Does anyone know anything about the punic war?

Question

over which territort was the 2nd punic war fought?
Which side [[rome or carthage]] gained control of this territory?

What strategy did Hannibal use to almost outsmart the stronger army of the romans in the second punic war?
What stragety duid the romans use to gain strength for their army and to eventually defeat the carthaginians?

Why was the third punic war fought?Who won? What happened to the loser? What happened to the winner?

Whoever gets alll those I will hug =]

Answer 1

the first one was fought around scilia for control of the sea so major sea battles.

the second was fought to force rome to surrender and the carthage general was hannibal.

the 3rd one carthage got screwed the winner of course gets gold and land.

Answer 2

OK. I don't want a hug. But here ya go:

Hannibal used elephants to cross the Alps. They were one of his favorite tools of war. At the battle by Trebia River. Hannibal split his Elephant forces into 2 groups to protect the wings of his infantry. The panich and confusion the elephants wrought was the determining factor in this victory. For the "almost part": The romans soon figured out how to incorporate the beasts into the war, making the animals useless. I belive in the second punic war they were fighting over Western Hegemony, which could be either Sardinia (an island to the west of Italy) or Sicily (the island at the toe of Italy).
Hannibal also defeated Rome through a simple maneuver of surrounding the army led by Gaius Terentius Varro..whose numbers were superior.
The Third punic war was fought over trumped up reasons brought about by a faction of the Roman Senate that wanted Carthage to be destroyed. Carthage was massacred- The ROMANS won. Carthages survivors were sold into slavery and Rome went about it's merry little way forging a larger empire.

Answer 3

The 2nd Punic War started when Hannibal attacked Sargantum, the city whose protection was guaranteed by Rome which was in in the area under Carthage's sphere of influence even though the agreed demarkation line between Roman & Carthaginian spheres of influence is the Iberus (Ebro) River.

From there, Hannibal crossed the Pyrennees & the Alps, bringing the fight on Italian soil for 11 years before being recalled to North Africa to defend Carthage against Scipio Africanus Major.

Hannibal's strategy (as opposed to tactics) in breaking Roman power is to break up tyhe Roman federation - ie, turn Rome's allies to Hannibal's cause by showing that he can defeat the Roman armies.

In terms of tactics, Hannibal goaded the Romans to attack him at times & places of his choosing. He won the battles of Lake Trasimene & Cannae on account of the Roman generals' hot headedness & over-confidence.

However, the Roman federation proved too strong for Hannibal to break & he met his nemesis in the person of Scipio Africanus Major (he was a genius in his own right) who invaded North Africa & defeated Hannibal in the Battle of Zama.

The 3rd Punic War started because the Carthaginians broke the terms of peace & they lost, resulting in the city being razed & the lands covered with salt so that crops can never be planted there again.

The Carthaginians initailly won against the Romans mainly beacuse of Hannibal's ingenius & strong leadership. In terms of discpline, the Romans were in many ways superior & their soldiers were citizens whereas Carthage used mercenaries, namely Spaniards, Gauls & Numidians.

Also, the Romans learnt quickly from their defeats & were united in the Punic wars whereas the Carthaginian leadership was divided between the war & peace seeking camps.

Answer 4

The Second Punic War (referred to as "The War Against Hannibal" by the Romans) lasted from 218 to 202 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. It was the second of three major wars of the former Cypriot-Phoenician colony Carthage and its dependencies against the Roman Republic. Hannibal selected the most trustworthy and devoted contingents of the large army of Libyan and Iberian mercenaries at his disposal to carry on with him.His army also had an unknown number of war elephants. The Romans always kept Hannibal in view, they only fought when everything was in their favour; they sought to starve him rather than destroy him in battle; and cut down his power of doing harm.The third punic war was a siege operation, starting sometime between 149 and 148 BC, and ending in the spring of 146 BC with the sack and complete destruction of the city of Carthage.Romans won.Carthage fell.

Answer 5

Hannibal - his crossing of the Alps with elephants is between the superb widespread thoughts ever, and he's lots extra substantially widespread than Spartacus. His victory at Cannae in 216 BC is recognised by using historians by way of fact the superb tactical success ever, the 'desirable conflict' with the desirable result.It became certainly one of Rome's correct ever defeats, and the only time that Rome itself became in actual danger of being taken and conquered till just about seven hundred years later.

Answer 6

Over which territory was the 2nd punic war fought?


2nd Punic War

Begins when Hannibal conquers Saguntum in Spain and the Carthoginians refuse to dismiss Hannibal.

He crosses the Alps into Northern Italy and engages the Roman Army. Hannibal then skirted Rome and moved to Cannae in southern Italy.Sicily allied itself with the Carthaginians. In addition, the king of Macedon, Philip V, who controlled most of the mainland of Greece, allied himself with Hannibal and began his own war against Roman possessions in 215 BC.

Hannibal was dependent on Spain for future supplies and men, so they appointed a young, strategically brilliant man as proconsul and handed him the imperium over Spain. This move was unconstituional, for this young man had never served as consul. His name: Publius Cornelius Scipio (237-183 BC). Scipio, who would later be called Scipio Africanus for his victory over Carthage (in Africa), by 206 had conquered all of Spain, which was converted into two Roman provinces. Hannibal was now left high and dry in Italy. Scipio then crossed into Africa in 204 BC and took the war to the walls of Carthage itself. This forced the Carthaginians to sue for peace with Rome; part of the treaty demanded that Hannibal leave the Italian peninsula.

Hannibal retreated to Carthage and and the Carthaginians took heart and rose up against Rome in one last gambit in 202 BC. At Zama in northern Africa, Hannibal, fighting against Scipio and his army, met his first defeat. Rome reduced Carthage to a dependent state; Rome now controlled the whole of the western Mediterranean including northern Africa.


Which side [[rome or carthage]] gained control of this territory?
The Second Punic War turned Rome from a regional power into an international empire: it had gained much of northern Africa, Spain, and the major islands in the western Mediterranean. Because Philip V of Macedon had allied himself with Hannibal and started his own war of conquest, the second Punic War forced Rome to turn east in wars of conquest against first Philip and then other Hellenistic kingdoms. The end result of the second Punic War, in the end, was the domination of the known world by Rome.


What strategy did Hannibal use to almost outsmart the stronger army of the romans in the second punic war?


Hannibal wanted exclusive landpower. The Carthaginians wished to wished to invade Italy overland while protecting the strategic bases of North Africa and Iberia.

Battle of Trebia

Hannibal was aware that the Romans preferred to engage in set-piece battles on open ground and at the time of their own choosing. As a result, Hannibal ensured that his men were well fed and rested during the night, then he sent out a force to attack the Roman camp and provoke them into attacking. The Romans, alarmed by an almost unheard-of night offensive, hungry and bleary-eyed with sleep, unwisely forded a freezing winter stream in an attempt to engage their enemy. They were outflanked and cut to pieces, partly because Hannibal had possessed the foresight and artifice to make his cavalrymen lie their horses down among shrubs and bushes in ambush.

In 217 BC, Hannibal fought and destroyed the Roman army of Gaius Flaminius at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Hannibal cut off the Roman force in a defile by the lake after having concealed his own men in the trees on the slopes and among the billowing fronds of mist. In an attack whose nature presaged the later destruction of a Roman army at the Teutoberger Wald in Germany, where three legions were destroyed in AD 9 by Arminius, Hannibal attacked on three fronts, leaving the hungry waters of the lake the only course of retreat open to the fleeing Roman legionaries. In this disaster for Rome, two Roman legions perished at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, but much worse was to follow.

In the following year, in 216, there took place what was to be Hannibal's crowning masterpiece, the Battle of Cannae in southern Italy. Again, much has been written about this pivotal engagement, so I'll confine myself to what I believe are some salient observations. After the first three defeats by Hannibal, the Romans had wisely withheld from giving battle on the advice of Fabius, the Cunctator or Delayer, but by 216, they had gathered a massive army of ten legions, or something in the region of 100,000 trained fighting men with which to finally crush the Carthaginian interloper.

There are many stories told about Cannae and it is even thought that Hannibal arranged matters so that the wind blew dust into the faces of the advancing Romans, to give himself every single advantage possible. What is certain is that during the night, Hannibal had planned the forthcoming battle down to the minutest detail, while the unsuspecting Romans could barely believe their luck.

The Roman army always preferred to face its enemy in a set-piece battle on open ground and to clearly defeat it, rather than engage in any long-running guerrilla war. So here at Cannae, the dreaded Roman legions with their disciplined infantry faced an adversary on open ground, an enemy that was outnumbered by as many as three to one. Furthermore, the Carthaginian forces were thought to be inferior in quality to the Roman infantry in almost every respect.

Hannibal's demonstrable genius at Cannae was to realise that it did not matter so much how many men you brought to the battlefield, but how many of your men you could get to actually engage the enemy. Firstly, he ensured that his superior cavalry under the command of his brother Hasdrubal destroyed the opposing Roman cavalry and drove it from the field, which is what happened. However, cavalry have always been notoriously unreliable in warfare because of their tendency to lose their heads, disperse and chase a retreating and beaten foe. One of the miracles of Cannae was that Hasdrubal not only defeated the Roman cavalry, but then rallied his entire force and returned to the battle to execute his brother's precise orders, while it was to be over eighteen hundred years before any cavalry force would show such iron discipline.

Another miracle took place at Cannae, when Hannibal placed what were arguably his most unreliable troops to the fore, to face the relentless Roman juggernaut. The Iberian and Celtic swordsmen were fantastically brave but extremely unpredictable, yet Hannibal induced them to face the Roman steamroller in a convex arc. Rather than break before the machine-like onslaught from the Roman legions, the Celts and Spaniards simply gave ground, against their nature, and retreated into a concave bow. The Romans were successfully advancing, but the Carthaginian army was also successfully enveloping them. The formidable heavy Libyan infantry and remaining cavalry of Hannibal's flanks stood fast and overlapped the advancing Roman line, which was by now more of a tight mass that had been deliberately funnelled together by the press from the sides and by the seeming retreat of the Celts and Spaniards at the front.

The Libyans then moved to encircle the tightly-packed Roman legions, while Hasdrubal completed the manoeuvre by smashing into the helpless formation from the rear. Thus, with a vastly inferior force, Hannibal had succeeded in surrounding a numerically superior enemy and effectively nullified its fighting ability. Of the 100,000 or so Romans in this compact mass, only the comparatively few on the outside could engage the enemy, while the Carthaginians could bring all their forces to bear and outnumber the entire Roman perimeter. Not only that, but they could hurl stones, javelins and any weapon to hand into the static and largely impotent throng before them, certain that they could not miss.



What stragety did the romans use to gain strength for their army and to eventually defeat the carthaginians?

Romans retained the advantage of naval supremacy.
They adopted the policy of Fabius Maximus.
Fabian Strategy, maintaining Roman military strength
See also: Fabian strategy and Fabius Maximus

Hannibal's three-main victories in Italy: (1) The Battle of the Trebia (2) Battle of Lake Trasimene (3) Battle of Cannae respectively, courtesy of The Department of History, United States Military Academy.Rome, reeling from her disastrous defeat at Lake Trasimene, was put into an immense state of panic. According to Polybius “On the news of the defeat reaching Rome, the chiefs of the state were unable to conceal or soften down the facts, owing to the magnitude of the calamity, and were obliged to summon a meeting of the commons and announce it. When the Praetor [the head of the Roman Senate] ... said, ‘We have been defeated in a great battle”, it produced such consternation that to those who were present on both occasions, the disaster seemed much greater now than during the actual battle.” [2] In times of such crisis, there was but one thing to do; and that was to appoint a dictator. Dictatorial power permitted a single man to develop his own strategies, make appointments in the civil government, and prepare armies without the usual political wrangling; a post that gave him near total authority for a period of approximately six months. “Abandoning” says Polybius “the system of government by magistrates elected annually, they [the Romans] decide to deal with the present situation more radically, thinking that the state of affairs and the impending peril demand the appointment of a single general with full powers” [2]. The man they appointed as sole commander, or “dictator”, was a man named Quintus Fabius Maximus, intelligent and prudent general coined as the "Cunctator" (akin to the English noun cunctation), or the "Delayer" in Latin

Departing from Roman military traditions, Fabius adopted the Fabian strategy of refusing open battle with his opponent while placing several Roman armies in Hannibal’s vicinity to limit his movement. While seeking to avoid battle, Fabius instead, sent out small detachments against Hannibal’s foraging parties, and always maneuvered the Roman army in hilly terrain, so as to nullify Hannibal’s decisive superiority in cavalry. Residents of small northern villages were encouraged to post lookouts, so that they could gather their livestock and possessions and take refuge into fortified towns. This, Fabius knew, would wear down the invaders’ endurance and discourage Rome’s allies from going over to the enemy, without having to challenge the Carthaginians to battle.

Having ravaged Apulia without provoking Fabius to battle, Hannibal decided to march through Samnium to Campania, one of the richest and most fertile provinces of Italy, hoping that the devastation would draw Fabius into battle. Livy tells us that “He [Hannibal] began to provoke and try his temper, by frequently shifting his camp and laying waste the territory of the allies before his eyes; and one while he withdrew out of quick sight and halted suddenly, and concealed himself in some winding of the road, if possible, to entrap [ambush] him on his descending into the plain” [2]. The dictator closely followed Hannibal’s path of destruction, yet still refused to let himself be drawn into battle, and thus remained on the defensive. While Fabius refrained himself from being drawn into battle, his troops became increasingly irritated by his “cowardly and unenterprising spirit” [1]. His inactive policies, while tolerable among wiser minds in the Roman Senate, were deemed unpopular, because the Romans had been long accustomed to facing their enemies in the field. Fabius’s strategy was especially frustrating to the mass of the people, who were eager to see a quick conclusion to the war. Moreover, it was widely believed, that if Hannibal continued plundering Italy unopposed, the terrified allies, believing that Rome was incapable of protecting them, might defect and pledge their allegiance to the Carthaginians.


Hannibal - Silver double shekel, c. 230 BC, The British MuseumAs the year wore on, Hannibal decided that it would be unwise to winter in the already devastated lowlands of Campania but Fabius had ensured that all the passes out of Campania were blocked. Fortunately, the Carthaginian general hit upon a highly imaginative deception scheme. At night, he gathered together all the cattle, and after tying burning torches to their horns, he drove them along a ridge near the pass. To the Romans guarding the pass, this gave the impression that the Carthaginians, aided by torches, were attempting to escape through the woods, and thus left the defile to attack them. After the Romans had chased off after the cattle, Hannibal promptly occupied the pass, and his army made their way through the pass unopposed. Fabius was within striking distance but in this case his caution worked against him. Smelling a stratagem (rightly) he stayed put. For the winter, Hannibal found comfortable quarters in the Apulian plain. What Hannibal achieved in extricating his army was, as Adrian Goldsworthy puts it, "a classic of ancient generalship, finding its way into nearly every historical narrative of the war and being used by later military manuals". This was a severe blow to Fabius’s prestige, and soon after this, his period of power ended. The rest of autumn continued that year with frequent skirmishes— and after six months of exercising dictatorial power, Fabius would be removed from his position, in accordance with the Roman law.

Fabius' plans were in part ruined by Minucius, magister equitum and political enemy of Fabius. Minucius was named co-commander of Roman troops and, claiming Fabius to be a coward, decided to attack Hannibal's army in Larinum. The Carthaginians avoided Minuncius frontal attack by setting a trap, but, when Roman soldiers were on the verge of being slaughtered, Fabius Maximus rushed to his co-commander's assistance and Hannibal's forces immediately retreated.

Fabius became unpopular in Rome, since his tactics did not lead to a quick end of the war. Roman people gave Fabius the nickname Cunctator (delayer), and two new consuls, Gnaeus Servilius Geminus and Marcus Atilius Regulus, were elected to lead a more incisive war campaign.



They recovered Iberia.
Isolated Hannibal by war and diplomacy with other states.
Scipio seperated the Numidians and Carthage and obtained Numidian Cavalry for himself.


Why was the third punic war fought?Who won? What happened to the loser? What happened to the winner?

The Third Punic War (149 to 146 BC) was the third and last of the Punic Wars fought between the former Phoenician colony of Carthage, and the Roman Republic. The Punic Wars were so named because of the Roman name for Carthaginians: Punici, or Poenici.

The war was a minor engagement which consisted of a single action, the Battle of Carthage, but resulted in the complete destruction of the city of Carthage, the annexation of all remaining Carthaginian territory by Rome, and the death or enslavement of the entire Carthaginian population. The Third Punic War ended Carthage's existence as an independent statal entity.

In 151 BC, the Carthaginian debt to Rome was fully repaid, meaning that, in Hellenic eyes, the treaty was now expired, though not so according to the Romans, who instead viewed the treaty as a permanent declaration of Carthaginian subordinance to Rome akin to the Roman treaties with its Italian allies. Numidia launched another border raid on Carthaginian soil, besieging a town, and Carthage launched a large military expedition (25,000 soldiers) to repel the Numidian invaders.

As a result, Carthage suffered a humiliating military defeat and was charged with another fifty year debt to Numidia. Immediately thereafter, however, Rome showed displeasure with Carthage’s decision to wage war against its neighbour without Roman consent, and told Carthage that in order to avoid a war it had to “satisfy the Roman People.” The Roman Senate then began gathering an army. After Utica defected to Rome in 149 BC, Rome declared war against Carthage. The Carthaginians made a series of attempts to negotiate with Rome, and received a promise that if three hundred children of well-born Carthaginians were sent as hostages to Rome the Carthaginians would keep the rights to their land and self-governance. Even after this was done, however, the Romans landed an army at Utica where the consuls demanded that Carthage hand over all weapons and armour. After those had been handed over, Rome additionally demanded that the Carthaginians move at least ten miles inland, while Carthage itself was to be burned. When the Carthaginians learned of this they abandoned negotiations and the city was immediately besieged, beginning the Third Punic War. The Carthaginians endured the siege starting c.149 BC to the spring of 146 BC, when Scipio Aemilianus took the city by storm.

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Aftermath
Many Carthaginians died from starvation during the latter part of the siege, while many others died in the final six days of fighting. When the war ended, the remaining 50,000 Carthaginians, a small part of the original pre-war population, were sold into slavery.

The city was systematically burned for somewhere between 10 and 17 days. Then the city walls, its buildings and its harbour were utterly destroyed and the surrounding territory was supposedly sown with salt to ensure that nothing would grow there again. The sowing may have been merely a symbolic curse against Rome's defeated enemy, or the account may be entirely invented; it does not appear in the records of the war, and historians today dispute whether it actually happened.

The remaining Carthaginian territories were annexed by Rome and constituted the Roman province of Africa.