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	The Punic Wars were a series of three wars fought between the Roman Empire in Italy and the Carthaginian Empire in Africa, during the third and second centuries BC. The name Punic is derived from the word *Poenus,* the Latin term for the Carthaginians, who were of Phoenician descent. The wars can be regarded as the first major struggle between two great powers in history, and in terms of resources and loss of human life, were the greatest ever fought in the ancient world. They occurred when the might of Carthage was at its strongest and shortly after the Romans had completed their subjugation of Italy and were the result of a growing rivalry between the two powers, eventually sparked by events that led to a conflict over the possession of Sicily. The Romans tended to produce the more highly skilled military commanders, along with their superior army and weapons, but the greatest leader of them all was a Carthaginian who almost succeeded in crushing Rome completely. Hannibal Barca, who commanded the Carthaginian forces during the Second Punic War, led his troops across the Alpine mountains and invaded northern Italy with the intention of destroying the Roman Empire. In 146BC, after the two powers had been at war on and off for well over a century, the Romans finally invaded Carthage itself, razed it to the ground, massacred most of the citizens and sold the rest into slavery. The slaughter was one of the largest planned and concentrated executions of civilians before World War II, and the legend goes that the Romans spread salt all over the area so that no one would ever be able to inhabit it again.

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