• 5000 soldiers, not in it for pay (not yet)
• the Roman army’s elite heavy infantry
• recruited exclusively from Roman citizens

• group of eighty’s a century
• on horseback is the cavalry
• shield, sword, dagger, and armor and tunic

First Punic War

(264 - 241 BCE)

• naval battles for control of the strategically located island of Sicily
• Rome wins this one

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 siege to much of the peninsula for 15 years, but he never can get to Rome Rome 2, Carthage

• 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