Rome

That's a Roman legion, clear as day

- 5000 soldiers, not in it for pay (not yet)
- The Roman army's elite heavy infantry
- Recruited exclusively from Roman Citizens
- Groups of eight's a century
- On horseback is the century
- Shield, sword, dagger, and armor and tunic

Fightin' against Carthage in wars that are Punic

- The Punic Wars (264-146 BCE)
Rome vs Carthage
- three wars

Two empires fighting for control

First Punic War (264-241 BCE)

- Naval battles for control of the strategically located island of Sicily
- Rome wins this one

The (Carthaginian) Empire strikes back

Second Punic War (281-201 BCE)

- 29 year-old Carthaginian general Hannibal almost does the impossible take Rome
- Attacks Rome from the north after crossing Ibena (Spain) and the Alps
- lays siege too much of the peninsula for 15 years, but he never can get Rome

Third and final Punic War (149-146 BCE)
- Rome wanted to finally remove the threat of Carthage
- Scipio, Tiberius Gracchus, and other 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 mad into the Roman province of Africa

Economic change, social upheaval

- slaves poured into Italy (50,000 Carthaginians, 150,000 Greek Pows
- by the end of the second century BCE there were over a million slaves in Italy
- small farmers lost their land to aristocrats (for little or no money) if they couldn't pay their debts, sometimes because the men of the farm were fighting battles
- slaves did the work on the farms for the rich
- the big farms became massive estates called latifundia