How did the Roman Empire win the war against Carthage?

Question

RavVid · Accepted Answer

As I guess you'll know they tried and tried again and didn't accept failure. It was really innovative of them to train rowers on land. Plus innovate with a draw bridge (forget the correct name) to smack down on a Carthage ship so they could better use their land fighting skills. I do wonder how they disengaged the drawbridge if they had spikes at the end as I have seen drawn or how they bridged if they didn't.

I seem to remember the Carthaginians had a kit based approach to building ships and Rome got or deduced the Ikea plans. Therefore they were able to short cut the ship advantage out. (I may be confusing with the venetian ship factories).

But I think the primary reason has to be no matter how severe the defeats were they still could recruit another army. Cannae was a huge loss of the officer class and probably the NCO (centurian) class but they soon had another army in the field. That has to mean the ordinary Roman citizens were very willing to die for Rome and that has to be their biggest advantage.

However the third Punic war destroyed the Roman Republic and it's base the stalwart Roman farmer. They came back to find they didn't have farms any more. Sad. It is one off the big what-if's I think. Rome never found a good way to handle succession in the empire period. Had Rome kept a functional republic and not outsourced it's army, might the Western Empire lasted much longer?

Drewtate · Accepted Answer

1st one they reversed engineered carthaginean warships and mass production techniques and to overcome the superiority of carthage's naval skill over the Roman navy they invented a boarding device and techniques that turned naval battles jnto land battles where roman infantry had the advantage.

In 2nd war after massive defeats by hannibal they got absolutely ruthless employing a strategy of denying handball battle and scorched earth so hanibal couldn't get the resources he needed to raise new troops or get food for his army and using cavalry to hit and run carthages camps in Italy. They also used diplomacy to stop the Alexanderian successor states and Greek cities from allying with hanibal. The Romans did this to hanibal for 15 years, weakening his army, trapping it in Italy while conquering carthage territory in Spain and then invading carthage in North Africa so hanibal had to return to defend it. Carthage preferred to employ mercenaries over carthage citizens so the Romans bought up the best mercenaries like the Numibian cavalry & elephants. Hanibal was a great general but he made a mistake thinking that after he bested the Romans in battle that they would simply give up. Hanibal went on to serve as an advisor to some of the Alexanderian successor states that would later war and be conquered be Rome.

purplepoppy · Accepted Answer

Weren't there 3 wars? I'm guessing they just killed more people than the carthagens.

Jennz6 · Accepted Answer

I don’t know 🤷‍♀️, not really as smart as you

RyanEC · Answer

As I understand for the first war they were fairly evenly matched, maybe Rome had better tactics that payed off in the naval battle.
In the second war Hannable invaded Italy and did a lot of damage to the Roman heartland but too many resources were spent attacking and not defending so when Rome invaded Carthage they were pretty defenseless.
In the third war Rome was so much bigger they they easily destroyed Carthage.

AviatorTom · Answer

Determination, innovation, superb training and best technology.

Mettbltt · Answer

The Carthage army was very tired from previous wars and Scipio was well prepared for this war.

Anonymous · Answer

Eh... their days were numbered once the Romans figured out how to replicate their ships.

NamerOfStars · Answer

Which one?

How did the Roman Empire win the war against Carthage?

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