The Punic Wars

The Punic Wars were three conflicts fought between Rome and Carthage between 264 and 146 BCE that decided which of the two Mediterranean powers would dominate the western Mediterranean, and ended with Carthage's total destruction. The First Punic War, fought mainly over Sicily, forced Rome to build its first significant navy and ended in 241 BCE with Carthage's defeat and loss of Sicily. The Second Punic War, from 218 to 201 BCE, is the best remembered, dominated by the Carthaginian general Hannibal's crossing of the Alps into Italy with war elephants and his repeated defeats of Roman armies, most devastatingly at Cannae in 216 BCE, before Rome's general Scipio Africanus turned the war by invading Carthaginian territory in North Africa and defeating Hannibal at Zama in 202 BCE. The Third Punic War of 149 to 146 BCE was a one sided siege that ended with the Romans razing the city of Carthage and enslaving or killing most of its population. The wars left Rome the unchallenged power of the western Mediterranean and gave it its first overseas provinces, a decisive step in the Roman Republic's transformation from an Italian city state into an imperial power.