Rome and
Carthage
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History of Italy)
For more
than two centuries, since when in 509 BC the new Roman Republic
had made a friendship treaty with Carthage, relations
between the two states had remained good. Indeed, in 306 BC
they were reinforced with the reciprocal recognition of a Roman
sphere of influence over Italy and a Carthaginian one over Sicily.
On the island, in fact, the last tyrant of Syracuse, Agatocles,
was defeated at Ecnomus in 310 by the Carthaginians who had
been opposed by the Syracusians for almost a century.
With their
expansionist policy, the young and powerful Rome certainly could
not be content with only the Italian peninsula. The conquest
of Magna Grecia had to be completed with that of Sicily, even
if it meant breaking with Carthage. The opportunity came with
the revolt of the Mamertine mercenaries, who had seized Messina
and asked Rome for help against the Carthaginian garrison (265
BC). The struggle between Rome and Carthage was to continue
until the end of the century (264-201 BC) ending in two separate
conflicts: Sicily was the scene of the first (264-241 BC) until
it became a Roman province; and slightly later (238-227 BC)
Sardinia and Corsica met the same fate. In this way the Tyrrhenian
became the first entirely Roman sea (`Mare nostrum').
The Second
Punic War (218-201 BC) began from the Carthaginians besieging
Saguntum (219 BC), an Iberian town allied with Rome. Despite
Hannibal's legendary crossing of the Pyrenees and Alps into
the heart of Italy and his repeated defeats of the Romans (at
the rivers Ticino and Trebbia, Lake Trasimeno and Canne), the
Romans still managed to definitively defeat the Carthaginians
at Zama (202 BC). Gaining this victory under Scipio Africanus.
Forced, during
the conflict with the Carthaginias, to fight on different fronts
and against different allied enemies, from the Iberian peninsula
to the Po Valley and from Illyria (on the op posite shore of
the Adriatic) to Macedonia, Rome took the occasion of its many
victories over the Celtic (Iberi and Galli) and Hellenic (Greeks
and Macedonians) peoples, who were often allied with Carthage,
to enlarge her territorial domain and political sphere of influence
over a large part of the Mediterranean basin. Of particular
importance in this regard was the conquest of Greece, through
the three Macedonian Wars (215-146 BC), and the control of Asia
Minor (133 BC). While with the destruction of Carthage (146
BC, at the end of the brief Third Punic War), Corinth (146 BC)
and Numantia (133 BC) Rome had become the major Mediterranean
military power.
Meanwhile,
to the traditional Roman economic activities of agriculture
and pastoralism, which had declined due to war destruction (with
the consequent abandonment of the fields and rural deterioration),
there were added military and commercial interests. The latter
was a monopoly of the equites (the knightly or propertied class)
who, also thanks to contracts for revenue collection and public
works, began to form a rich urban middle-class.
The conquest
of Greece also had a profound effect on the cultural development
of the Roman world. This took the form of Hellenisation, which
changed society and customs while handing on the inheritance
of Greek civilization to successive centuries. Finally, under
the socio-economic heading, came the agricultural crisis. This
was to cost the lives of the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus
(133-121 BC), tribunes of the plebs, who came up against the
conservatism of the oligarchical senate.
However,
the agrarian question gradually led to the rebellion of the
Italic peoples, who were still excluded from Roman citizenship
and therefore the allotment of land to cultivate in the `ager
publicus'. In 90 BC a league was formed that, after varying
military fortunes, finally achieved its aspirations. In this
way too the political unification of Italy became concrete and
was not to be interrupted even during the following periof of
bitter civil wars: between Gaius Marius and Lucius Sulla (88-82
BC); Caesar and Pompey (49-46 BC); Octavian and Anthony (3630
BC); or even by the fierce struggles provoked by the slave revolts.
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