The Punic Wars

Rome took over all of Italy. But the Romans still weren’t happy. They wanted more!

Unfortunately, another city, Carthage, also wanted more. Do you remember reading about Carthage? The Phoenicians built the city of Carthage on the northern coast of Africa.

Carthage made a lot of money trading with cities all around the Mediterranean Sea. They wanted to keep on trading with these cities, and they didn’t want Rome to get in the way! But the Romans also wanted to trade with these cities without Carthage interfering. So Rome and Carthage began to fight. They fought for years and years and years. These wars were called the Punic Wars. They began in 264 BC/BCE. And they didn’t finally end until 146 BC/BCE, over a hundred years later.

At first, Carthage had the advantage because it had a navy—soldiers who knew how to sail ships. Rome didn’t have a navy. But when a Carthaginian ship wrecked on the coast of Italy, the Romans took it apart and figured out how to copy it. They built ships of their own and learned how to sail them. Soon the Romans could match the Carthaginians in a sea battle.

But Carthage was a tough enemy. The Romans had to work hard to beat them. They made lots of sacrifices to their gods, asking for victory. One Roman general named Claudius Pulcher actually took sacred chickens with him on his ship! He hoped that the sacred chickens would give him good fortune in battle. And he also thought that he could foretell the future by watching the way the chickens ate.

Unfortunately, the chickens got seasick and wouldn’t eat at all. This was a very bad sign. The Roman soldiers on Claudius Pulcher’s boat got more and more nervous. “The gods are against us!” they whispered.

Claudius Pulcher got more and more irritated. Nothing he could do would make those chickens eat. So finally he ordered, “Throw the chickens overboard!”

Sure enough, he got badly beaten in the next battle. And all of his soldiers thought that they were defeated because they had thrown the sacred chickens into the sea.

The Carthaginians and Romans fought back and forth for a long time. Neither side could win. And then, one of the Carthaginian generals got a wonderful idea. Instead of attacking the Romans with ships, he would attack them with elephants.

Roman soldiers were camping near the Alps, up in the north of Italy, when they heard strange noises. They peered out of their tents into the swirling snow and mist. Suddenly, huge dark shapes loomed up in the snow. The ground shook. A herd of wild elephants was charging through the camp.

The Roman soldiers fled in terror. Many of them had never seen an elephant before. And these were no ordinary elephants. They were specially trained for battle. When they were told to attack, they spread their ears wide out to make their heads even larger. Their heads and ears were painted red, white and yellow, to make them look even more terrifying. Some of them were pulling carts full of armed Carthaginian soldiers, shooting arrows at the Roman troops. Others were carrying wooden boxes that contained even more attacking soldiers.

Some of the Romans did try to fight back. They ran for their horses and mounted, ready to attack the thundering beasts head on. But the horses were stricken with terror. They bolted, carrying the Roman soldiers off into the dark.

The Carthaginian general who planned this attack was named Hannibal. Hannibal saw that the battle between Carthage and Rome at sea was a stalemate—no one was winning. So while the two navies fought with each other, Hannibal took his army and forty elephants around the Mediterranean Sea by land.

Once Hannibal had gotten into Italy with his elephants, he roamed up and down Italy, burning villages and leaving Roman soldiers dead all through the countryside. The Romans were terrified. And they were afraid that Hannibal would come all the way to the city of Rome and burn it too.

Then a Roman general named Scipio thought of a plan to defeat Hannibal and his men. He gathered together the best Roman soldiers, sailed down to Carthage, and attacked the city itself. The city of Carthage wasn’t expecting to be attacked! And all the best Carthaginian soldiers were over in Italy. So the people of Carthage sent a message to Hannibal: “Come back to Carthage and help us!”

Hannibal left Italy and sailed across the African Sea to defend his home town. But his soldiers were so worn out from burning and sacking towns in Italy that they were defeated! Hannibal himself ran away and hid, in Asia Minor.

Finally, the city of Carthage was forced to surrender to Rome. When Hannibal heard this news, over in Asia Minor, he drank poison. He could not bear to think that his great city, Carthage, had been beaten by the Romans who were afraid of his elephants.

Note to Parent: The First Punic War was fought 264–241 BC/BCE; the Second Punic War took place 218–202 BC/BCE.