Roman Legion

• 5000 soldiers, not in it for pay (not yet)
• The Roman army's elite heavy infantry
• Recruited exclusively from Roman Citizens
• Groups of eight's a century
•  On horseback is the century
• Shield, sword, dagger, and armor and tunic

The Punic Wars (264-146 BCE)

• Rome vs Carthage
• three wars

First Punic War (264-241 BCE)

• Naval battles for control of the strategically located island of Sicily
• Rome wins this one

Second Punic War (281-201 BCE)

• 29 year-old Carthaginian general Hannibal almost does the impossible: take Rome
• Attacks Rome from the north after crossing Ibena (Spain) and the Alps
• Lays siege too much of the peninsula for 15 years, but he never can get Rome

Third and final Punic War (149-146 BCE)

• Rome wanted to finally remove the threat of Carthage
• Scipio, Tiberius Gracchus, and other mercilessly attacked the city
• Carthage was burned for 17 days; the city's walls and buildings were utterly destroyed
• When the war ended, the last 50,000 people in the city were sold into slavery
• The rest of Carthage's territories were annexed, and mad into the Roman province of Africa

• slaves poured into Italy (50,000 Carthaginians, 150,000 Greek Pows
• by the end of the second century BCE there were over a million slaves in Italy
• small farmers lost their land to aristocrats (for little or no money) if they couldn't pay their debts, sometimes because the men of the farm were fighting battles
• slaves did the work on the farms for the rich
• the big farms became massive estates called latifundia