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Roman Legion

• 5000 soldiers

• The Roman army's elite heavy infantry
• Recruited exclusively from Roman citizens

• Group of eighty's a century
• On horseback is the cavalry
• Shield, sword, dagger, and armor and tunic

Punic War

• 264-146 BCE
• Rome vs. Carthage
• Three wars

First Punic War

• 264-241 BCE
• Naval battle for control of Sicily
• Rome wins this one

Second Punic War

• 218-201 BCE
• 29 year old Carthaginian general Hannibal almost does the impossible: taking Rome
• Attacks Rome from NORTH after crossing Iberia (Spain) and the Alps
• Lays siege to much of the peninsula for 15 years, but he never can get to Rome

Third Punic War

• 149-146 BCE
• Rome wanted to finally remove the threat of Carthage
• Scipio, Tiberius Gracchus, and others mercilessly attacked the city
• Carthage was burned for 17 days; the city's walls 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

• Slaves poured into Italy
• By the end of the second century BCE there were over a million slaves in Italy
• Small farmers lost their land to aristocrats if they couldn't pay their debts, sometimes because the men of the farm were fighting battles
• Slaves did the work for the rich on the farms for the rich