The Punic War, which took place between 264 and 146 BC and was divided into three phases, was a famous war between Ancient Rome and Carthage for control of the western Mediterranean. In a long confrontation of more than a hundred years, at the end of the Second Punic War, Rome's offensive in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa was victorious, and successfully forced the Carthaginian general Hannibal to leave Italy, thus occupying absolute dominance at the strategic level.
Shortly after the war, the Romans, fearing for Carthage's economic recovery, demanded hannibal's surrender, forcing him to exile himself to western Asia, serving the Seleucids, the Kingdom of Armenia, and Then Bithynia. Rome's continued retention of the remnants of Carthage after its victory stemmed from the urgent need to rest the anti-Roman forces that had been destroyed by Hannibal and reconquest the peninsula, and on the other hand, because Carthage and Rome had agreed on a 50-year war reparations period. Of course, as soon as the 50-year period ended, Rome renewed its conquest of Carthage and razed the north African city of Carthage to the ground. Interestingly, after the Second Punic War, Rome, as soon as it gained control of the western Mediterranean, quickly set its sights on the Greek world to the east. So what prompted Rome to launch the Crusade, and how did they step by step encompass the Mediterranean Sea into their own inland sea?
※ Safe Drive: Shine the sword to Illyria and Macedonia? ※
Since the collapse of Alexander's empire, the whole of West Asia and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean sea have been in a succession war for more than two hundred years, and the Seleucid dynasty that eventually occupied West Asia, the Ptolemaic dynasty that divided Egypt, and the Macedonian Antik dynasty sitting in the Aegean region formed a three-legged power in the Greek world. Unlike the other two dynasties, however, the Aegean region of the Macedonian Antik dynasty, with its dense mountains and intertwined coastlines, was not conducive to the creation of a truly centralized state. Because of this, the Antiochus sphere of influence was still filled with many independent city-states, and the conquest of these city-states became the primary task of Macedonia in maintaining its hegemony. Against this background, when Macedonia sent troops to defeat the Spartans at the invitation of the Achaean city-state alliance from 220 BC to 217 BC, Shunshi also incorporated these independent city-states into its sphere of influence and even territory.
As the Macedonians struggled to consolidate their hegemony, the Romans launched the Second Illyrian War in 219 BC. Illyria is located on the Adriatic coast of the northwestern Part of the Greek Peninsula, across the sea from the Apennine Peninsula, although it cannot be counted as a part of the Greek world, and the purpose of the Roman cross-sea landing here is only to maintain the safety of navigation in the Adriatic Sea, but it also poses a dangerous signal to the situation in the Balkan Peninsula. After all, no one could guarantee where Rome's next strategic goals would be. Therefore, when the Second Punic War broke out in 228 BC, Macedonia also began to act opportunistically, on the one hand, to take advantage of Hannibal's repeated defeat of Rome to obtain the possibility of landing on the Apennines through alliance with Carthage, and on the other hand, to follow the precedent of Alexander the Great's leadership of the entire Greek crusade and lead its allies to conquer Rome in the west to further consolidate its hegemony. Based on this, Macedonia participated in Hannibal's "arc of blockade of Rome" from the Iberian and Apennines to the Balkans.
It was precisely because of geopolitical security considerations and the need for its own hegemonic position that Macedonia, shortly after formally concluding an alliance agreement with Hannibal, sent its navy to attack Illyria under Roman captivity in the summer of 216 BC, known as the "First Macedonian War". The reason why the Macedonians abandoned the land crossing of the mountains to attack Illyria, but instead achieved this goal by forming a navy, was because it was their real idea to cross the sea against Rome. In the end, both Macedonian and Hannibal were defeated by the Romans. Since Macedonians had taken advantage of the fire while Hannibal's army was wreaking havoc on the Italian peninsula, it was only natural that the Romans would be able to free up their hands and send troops to take revenge on Macedonia.
※ Economic drive: conquest of the Greek world and control of the Mediterranean?※
In fact, after the Second Punic War, Rome's territory had expanded from the Apennine Peninsula to Iberia and numerous islands in the western Mediterranean, which led to a sharp increase in the share of the maritime commerce economy from Roman society. Carthage, once the hegemon of Mediterranean trade, had declined, and the Greeks had become Rome's greatest competitors in commerce. More importantly, with the expansion of the outside world, economic leaps and population security, the area of arable land in the "Latinum" region that once depended for survival became more and more difficult to support the volume of Rome. The search for new agricultural areas was conducive to maintaining the functioning of the Roman agricultural economy, and it was in the interest of Rome's emerging merchant class to have these new agricultural production areas (i.e., commodity exporters) controlled by Rome itself.
Rome had just absorbed many of Hannibal's military tactics and strategic diplomacy ideas, and quickly applied them in the Balkans and Asia Minor. As mentioned above, due to the fragmented topographical features of the Aegean region, it was difficult for Macedonia to establish a totalitarian rule in the full sense, so it gave the Romans a lot of room for diplomatic operations. In 200 BC, Rome, which had just won the Second Punic War, launched the Second Macedonian War in the name of helping Pergamum (the Ionian region of Asia Minor) and Rhodes maintain their independence. At this time, the Greek world as a whole was far more powerful than Rome, but due to the long tradition of city-states due to geographical factors, many Of the Greek city-states placed under Macedonian rule, in order to regain their independence, regarded the Romans as liberators of all Greece, including the Achaean League that had once reinforced Macedonia in order to defend Sparta.
In this way, the Romans, with a strong economic and military foundation and diplomatic skills, soon won the Second Macedonian War. Shortly after forcing Macedonia to retreat to its territory, the Romans clashed with the Seleucid dynasty in 192 BC, the Antioch War. It turned out that when Macedonian power withdrew from the Aegean coast, the Seleucid Dynasty thought that this was a good time to expand to the Greek peninsula and sent troops to the Thracian region. However, just as Macedonia thought it could shake Roman rule over the Apennine Peninsula on its own, the Seleucid ambitions for the Greek Peninsula also despised the strength and determination of the Romans. In the end, Seleucus suffered a crushing defeat on both land and sea fronts, which not only led to Rome becoming the sole maritime power in the Mediterranean region, but also led to the complete separation of Bactria and Sabbath from their own rule, and never again.
※ Geopolitical drive: The road to hegemony encompassing the Mediterranean coast?※
If the early Roman Republic's conquests to the east were due to the safety of navigation (the two Illyrian Wars) and the threat of war (the First Macedonian War), and thereafter were only a trade-off between the desire for arable land and the desire for control of the trade routes (the Second Macedonian War and the Antioch War), then after the fall of Carthage, Macedonia, and Seleucus, the driving factor for Rome's next conquest was more geopolitical. Between 171 and 168 BC, Macedonia's intention to renew its expansion into Thrace and Illyrian territory was met with strong opposition from Rome, and the Third Macedonian War broke out. After this war, Macedonia was divided into four autonomous republics, which had become Roman dependencies on a de facto level. In 149 BC, in response to the Macedonian dissatisfaction with the four autonomous republics (and also with Roman rule), Rome sent troops to suppress it, and in 146 BC completely included the Greek region within the Roman territory. In the same year, Carthage, which had just completed the 50-year indemnity period, was attacked by Rome, and the north African city of Carthage was razed to the ground.
At this point, the Mediterranean Sea and the European coast on the north side, the Asian coast on the east side, and the homeland of Carthage in North Africa were all called the territory of the Roman Republic, so that only the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt in a remote corner was left outside the Mediterranean world constructed by the Romans. Egypt was placed by Rome at the end because it was itself the most important export of commodities (handicrafts, agricultural products) around the Mediterranean, and its relatively independent geopolitical structure (the main competitor was only the Seleucid dynasty in the northeast, which tended to ally with Rome) and did not have much geopolitical competition with Rome. More importantly, Egypt's food production was able to compensate well for the growing needs of Rome (rushing to war would trigger a food crisis in Rome), which is the root cause of Rome's efforts to help Egypt defend against the Seleucid Dynasty and repeatedly coordinate the power struggles within the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Of course, later, when The Roman power gradually spread to the Black Sea coast, Gaul, and even as far as Britain, based on the geopolitical logic of "lying on the side of the bed to allow others to snore", Egypt was eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire.
In summary, Rome began to expand beyond the Apennines after the Pyrrhusian And Punic Wars, which led to the Punic Wars. In order to ensure the safety of navigation in the Adriatic Sea on the eastern side of the Apennines and to eliminate the threat of war in Macedonia, Rome sent troops to the Balkan Peninsula on several occasions. Later, with the end of the Second Punic War, Rome was able to free up its hands to concentrate on the affairs of Greece, and actively participated in the affairs of the Greek world in the Balkans, Asia Minor, and even West Asia based on economic drivers, and eventually annexed Carthage, the Greek Peninsula, the western coastal region of Seleucus, and Egypt due to geopolitical drivers.