ABSTRACT
A NEW era was inaugurated with the Punic wars which came about shortly after the final conquest of Samnium, the retreat of Pyrrhus and the chastisement of Tarentum. Until then the Romans had found themselves opposed to loosely organized tribes and to kings at the head of bands greedy for booty. Neither tribes nor kings were capable of pursuing anything in the nature of a far-sighted policy, of any action requiring protracted effort or of a combined sea and land offensive. At the beginning of the third century Carthage represented the greatest power in the known world after the partition of the Alexandrian empire. Carthage had armies and fleets, tried diplomats, colonies or settlements throughout the western Mediterranean, and unlimited financial resources. The victor of Syracuse, it had signed with the Romans commercial treaties each of which was a fresh humiliation for Rome. After the capture of Tarentum and the annexation of the Greek cities to the Roman sphere of influence, conflict was inevitable between the great African city and the capital of Latium. Sicily furnished the occasion and the pretext. Rome might well have disappeared in the tragic duel that was the logical outcome of the great struggle which had previously taken place between the Greeks and Phœnicians: she was obliged, in the midst of warfare, to improvise a fleet and her rival seemed to have every advantage. In spite of terrible disasters, she won. When, after two periods of battles lasting in all for forty years she looked back upon the events which had decided her fate, she could evoke days of mourning when her squadrons were destroyed, when the enemy was approaching her walls with rapid strides, when the fields of Etruria and of the Sabine country were overrun by Carthaginian cavalry and soldiers were falling by tens of thousands. And yet all these defeats failed to crush her and even ended in brilliant victories. As a recompense for refusing to despair and for surmounting the most demoralizing crises she subjugated the arrogant plutocracy which had established itself on the soil of Africa and which had come near to converting Rome herself into a Phoenician colony.
