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’s strength faded even as he continued to engage Roman armies in Southern Italy. Scipio then landed in North Africa thereby causing Carthage to recall Hannibal. In this way Scipio at last extracted Hannibal from Italy by not confronting him. This was a brilliant move, forever placing Scipio among the world’s best generals. Hannibal met General Scipio not far from Carthage at the battle of Zama in 202 BC, where Rome won the final battle of the Second Punic War. Reduced to little more than a small city-state on the Southern Mediterranean, Carthage would slowly grow prospers one last time. To his credit, Scipio did not burn Carthage to the ground or otherwise unwisely harm her citizens. His peace treaty did strip Carthage of its lands and its treasury, but considering what the Romans had done to other enemies, this was a peace long on generosity. Scipio thus won both the war and the peace. This has seldom been accomplished. Through his masterful victories and his thoughtful peace Scipio Africanus placed himself among the greatest men in antiquity. Eliminated as a threat, Carthage remained a semi-prosperous city at the edge of the empire, thus benefiting Rome through trade and taxes. Other Roman leaders destroyed the efforts of the gifted Scipio for reasons of pride and little else.

“Carthage must die” was the dull refrain of Cato, a Roman senator, who ended every speech in the Roman Senate with that slogan. Rome got its chance for another war with Carthage in 149 BC by siding with Numidia (an African state) against their old enemy. Carthage was a shadow of its former self and was quickly defeated by 146 BC, succumbing after a short siege. Rome razed the city, sowing salt on the land (thereby preventing crops being grown there) and declaring northern Africa a Roman colony. The inhabitants of Carthage were either murdered or taken away as slaves. Hannibal fled the city, but the emissaries of Rome followed. Discovered by Rome’s agents in the eastern Mediterranean, Hannibal died by his own hand far away from his beloved Carthage.

The Punic wars gave Rome control of the western Mediterranean and set Rome on the road to a massive empire. The key to its growth was its professional army that was rigorously trained, superbly disciplined, well armed, and well led. The Roman legions worked together and fought as a united entity. Often faced with enemies who outnumbered them dramatically, the Roman legions managed to outgeneral and outfight the less-disciplined throngs that defied them.

The Army, the Republic, and the Empire

The Roman Army after 107 BC centered on the legion, consisting of six thousand men divided into ten cohorts of six hundred men. Each cohort then divided into six “centuries” of one hundred men lead by a centurion. Support troops normally accompanied the legions, such as archers, slingers, cavalry, and skirmishers that may have numbered up to an additional six thousand per legion. The legion in formation had remarkable flexibility, and in the hands of generals like Julius Caesar, Marius, and Sulla, it proved to be nearly unbeatable. With these formations Rome conquered Greece, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, Portugal, Gaul (present-day France), part of England and Germany, the Balkans, Turkey, and for a time Mesopotamia.

As Rome expanded, its armies patrolled the empire, protected trade, and enforced Roman law. Whatever else Rome was, it was also an empire of trade. Numerous ships sailed the Mediterranean Sea, many with tons of cargo in their holds bound for the various ports around the empire. For trade the Romans constructed wooden super ships, some over 200 feet long, that could carry up to 2000 tons (that’s right—TONS) of cargo.[35] Obviously, the Romans were serious about trade. Roman conquests around the coast of Turkey, and its access to the Black Sea, permitted Rome’s traders to receive goods from the orient, central Asia, and other faraway places, spreading it about the empire on its fine roads and Mediterranean waterways. Observe that the Mediterranean Sea was at the very center