Segment eight A, introduction.

The turning point in the history of the roman republic was their second war against the Carthaginian Empire.

This so-called second Punic War, or even Hannibalic War, lasted from two eighteen to two zero one BC.

Rome entered this war as one of several Mediterranean powers

but emerged from this war as the superpower in the Mediterranean.

There was a great deal of suffering, bloodshed

and excruciating uncertainty in between, which can be summed up in the phrase,

Hannibal ad portas, which means Hannibal ad portas

Hannibal is at the door, as indeed he was.

For centuries Roman parents would say this to scare the togas off of their little children.

But there was a time when all Rome shook at the mention of Hannibal.

Rome spent years on the ropes.

In outlasting Hannibal and then by defeating Hannibal,

Rome was able to embark on, apparently,

its true destiny. I must warn you that

this lecture has oodles of historical content.

In segment eight B; Evil Empires, we learn

why Carthage became the Roman's greatest example of an evil empire. Every superpower has an especially hated enemy that it can use

to rile its people up to superhuman efforts.

For years and years and years we had the Soviet Union.

For years before that we had the evil Nazi Germans

and evil Japanese, and so on. For the Romans, the Carthaginians certainly earned their evil empire status.

Even so, the Romans and Carthaginians had actually,

prior to their wars, experienced two and a half centuries of peaceful and profitable relations.

The Romans won their first go-around over the island of Sicily in a war

that took from two sixty four BC to two forty one BC.

But to do so they had to create their very first navy,

and they had to invent, by chance, a brilliant new naval technology.

Even so, the Carthaginians just got knocked down.

They would get up again. Segment eight C;

Hannibal Ad Portas, describes the great gut-check of Roman history called The Second Punic War.

But the Romans and the Carthaginians knew there would be a second round.

After years of tense waiting

Hannibal utterly shocked the Romans by coming in over the Alps to invade Italy

in two eighteen BC.

At the Battle of Cannae in two sixteen BC,

two Roman consular armies were ripped to shreds

and Rome discovered that

there was only one safe thing to do when Hannibal was in the country, run.

Yet Hannibal could not muster the men and resources necessary to beat the Romans either.

A bold Roman invasion of Carthage forced Hannibal to go back to Africa.

As close as Rome had come to total defeat,

her victory to, was nearly total.

We will see in segment eight D that Rome becomes a superpower

and how Rome coped with both the positive and

negative consequences of victory over Carthage.

Because Rome was now the old alpha dog

in the Mediterranean, she was also the number one target of the other powers.

And again, to quote Wilt Chamberlain

'nobody roots for Goliath.'

She especially worried the large empires of the east, which had once been part of Alexander's empire.