Th e outcome of this confl ict was by no means assured,
particularly since Carthage was the great naval power of the
period and Rome had no navy at all because the city’s wars
had to date been conducted on the Italian mainland, gen-
erally inland. When water transport was necessary to carry
troops along the Italian coast, Rome turned to its allies on
the Bay of Naples for ships and crews. In order to win the
First Punic War, Rome built its fi rst fl eet, modeling its ships
on captured Carthaginian vessels. Th e Romans developed
a new device to aid them in this new type of warfare. Th e
corvus was a large gangplank that could be dropped onto
an enemy ship. A large spike at its end drove deep into the
enemy’s deck. Army legionnaires then crossed over the cor-
vus to take the other vessel. Th e device worked very well,
allowing the Romans to use their greatest battle strength,
close-quarter infantry fi ghting. With the aid of the corvus
the Romans defeated two Carthaginian fl eets and won the
First Punic War.
Despite two more wars with Carthage and other sea en-
gagements, the republic never maintained a permanent navy.
When a fl eet was needed, it was built, as for Pompey’s expe-
dition in 64 b.c.e. against the pirates of the Mediterranean.
Even when they existed, republican fl eets oft en came to grief.
Led by commanders with no nautical experience, entire fl eets
were lost to storm and shipwreck. It would not be until the
empire that Rome would maintain a permanent navy, and
even then the seafaring service would remain secondary to
the army.THE SECOND AND THIRD PUNIC WARS
During the Second Punic War (218–202 b.c.e.) the Carthag-
inian general Hannibal (247–183 b.c.e.) crossed the Alps; af-
ter infl icting a series of devastating defeats on the Romans,
most notably at Cannae, he and his army ravaged the Italian
countryside. Hannibal made no attempt to attack the city of
Rome, perhaps because its walls, built aft er the Gauls’ capture
of the city in 390 b.c.e., made Rome a diffi cult target. Instead
of continuing in its attempt to defeat Hannibal’s army, Rome
tried a new tactic: It launched an attack on the city of Car-
thage. Hannibal was recalled to defend his home, where he
was overcome by the Roman general Scipio Africanus Major
(236–184 or 183 b.c.e.).
Carthage was destroyed in the Th ird Punic War (149–146
b.c.e.). Following their strategy of annihilating their enemies,
the Romans captured the city of Carthage aft er a brief siege,
sold into slavery those Carthaginians not killed, and razed
the city to the ground. When the Romans fi nished, nothing
remained of the Carthaginians or their culture, and Rome
was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean.
Th e Punic Wars left Rome in control of Sicily, North Af-
rica, and parts of the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next cen-
tury they conquered and occupied the southern part of Gaul,
Macedonia, Greece, and much of the Middle East. Although
Rome was still technically a republic, it was by the fi rst cen-
tury b.c.e. an empire in all but name.SOCIAL CHANGE
Roman war and the conquest brought power and wealth to
Rome, but they did even more. Th ey changed what was a
small farming community, more town than city, into one of
the largest and most cosmopolitan cities of the ancient world.
Rome became a place where people from all over the Mediter-
ranean lived, worked, and traded. Roman society itself was, if
not soft ened, altered by exposure to other peoples, most no-
tably the Greeks, whose literature, art, and philosophy were
embraced by many Romans.
War also brought to Rome millions of slaves, whose
cheap labor led to economic dislocation for many Roman
citizens. By the fi rst century b.c.e. the small farms of early
Rome had mostly given way to large farming estates owned
by wealthy individuals and worked by slaves. Th e small Ro-
man farmers were left landless and without a livelihood. Oc-
casionally, one of these estates was broken up and its land
distributed to soldiers, such as those who served Pompey
and Julius Caesar. However, such redistributions were not
given to Roman peasants, many of whom made their way to
Rome, where they lived in tenements and depended on food
from the state grain supply. Th ere was little but poverty for
these Roman citizens, for as in the countryside, most work in
the city was done by slaves.POLITICAL CHANGE
War and conquest also led to political change. Th e political
organization of the republic, designed to rule a single city,
was not capable of handling the administration of such a large
realm. Th e Roman Republic lacked any true central authority
and had virtually no state employees with which to handle
the day-to-day details of government. Its ruling offi cials,
two consuls, served for only one year, a period that was of-
ten insuffi cient to study and then handle problems in Rome’s
far-fl ung provinces. Additionally, the consuls could overrule
each other and be overruled by other elected offi cials, so im-
portant matters frequently were left unattended for years at a
time. Although they had fewer checks on their power, Rome’s
provincial governors, the proconsuls and propraetors, also
rarely had more than a yearlong appointment, sometimes a
goodly amount of that time being eaten up preparing for the
job and then traveling to the assigned region. Th e strain of
governance was one of the contributing factors leading to the
eventual disintegration of the Roman Republic and the emer-
gence of the Roman Empire, with its single source of author-
ity, the emperor, and its elaborate bureaucracy.
Th is political change was also aided by the rise at the end
of the second century b.c.e. of generals whose troops were
more loyal to them than to the state. Th ese generals, among
them Marius (ca. 157–86 b.c.e.), Sulla (138–78 b.c.e.), Pom-
pey (106–48 b.c.e.), and Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.), became
rich from the plunder of successful campaigns and used this
money to buy the favor of many Roman citizens. Caesar,
for instance, for one year paid the rent of everyone living in1152 war and conquest: Rome0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1152 1152 10/10/07 2:31:15 PM