The Punic Wars
On a dusty plain in southern Italy, in the summer of 216 BC, soldiers were dying at a rate of about five hundred every minute. Most never even faced a sword — they were being crushed, packed so tightly by a trap that they could not lift their arms to fight back. The man who built that trap was the finest battlefield commander the ancient world had yet produced. He would win this battle by a wider margin than almost any general in history — and still lose the war.
Key Terms
- Hannibal Barca
- The Carthaginian general who swore as a boy at his father’s altar that he would never be a friend to Rome.
- Hamilcar Barca
- Hannibal’s father, who carried his army into Spain and built a new empire there after Carthage lost Sicily.
- Carthage
- The rich trading empire across the sea from Rome, twice at war with the young Republic.
- First Punic War
- The twenty-three-year war, fought mostly over the island of Sicily, that Carthage lost in 241 BC.
- Second Punic War
- The war Hannibal launched by marching cavalry, foot soldiers, and war elephants over the snowbound Alps.
- Lake Trasimene
- The misty lakeshore ambush where an entire Roman army vanished into the fog in about three hours.
- Cannae
- The battle where Hannibal’s curved line bent, folded, and surrounded a huge Roman army on every side.
- Gaius Flaminius
- The proud, popular Roman consul who chased Hannibal with 25,000 men and sent no scouts ahead.
- Scipio
- The young Roman who survived Cannae as a teenager, studied Hannibal’s methods, and turned them against him.
- Zama
- The battle where gapped Roman columns let 80 charging war elephants thunder through and do almost no harm.
- Fabius Maximus
- The Roman general mocked as "the Delayer" for refusing to give Hannibal the battle he wanted.
- Capua
- The second-richest city in Italy, which threw open its gates to Hannibal and was later ringed with siege walls and starved.
- Archimedes
- The inventor at Syracuse who built cranes and mirrors to fight off the Roman fleet.
- Thalassocracy
- A state whose power rests mainly on the sea, through its navy and trade — the way Carthage worked.
- Indemnity
- A heavy payment forced on the loser of a war; Carthage owed Rome 3,200 talents of silver.
- Mercenary
- A soldier who fights for pay rather than for his own homeland — Hannibal’s army was full of hired Celtiberians.
- Double Envelopment
- Surrounding an enemy on every side at once — the trap Hannibal sprang at Cannae.
- Obstinatio
- A stubborn Roman refusal to surrender no matter how many battles were lost.
- Circumvallation
- A double ring of walls an attacking army builds around a city to seal it off completely.
- Cognomen ex virtute
- An honored Roman surname earned by a great victory, such as Scipio "Africanus."