The Punic Wars The Punic Wars were a series of three wars fought between the Roman Republic and Carthage, which Rome won each time and eventually became the master of the entire Western Mediterranean basin. The wars began in 264 BCE and ended in 146 BCE, lasting for 118 years. The name Punic comes from the Latin word for Phoenician. The war occurred because they both wanted control over the Mediterranean: Sicily. Carthage wanted Sicily because they felt as though it belonged to them, while the Romans wanted Sicily because they were nervous about having an enemy so close to their home territory. The First Punic War was a 23 year war that began in 264 BCE and ended in 241 BCE. It was a war for Sicily. The Romans started the war by sending an army to Sicily, which the Carthaginians considered an act of war because they believed Sicily was their territory. The Romans soon realized that they could not equal Carthage’s naval power so they turned the naval battle into a land battle. Carthage eventually surrendered Sicily to Rome and had to pay them a fine (Backman 185-186). This shows that the Romans were very resourceful and knew how to …show more content…
It was a war for control of Spain. It occurred because the father of a Carthaginian General named Hannibal made him take a vow of revenge against Rome. Hannibal knew he could not attack by sea, so he decided to attack by land, marching his army of 46,000 men and 37 war elephants to Italy. During the course of the travel he lost a lot of his men and all but one war elephant. He conquered a lot of the Italian Peninsula, but was never able to take the city of Rome itself. The Romans decided to attack Carthage in order to get Hannibal to leave. He was defeated at the battle of Zama, ending the Second Punic War (Mulligan). This shows that the Romans did what they had to do in order to get Hannibal to leave their city