May 6, 2015: Notes

In Class today we took more notes on Rome. 

"5000 soldiers not in it for pay"

- The Roman army's elite heavy infantry 

- Recruited exclusively from Roman citizens

- Group of eight's a century 

- Usually on horseback/ cavalry 

- Shield, Sword, Dagger, and armor

Punic Wars

- The Punic Wars (264-146 B.C.E.)

- Rome vs. Carthage 

- Three wars

First Punic War (264-241 B.C.E.)

- Naval battles for control of the strategically located island of Sicily 

- Rome Wins this war 

Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.E.)

- 29 year old Carthaginian general Hannibal almost does the impossible: Taking Rome 

- attacks Rome from the NORTH after crossing the Iberia (Spain) and the Alps 

- lays seige to much of the peninsula for 15 years, but he can never get to Rome 

- Rome wins again 

Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.E.)

- Rome wanted to finally remove the threat of Carthage

- Scipio, Tiberius Gracchus, and others mercilessly attacked the city 

- Carthage was burned for 17 days; they city's wall 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 made into the Roman province of Africa

Economic change, social upheavel 

- Slaves poured into Italy (50,000 Carthaginians)

- By the end of the second century B.C.E. 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 not work on the farms for the rich 

- The big farms became a massive estates called Latifundia