This conclusive victory at what became the end of the Second Samnite War not only gave the Romans possession of central Italy. The outbreak of the Third Samnite War in 298 B.C. against Etruscans, Gallic Senones and Samnites that sought to curb Roman power later made the Romans the leading power in the whole peninsula, when remaining resistance ended by 290 B.C. The Etruscans were no longer dangerous, and one by one their cities were taken by the Romans or entered into an alliance with Rome. The Gallic invaders were contained due to superior Roman military tactics while exploiting the fragmented interests of these Celtic tribes that prevented them from pooling their resources, in contrast to the unified Roman polity. The northern boundary of the Roman conquests was thus set along the Arnus River, south of the Appenines, to the Greek cities of southern Italy, as all attempts by different Italian people to check the rising power of Rome were defeated.
The two remaining rivals of the Romans in the western Mediterranean world were now the Greeks and the Carthagians. Alarmed at the threatening expansion of Roman power, the surviving Greek colonies that had had fought against Italic tribes and other peoples of southern Italy endeavoured to unite against Rome. They sent an appeal to Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus in Sicily, who was well-known to be an able soldier and intended to form a nation of western Greeks in Sicily and Italy. He initially defeated the Romans in two battles in 280 and 279 B.C., and gained practically all of Sicily. However, the Carthagians, seeing a dangerous rival on the rise and potentially threatening their colony on the outermost western end of Sicily, Lilybaeum, and Carthage itself, sent a fleet to Rome to assist the Romans. This emboldened the Roman Senate to refuse to make peace with the Greeks as long as the army of Pyrrhus occupied territory on the Italian Peninsula. Moreover, the Greeks disagreed among themselves, and Pyrrhus, poorly supported, was unable to inflict a decisive defeat on the Romans at the cost of heavy casualties. The separate Greek cities then surrendered to the Romans and accepted alliances with them by 275 B.C. after Pyrrhus lost two-thirds of this troops in costly “Pyrrhic victories” that were more costly to him than to the Romans. By 265 B.C., all of Italy south of the Appenines had been united under Roman leadership, absorbing the former Greek cities, and Rome had become one of the strongest states in the Mediterranean.
The problem at this time was to make Italy a unified state controlled by Rome. If Rome annexed all of the conquered lands and endeavoured to rule them from Rome as mere subjects, the people of Italy would have been dissatisfied, and constant revolts would have followed. The Romans therefore granted the defeated cities a kind of citizenship, which entitled them to all the protection of the Roman state in the courts and in carrying on business, but did not entitle them to vote in the assembly. The conquered communities were thus organised by various degrees of privilege and responsibility, which was of decisive importance for the future growth of the Roman state. In distant communities, no one felt the lack of this privilege, since in order to vote it was necessary to go to Rome. Cities and communities that were called allies also enjoyed the protection of the Roman state, with carrying on business and commerce being of itself a very valuable advantage, and were therefore willing to place their troops entirely at the disposal of Rome, while they still had full control of their own local internal affairs except for those of the army. Hence, no two cities were likely to feel the same grievance or make common cause against Roman rule. In every case, they were incorporated into the Roman state as its allies, and therefore tied their fate to that of Rome while paying taxes to Rome and serving it in time of need. This made them strong supporters of Rome who would supply further troops who helped in further conquests, which was necessary while Rome was at war throughout most of the years of the republic.
Rome also gradually annexed a great deal of territory to pay for war expenses and to supply its increasing numbers of citizens with land. Its own full citizens thus occupied about a sixth of the territory of Italy, while continuing to establish Roman colonies throughout the territory of its allies to gain and keep control of Italy, over which Rome established its statehood for two hundred and forty-four years, and functioned as a consular republic for a hundred and seventy-two years, and then seventy-two years to establish its hegemony over the entire Italian peninsula against warring tribes to ensure its continued security, and would then expand outward to the known world.
Although Rome brought geographical unity to Italy, there were different peoples speaking different languages that remained distinct from each other, while its civilisation was largely borrowed from Greece after they entered the Greek cities in the south. Greek influences also made themselves especially felt in commerce and business, such as the influence of money and the rise of a merchant class. These interests would later put them into conflict with the possession of Carthage in northern Africa, the southern coastline of Spain, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Corsica and most of Sicily as an amalgamation of Phoenician city-states, as commercial expansion and the transactions of Roman merchants reached out beyond Italy, in contrast to the policy of agricultural expansion.
Rome and Carthage’s interests had been quite separate until all of Italy was united under Roman hegemony. Carthage was a sea empire while Rome was a land-based power without a navy. After Rome had conquered the Greek cities in southern Italy, it became enmeshed in the affairs of Sicily, which was a region with well-established Carthaginian interests. As the trade of Carthage increased, it gradually gained control over the northern African coast from the Greek city of Cyrene to the Atlantic, and becoming the leading commercial power in the western Mediterranean. Its merchants had seized southern Spain with its rich silver mines by way of the Straights of Gibraltar. They also closed the ports of the western Mediterranean islands and the Straights of Gibraltar to ships from all other cities, which were promptly rammed and sunk by Carthaginian warships.
Roman merchants were only engaged in small-scale business transactions prior to Rome acquired the leadership of Italy. The Senate had made a treaty with Carthage in 306 B.C. in which it was agreed that no Carthaginian ships should trade in the ports of Roman Italy, and no Roman ships should enter the harbours of Sicily. With increasing vexation, the merchants of Italy realized that Rome had gained the supremacy of Italy and pushed her frontiers to the southernmost part of the peninsula, only to see that the merchant nobles of Carthage held the profitable trade in Sicily and had left the western Mediterranean under Carthaginian control, while they could not do business there. Moreover, if Carthage were to occupy Messina, a Greek city that would be unable to resist Carthage after losing its Greek allies on the Italian mainland, they could cut off the west coast of Italy from traffic with Italian ports on the Adriatic coast of Italy, which Roman ships had to reach by passing through the Straights of Messina between Italy and Sicily.
Whatever the risks involved in a conflict with Carthage, the Romans soon discovered that this could not be avoided. The city of Messina had been seized by Italian mercenary soldiers who called themselves Mamertines, or sons of Mars, the war god. This prompted an attack by Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse. One party of Mamertines called in the aid of the Romans during the siege of Messina at the hands of Syracusans, while another party appealed to Carthage. The result was that a Carthaginian garrison quickly occupied Messina, putting the Carthaginians in command of the Straight of Messina. A Roman army also left Italy, and crossed the sea for the first time in Roman history, and entered Sicily in 263 B.C. to prevent Carthage from gaining control of all of Sicily and the Straights. Whereas the rulers of Carthage respected Roman subjugation of the Etruscans and the Samnites, their respective interests during continued Roman expansion into the Mediterranean led to conflict, in which the Romans possessed certain advantages. The Roman nobility continually identified with the population, and set an example of patriotism and civic duties, with good sense or the interest of the government moderating the brutality of paganism, and maintained sentimental religious interests. In contrast, the ruling class of Carthage was distinct from the rest of the citizens that were deprived of the wealth generated by commerce. Roman action was motivated by seeking glory through waging warfare, and prioritised military service, whereas everything at Carthage was sacrificed for commercial interests, while defence was handed to mercenaries, who were more difficult to replace than Roman recruits from the population, rather than by material means that could have reach state treasury limitations. Carthage’s pagan beliefs made religion consisting of jealous and malignant powers, which required being appeased through horrible sacrifices or honoured by shameful practices that alienated potential support among the subjugated local African populations with separate origins, languages and manners who subjected them to mercantile interests and were consequently economically exploited, as well as repressed. On the other hand, Rome afforded the vanquished a greater country and a share in its rights, and could therefore become assimilated therein.
This Sicilian War, or First Punic War against Carthage was Rome’s first conflict outside the Italian peninsula. An alliance with Syracuse concluded in 263 B.C. gave the Romans possession of eastern Sicily, but they were unable to make much progress into the central and western parts of the island, mainly because they lacked a strong war fleet. By the fifth year of the war, using a wrecked Carthaginian ship as a model, a hundred and twenty-five new Roman warships that were ordered to be built by the Roman Senate were put to sea. In spite of inexperience, the Roman fleet was victorious at first in two battles off the coast of Italy, introducing boarding rather than traditional ramming tactics – Roman engineers turned sea into land battles by placing heavy gangplanks on their ships that could be dropped onto enemy ships, allowing a contingent of legionnaires to march onto the enemy ship and fight as though on dry land. The Romans initially defeated the Carthagians in the naval battle of Mylae in 260 B.C. It was a major engagement during the First Punic War, and marked the rise of Rome as a naval power. The Roman fleet, commanded by Consul Cornelius Scipio defeated the Carthaginian fleet secured a Roman victory by using a corvus, serving as a boarding bridge that allowed them to turn the sea battle into a land battle, and overcome Carthage’s superior seamanship, and then further defeated them at Tyndaris in 257 B.C., which deprived Carthage of the prestige of its maritime superiority. However, other fleets were destroyed in heavy storms at sea, and one of them was badly defeated by the Carthaginians. The Romans therefore lost their command of the sea, and were unable to make any progress in the war. The Romans had also invaded Africa, which was very successful at first, but the Senate interfered with the progress of the invasion by recalling one of the consuls with many of the troops. The result was that the remaining consul with his reduced army was disastrously defeated.
The war strength of the Romans outweighed that of the Carthaginians, whose military power was built up entirely on a basis of money, with which they supported a large army of mercenaries. Meanwhile, the Romans could put a citizen army into the field that was composed of Roman citizens, and an equal number of troops drawn from the allies, which doubled their number of troops. The Roman army was consequently far greater in size than any army ever organized before in the Mediterranean world. The Romans had also made several improvements on the Hellenistic methods of fighting. After hurling spears into the ranks of the enemy, the Romans fought with short swords that were much more easily handled at close quarters than long spears. They had also improved the phalanx, which had been a long solid line eight men deep, possessing no flexibility. The Romans devised a means of making it easier to move quickly by dividing it into small groups, and as the Romans gradually learned to shift these smaller units increasingly more rapidly and skillfully, the art of war entered a new stage.
This was partly due to the Roman armies’ impressive logistical support system, which enabled legions of foot soldiers to apply sophisticated tactical versatility. As a result, the Romans could conquer any non-civilised people they opposed wherever they went. More important than their reputation that allowed them to expand their territory was their military discipline and organisation, whereby Roman troops were organised into legions of five thousand troops trained to fight with a short sword and shield. The legion moved as a unit with their tall shields up, and once upon the enemy, they stabbed with their short swords while constantly moving forward. As men fell, the disciplined Roman soldiers filled the ranks and pressed forward, literally pushing other armies from the battlefield, supplemented with cavalry. All Romans were expected to serve for a time in the army, and the soldiers were well equipped and often highly motivated with good pay that made extended service possible, and when the soldiers retired there was the chance of a big lump sum and land to farm. In military discipline, the Romans surpassed all other peoples of ancient times. For example, a legion that failed in its duty could be decimated, with one man in every ten being taken out and killed.
The conflict continued until the Carthaginians eventually lost control of their possessions in Sicily. While the Carthaginian commander, Hamilcar Barca, was plundering the coasts of Italy with his fleet, the Romans succeeded in building another fleet of two hundred battleships that was built with private contributions and put to sea in 242 B.C. The Carthaginian fleet was forced to surrender since the Romans could afford to outbuild the Carthaginians, whose fleet was defeated and broken up. As a result, the Carthaginians were unable to send reinforcements across the sea to their army in Sicily, and surrendered their possessions there in in 241 B.C. in the Treaty of Lutatius that ended more than twenty-three years of warfare, and pay the Romans the sum of thirty-two hundred talents as war damages within ten years. Rome thus held territory outside the Roman peninsula for the first time, and naval power in the western Mediterranean passed into Roman hands. Rather than being admitted into a system of alliances as in mainland Italy, Sicily as province of Rome was compelled to pay tribute to the Romans in the form of one-tenth of their crops, and its government was entrusted to a Roman magistrate. This established the pattern for provincial government that the Romans were henceforth to apply in new conquests, by which the old practice of extending citizenship and corresponding loyalty to Rome stopped in Italy.
Both Rome and Carthage then devoted themselves to increasing their strength. In spite of protests from Carthage, Rome took possession of Sardinia and Corsica in 238 B.C. after taking advantage of a revolt among hired Carthaginian troops who invited them to invade both islands after Carthage was unable to pay them after its defeat. The Romans later continued an expansive policy, conquering the Gauls and seizing their territory in the Po valley. Roman power was thus extended northward to the Alps, and the entire peninsula was now held by Rome. To offset this increase of Roman power and compensate for the loss of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, the Carthaginians turned toward Spain, planning to secure the wealth of the silver and other mines, enlist the native people there in the army, and thus build up a power able to meet that of Rome. Hamilcar, the Carthaginian leader in Spain, and his son Hasdrubal took up these plans after his father’s death, and took possession of the country as far north as the river Ebro, to which point Rome also extended its claims in the Iberian Peninsula, and secured an agreement in 226 B.C. that Carthage was not advance northward beyond this point. Meanwhile, the Romans were busily occupied with overthrowing the Gauls, and were unable to interfere with Carthage invading Spain.
Carthage, led by Hannibal, Hamilcar Barca’s son, found opportunity for a quarrel with Rome by besieging and capturing Saguntum in 219 B.C., an ally of Rome in Spain, which had begun to interfere with some of the Spanish tribes allied with Hannibal while being confident of Rome’s protection. He was soon advancing along the east coast of Spain with an army of forty-thousand troops, with the purpose of crossing southern Gaul and invading Italy, while the Roman Senate was planning to invade Spain and Africa. The Second Punic War thus began in 218 B.C. Hannibal knew that the defeated Carthaginian fleet could not protect his army if he tried to cross by water from Carthage and land in southern Italy. Moreover, his cavalry of over six thousand was too numerous to be transported by sea. Furthermore, he would have been met by a hostile population in southern Italy, where in northern Italy, there were the newly conquered Gauls looking for revenge against the Romans, and intended to enlist them in his army. In addition, he believed he could induce the allies of Rome to join him in a war of independence, having had reports of dissatisfaction among them.
Hannibal reached the Alps in the late autumn of 218 B.C., where his troops were overwhelmed by snowstorms and struggling over steep and dangerous trails that had to be extended to make room for elephants and facing hostile Celtic natives in Helvetia who rolled large stones down on them. By the time they crossed the Alpine pass and entered Italy in the upper valley of the Po, they were reduced to some thirty-four thousand men, facing the territory of the strongest military power of the time. Nevertheless, Hannibal was familiar with the most highly improved methods of fighting, while on the other hand, the Roman consuls commanding the Roman armies were simply magistrates who were often without much knowledge of handling an army.
Hannibal won two victories in the Po valley through skillfully using cavalry, at which the Romans were weak, and was joined by Gauls of the region. Having successfully crossed the Apennine mountains in 217 B.C., Hannibal then surprised the army of the unsuspecting Roman consul Flaminius on the march. On the shores of Lake Trasimine, he suddenly attacked the Roman legions in both front and rear, and destroyed an entire Roman army and the consul himself was killed. He was then only a few days’ march from Rome, but he did not have siege machinery and he lacked the troops to besiege the walled city. Besides, his superior cavalry was also useless in a siege. He therefore hoped for another victory so that the allies of Rome would turn against it and join him in attacking the city. He therefore marched eastward to the Adriatic coast, where he found horses, provisions, and an opportunity to train Gallic recruits.
At this dangerous time, the Romans appointed a dictator named Fabius, whose plan was to delay battle and harass the Carthaginians. This policy of caution and waiting did not meet with popular favour at Rome, and he was dubbed “The Laggard” due to his use of delaying tactics. The new consul elected in 216 B.C., Gaius Terentius Varro, was therefore urged to take action without delay. They prepared an army of eighty thousand men, and pushed southward to fight Hannibal at the battle of Cannae that year. Hannibal’s stronger cavalry put the Roman cavalry to flight, and they then turned back to attack the heavy mass of the Roman centre in the rear, and the Romans were caught between the Carthaginian army before them and the Carthaginian cavalry behind them. Then two bodies of African reserves that Hannibal kept waiting pushed forward until they closed in on both sides of fifty-five thousand Roman soldiers, followed by a slaughter that lasted all day and the Roman army was annihilated, proving to be the worst disaster in Roman history.
Within a few years after these defeats, southern Italy, including the Greek cities, and Syracuse in Sicily defected to Hannibal’s side against Rome, which could only count on some of the southern Latin colonies while central Italy stayed loyal to Rome due to Rome’s traditions of sharing the benefits of victory with its allies, extending the rights of Roman citizenship, and protecting central and southern Italy from its enemies. Hannibal therefore could not hold the terrain he gained without local support. The Roman Senate also made an alliance with Philip V of Macedon that prevented the Macedonians from providing help to Hannibal, who had agreed to help a year after the battle of Cannae. Although the Romans were finally compelled to arm slaves and boys, new armies were formed. With these forces, the Romans began to besiege and capture the allied cities that had turned against Rome.
Hannibal marched on Rome itself and offered peace as a last-ditch attempt, but the Romans knew his army was not large enough to lay siege to Rome, and also lacked siege machinery. He was therefore obliged to retreat. After being in Italy for ten years, he realised that he needed a large force to come to his assistance. His brother Hasdrubal was in Spain where he had gathered an army and was marching into Italy, but he was met by a Roman army at the Metaurus river that completely defeated him in 207 B.C. Hannibal knew that his cause was hopeless if reinforcements did not reach him, and his hopes were crushed when a Roman messenger hurled the head of Hasdrubal into the Carthaginian camp. By 206 B.C., the Carthaginian garrisons were driven out of the country.
Hannibal continued fighting for a few more years in southern Italy, while knowing that he could not count on reinforcements or a large-scale defection of Rome’s allies. Meanwhile, the Romans, learning the lesson of not entrusting a consul with an army, had given command to their forces in Spain to the able Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio. He arrived with his army in Spain in 210 B.C., and four years later, drove the Carthaginians entirely out of Spain, and so cut off their chief supply of both money and troops. He later demanded the Senate that he sent to Africa to invade the territory of Carthage, which he invaded in 204 and stirred up revolt among the peoples subject to Carthage. Scipio twice defeated the Carthaginian forces along with Numidian allies in Africa by 203 B.C., forcing Hannibal to return to its defence. Scipio finally defeated the Carthaginian army in 202 B.C. at the Battle of Zama, in which Scipio changed the battle plan created what is now known as “division tactics.” He ordered the rear divisions behind the front of the Roman center to prevent the Roman army from being encircled, and had the further advantage of having a greater cavalry force that fell on the Carthaginian flanks and weakened the extended front line. Carthage was thus forced to sue for peace.
The treaty ending the war in 201 B.C. made Rome the leading power of the ancient world. The Romans forced Carthage to pay ten thousand talents in fifty years, and to surrender all of its warships, except ten triremes. Carthage could also not make war anywhere without the consent of Rome, making Carthage lose its independence and becoming a vassal state of Rome, which also took over its possessions in Spain. Hannibal was forced into exile in the east, and Rome made a series of alliances and treaties with peoples in southern Gaul and northern Africa, establishing Rome predominance throughout the western Mediterranean.
Over fifty years later, Cato, a famous senator, was convinced that Carthage was still a danger to Rome to such a degree that he concluded all of his speeches with the words, “Carthage must be destroyed” in view of its growing economic power. The merchants of Carthage had been allowed to trade in the Mediterranean until Rome attacked Carthage again. In order to defend itself against the neighbouring Numidians, Carthage was obliged to go to war against them, which was a violation of the treaty with Rome. The Senate seized this opportunity to call Carthage to account in 149 B.C. In the three years’ war that followed, or the Third Punic War, the city of Carthage was overrun and completely destroyed in 146 B.C. Its territory was taken by Rome, and called the province of Africa. Rome was hereafter the undisputed leader of the western Mediterranean, while also having had turned its attention to the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean, as the Roman Senate could not allow any state in the Mediterranean to develop the strength that could endanger Rome again as Carthage had done, and continued with eastward expansion into the Greek territories.
Hannibal had persuaded Philip V of Macedonia during the Second Punic War, to form an alliance with him against Rome, provoking the First Macedonian War from 215 to 205 B.C. The Romans continued to regard Macedonia under the rule of King Philip V of Macedon with suspicion about its future intentions. As a result, the Roman Senate accepted alliances with weaker states in the Aegean, whose rulers feared the power of Macedon, and ordered Philip in 200 B.C. not to attack any Greek city, which he refused to obey. This brought Macedonia into armed conflict with Rome. Two years later, Rome sent an army under the general Flaminius, who demanded that Philip withdraw from Greece entirely. He later utterly defeated the Macedonian army on the field of Cynoscephalae in 197 B.C., in which the massive Macedonian phalanx was not flexible enough to meet the Roman divisions shifting into unexpected positions. Macedonia became a subject state of Rome. The Greek cities that had been brought under the control of Macedonia by Philip and Alexander the Great were now granted their freedom as allies in 196 B.C., under the strict auspices of Rome.
This war brought the Romans into conflict with Antiochus the Great, the Seleucid king, who held a large part of the former Persian Empire in Asia and endeavoured to seize some of Philip’s former possessions that the Romans had declared free, under the pretext of freeing the Greeks from Roman domination. This gave rise to another armed conflict, and the Romans were able to defeat the forces of Antiochus at Magnesia in Asia Minor in 189 B.C. The lands of Asia Minor eastward to the Halys River submitted to Roman control after the Romans had declared them to be free.
The Romans thus reduced two of the three great empires that succeeded Alexander – Macedonia and Syria. Egypt, the third of the three great empires that had succeeded Alexander in the East, became a vassal of Rome by 168 B.C. The Romans also took harsh measures against the Greeks who revolted against them during the Third Punic War, destroying Carthage in 147 B.C., and reducing the remaining survivors there to the condition of Roman slaves. The Roman republic had thus put down all other potential claimants to Alexander’s legacy, and all other contenders in the Mediterranean had been shut down, and the lines of empire that had been drawn by Alexander the Great were now all Roman boundaries.
Rome remained allied with the Hellenistic Confederation of the Achean League since the Second Macedonian War, and would continue expanding its possessions by engaging in hostilities against this alliance of Greek states. The Roman republic reacted to the League waging war against Sparta by in turn waging war against the League. In addition to intervening in Greece, the republic also waged war against the Celtiberians in Numantia on the Iberian Peninsula, where they likewise sought to seize control, with this additional conflict ending in 133 B.C, and also subduing the Lusitanians of Hispania Ulterior during the same time. Further expansion took place in the east where Pergamon III surrendered his kingdom of Pergamon to the Roman Republic.
The occupation of these territories led to the expansion of Roman power, but the Romans were also faced with the problem of devising successful government in the newly-acquired territories, in which they did not have any experience. Much of the strength of Rome and its capability to hold onto territory once it has been acquired was largely due to its political system in Rome itself, where successive emperors were chosen peacefully, which was quite an innovation in the ancient world. This allowed the Romans to turn their attention toward outward expansion without any fear of internal collapse. However, another one of the results was misgovernment, which along with the effects of long wars on Italy, resulted in the later overthrow of the Roman republic.
What were the fundamental underlying elements of Roman civilization?
How was the Roman republic able to assert its presence and then continue its expansion?
Talking chips discussion groups.
1. Set up groups and provide poker chips to each group.
2. Each student turns in a chip after presenting an element of contributing a single point concerning the development of early Roman history.
3. Wrap up as a class.
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