Punic Wars

• 5000 soldiers, not in it for pay (not yet)
• the roman army's elite heavy infantry
• recruited exclusively from roman citizens 
•  group of 80 is a century
• on horseback is cavalry
• shield, sword, dagger, and armor and tunic

• The Punic Wars (264-146 BCE)
• rome vs. carthage
• 3 wars
• First Punic War 
• naval battles from control of the strategically located island of Sicily
• rome wins 
• Second Punic War (218-201 BCE)
• 29-year-old Carthaginian general Hannibal almost does the impossible: taking rome
• attacks rome from the north after crossing Iberia (spain) and the Alps
• lays seige to much  of the peninsula for 15 years, but he can never get to rome
• third and final Punic war (149-146)
•  rome wanted to finally remove the threat of carthage
• scipio, Tiberius Gracchus, and others mercilessly attacked the city
• carthage was burned for 17 days; the city's walls and buildings were utterly destroyed
• when the war ended, the last 50,000 people in the city  were sold into slavery
• the rest of carthage's territories were annexed, and made into the Roman province of Africa