The Punic Wars, 264–146 BC: Rome's Fleet, Hannibal's March and the Fall of Carthage

A Navy Copied from a Wreck

In 260 BC the Roman Republic, which had never fought a battle at sea, built about 120 warships in one season, copying a stranded Carthaginian quinquereme. Carthage had ruled the western Mediterranean from its harbours for centuries. Nineteen years later the newcomer had beaten that navy and taken Sicily, and the rivalry that followed ended in 146 BC with Carthage burnt to the ground.

The three Punic Wars (264–241, 218–201 and 149–146 BC) are usually told as Hannibal's story, and the map follows his army from Saguntum over the Alps to Cannae and Zama. Two quieter questions decided them: how a nation of farmer-soldiers learnt to win at sea, and why fifteen years of Hannibal in Italy never broke Rome's alliances.

264–241 BC: Learning to Fight at Sea

The first war began at Messana, on the Sicilian side of the strait, whose Italian mercenary rulers asked Rome for help. Rome crossed in 264 BC, and the map opens with the island divided: purple Carthage in the west, teal Syracuse under King Hiero II in the south-east and a red foothold at Messana. Hiero changed sides in 263 and stayed Rome's ally until his death in 215, and his kingdom stays teal until Rome takes Syracuse in 212. In 262–261 the legions took Agrigentum, Carthage's main base on the south coast.

On land Rome was winning, but Carthage's fleet supplied its fortresses and raided Italy at will, so in 260 the Senate built a navy. Its ships were heavier and slower than Carthage's, and the Romans made up for it with the corvus, a spiked boarding bridge that turned a sea battle into an infantry fight. At Mylae the consul Duilius took around fifty ships (the counts differ). In 256 about 330 Roman ships beat some 350 Carthaginian ones off Cape Ecnomus and carried the consul Regulus to Africa, where his army (a dark red disc) marched from Aspis to Tunis and was destroyed in 255.

Learning cost Rome dearly. The fleet bringing Regulus' survivors home in 255 sailed into a storm and lost 384 of its 464 ships, with perhaps 100,000 men, most of them allied rowers, and at Drepana in 249 Claudius Pulcher lost most of another fleet. On land Rome took Panormus in 254, and by 249 Carthage held only the western tip of Sicily. With the treasury empty, wealthy Romans lent the state the money for about 200 new quinqueremes, which caught the Carthaginian relief convoy off the Aegates Islands in 241. Carthage gave up Sicily and agreed to pay 3,200 talents over ten years. Rome built over a thousand galleys in the war.

241–219 BC: Sardinia, the Gauls and an Empire in Spain

Carthage could not pay the mercenaries it brought home from Sicily, and they rose with its Libyan subjects in the Mercenary War (241–237). Rome used the crisis to take Sardinia and Corsica and another 1,200 talents, a seizure that even Polybius, who admired Rome, called unjust. In the north it beat a Gallic invasion at Telamon in 225, and by 221 the map has turned most of the grey Cisalpine Gauls red.

Hamilcar Barca looked west. In 237 he crossed to Gades with his nine-year-old son Hannibal and spent nine years conquering southern Spain, rich in silver and soldiers: the thin purple strip of Phoenician ports swells into the whole valley of the Baetis (the Guadalquivir) by his death in 228. His son-in-law Hasdrubal founded New Carthage (Cartagena) in about 227 and promised Rome not to cross the Ebro in arms. In 219 Hannibal, in command since 221, besieged Saguntum, a city south of the Ebro that Rome counted as a friend, and Rome declared war.

218–203 BC: Hannibal in Italy

Hannibal left New Carthage in the late spring of 218 with, by Polybius' count, 90,000 foot and 12,000 horse. Here the map slows down to months: the dark purple disc crosses the Ebro in July, the Rhône in late September and the Alps in late October, after some fifteen days in early snow. Polybius says 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry reached the Po valley. Which pass they used, and where they crossed the Rhône, is still argued over.

The fleet from the first war mattered here too: Rome held the sea, so Hannibal had to walk to Italy, and so did every reinforcement he later got. The Gauls of the Po valley rose at once (the grey returns over Lombardy and Emilia), and Hannibal won at the Ticinus in November and at the Trebia around the winter solstice. In June 217 he trapped the consul Flaminius by Lake Trasimene, and on 2 August 216 he surrounded some 80,000 men at Cannae, the largest army Rome had yet put in the field. Polybius says about 70,000 died there, Livy 48,200 Romans.

After Cannae Capua, the second city of Italy, went over to Hannibal, with the Hirpini, the Lucanians, most of the Bruttians and, in 212, Tarentum: the purple that spreads over the south in the 216 and 212 keyframes. Rome refused to negotiate. It avoided pitched battles, besieged the cities that had defected and fought in Spain and Sicily at the same time. Syracuse, which had joined Carthage, fell in 212 (Archimedes died in the sack), and Capua in 211, although Hannibal marched to the gates of Rome to draw the besiegers away. After his brother Hasdrubal's relief army was destroyed at the Metaurus in 207, only Bruttium was left to him, and in 203 he sailed home from Croton.

Why Rome's Alliances Held

Hannibal's strategy rested on one idea. Rome's strength was its Italian allies, and if he beat its armies often enough they would leave it. After the Trebia and Trasimene he released allied prisoners without ransom and told them he had come to free Italy. Polybius reckons that in 225 the Romans and their allies could put more than 700,000 foot and 70,000 horse into the field, many times anything Hannibal ever commanded.

Much of the south did defect, and the core held. The Latin colonies, the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the peoples of central Italy and the Greek cities of Neapolis and Rhegium stayed with Rome, and on the map the red never leaves central Italy, coastal Campania or the toe opposite Messana. At the worst moment, in 209, twelve of the thirty Latin colonies told the Senate they had no more men or money to give; the other eighteen kept paying, and none changed sides. Hannibal also had no siege train or reliable port, so he could beat armies but rarely take walled towns, while Rome could always raise another army.

202–146 BC: Zama and the End of Carthage

The war was decided outside Italy. Publius Cornelius Scipio, whose father and uncle had been killed in Spain in 211, landed at Tarraco in 210, took New Carthage in a single day in 209 and destroyed the last Carthaginian army in Spain at Ilipa in 206; his dark red disc follows him there and on to Sicily. In 204 he landed near Utica, in 203 he burnt the camps of Hasdrubal Gisco and the Numidian king Syphax, and Carthage recalled Hannibal. With the cavalry of the Numidian prince Masinissa, Scipio beat him at Zama in 202. The peace of 201 left Carthage its land in Africa and little else: ten ships, a debt of 10,000 talents over fifty years and no war without Rome's consent.

Numidia tells the last half century. Masinissa, now king and Rome's ally, took Carthaginian land piece by piece while Rome's arbitrators looked away: the coastal Emporia around 162–161 (gold on the map from 161), then the Great Plains and the district of Tusca at a disputed date before 149. When Carthage fought back and lost at Oroscopa in 151, it broke the treaty. Rome declared war in 149, took the city's weapons, ordered its people to move inland and, when they refused, besieged Carthage for three years. In the spring of 146 Scipio Aemilianus stormed it, some 50,000 survivors were sold as slaves and its land became the province of Africa. Rome sacked Corinth the same year, and the last keyframe shows Macedonia and mainland Greece red as well.

How to Read the Map

Red is Rome, purple Carthage, teal Syracuse and gold Numidia; the grey Cisalpine Gauls and Macedon are context. The small dark discs are armies: Hannibal's in dark purple (219–202 BC), Scipio Africanus' in dark red (210–202) and Regulus' in Africa (256–255). A disc marks where the army was at each keyframe and slides in a straight line to the next, so it may cross a sea or a mountain range the army went around.

Pins mark battles and sieges, red for Roman and purple for Carthaginian successes; small dots mark Hannibal's march in 218 and smaller events. Most of the 35 keyframes are dated to the year, but 218–216 BC gets its months. The style is vintage-soft: parchment, with borders that fade into each other.

How the Map Was Made

No surveyed border survives from the third century BC, so the map uses modern units as building blocks: Italian and Spanish provinces, Tunisian governorates and Natural Earth coastlines. Who held which block at each keyframe follows the English Wikipedia articles on the wars and their campaigns, on Masinissa and on the Fossa regia, the ditch that later marked Carthage's last territory. Macedon comes from Cliopatria, a dataset of historical borders from the Seshat Global History Databank. The coasts are modern, although silt has since closed some harbours (Utica, then a port, now lies inland).

Each region goes to the right side, but the lines between regions are modern. Numidia is drawn as one kingdom, although until 203 it was two (the Masaesyli of Syphax and the Massylii of Masinissa). Army sizes, the dead at Cannae and the ships at Ecnomus come from Polybius and Livy, who wrote decades and nearly two centuries later and did not always agree, and the Alpine pass, the Rhône crossing and the battlefield of Zama are still debated.

Chronological Timeline

• 264 BC: Rome crosses to Sicily; Syracuse joins Rome in 263
• 262–261 BC: Rome takes Agrigentum
• 260 BC: Rome's first fleet wins at Mylae
• 256–255 BC: Ecnomus; Regulus invades Africa and is beaten
• 254 BC: Rome takes Panormus
• 249 BC: Roman defeat at Drepana
• 241 BC: Aegates Islands; Carthage gives up Sicily
• 241–237 BC: Mercenary War; Rome seizes Sardinia and Corsica
• 237–228 BC: Hamilcar Barca conquers southern Spain
• About 227 BC: New Carthage founded
• 225–222 BC: Rome conquers the Po valley
• 219 BC: Hannibal besieges Saguntum
• 218 BC: Hannibal crosses the Alps; Ticinus and Trebia
• 21 June 217 BC: Lake Trasimene
• 2 August 216 BC: Cannae
• 213–212 BC: siege of Syracuse; Tarentum goes over to Hannibal
• 211 BC: Hannibal marches on Rome; Capua falls
• 209 BC: Scipio takes New Carthage; Rome retakes Tarentum
• 207 BC: battle of the Metaurus
• 206 BC: Ilipa; Carthage loses Spain
• 204–203 BC: Scipio lands in Africa; Hannibal leaves Italy
• 202 BC: battle of Zama
• 201 BC: peace; Carthage keeps only its land in Africa
• 197 BC: two Roman provinces in Spain
• About 162–161 BC: Masinissa takes the Emporia
• 151 BC: Carthage defeated by Masinissa at Oroscopa
• 149–146 BC: siege and destruction of Carthage; Corinth sacked