Editing Roman Empire (section)

=== The Punic Wars ===

Meanwhile, Carthage, the city once ruled by Dido, was the dominant superpower of the Western Mediterranean, unmatched in wealth and influence, able to bend the Greek kings to their will. Eventually there began to be some friction between the two groups as Carthage moved into Sicily and Sardinia, compromising Roman trade in the Mediterranean. This led to three wars called the Punic Wars where the descendants of Aeneas and Dido clashed.

The first Punic War (264 BCE to 241 BCE) involved the Romans fighting the Carthaginians and its Greek allies over Sicily and Sardinia. The Romans begin to take to the sea for the first time. Rome suffered massive casualties at first, until they reverse-engineered a Carthaginian ship and started pushing back (with the incredible innovation of adding a ramp to the front)... while still taking massive causalities.  See Rome was still pretty new to this whole "navy" thing and kept losing fleets to storms.  But after twenty three years of fighting, Carthage threw in the towel, paying Rome over three thousand talents of silver to leave them alone (a talent of silver, 26 kilos, was the usual measure of enough silver to maintain and crew a ship for a month).  [[Nazis|This crushing economic burden fostered resentment]] making a second war all but inevitable.

Eventually shit happened involving a Greek colony and war sparks again. A guy named Hannibal, whose father commanded the Carthaginian forces last time, swears revenge on the Romans. He invades Spain, [[Creed|brings elephants over the Alps]] and into Italy (at heavy cost), and generally starts wrecking shit, obliterating every Roman army he comes across. The only thing stopping him from destroying Rome is his army is too small to lay siege properly so the Roman regroup under Fabius "[[Troll|The Delayer]]" Maximus, who used hit-and-run tactics to keep the army away from Rome, intending to starve him out rather than risk a direct fight.. Meanwhile, Roman general Scipio Africanus leads his army through Carthagian Spanish colonies all the way through Africa to Carthage itself, Hannibal is called back to defend his home, and gets defeated. Carthage then becomes a dependent "ally" to the Republic, basically being sucked dry of its resources. Eventually around 149 BC Carthage was rebelling and pissing off the Romans again thus resulting in the Third Punic War. A few years later [[Exterminatus|Carthage itself was destroyed, the earth around the city was salted,]] [[Grimdark|and the surviving population was sold into slavery]]...or so the legend goes, as there isn't really any good evidence for the Romans having salted the land but there's evidence ''against'' it (Rome rebuilt and recolonized the area later, and salt was probably too valuable in those times for that to happen).