Rome's Punic Wars

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In all of history, Rome was arguably one of the most powerful empires to ever exist. At its peak, the Roman Empire, which existed for nearly one thousand five hundred years, spanned across three continents and nearly six million five hundred thousand square miles of land. Rome’s official language—Latin—served as the origin for the five current Romance languages today, displaying its massive influence across the entire world. In fact, Rome’s system of a republic served as the origin for many democracies and governments in existence today. In order to expand this far, however, Rome adapted to become the most powerful empire in regards to military strength and magnificent landmass. In order to arise as a major world power, Rome had to make its …show more content…

After the Second Punic War, Rome was in massive debt. As Plutarch describes, “The first conflicts of this war brought great victories and also great disasters to the Romans,” outlining the benefits yet also downsides of war for the Romans (Plutarch). This holdback increased to an even greater extent, for Rome experienced massive devastation at the hands of Hannibal as he famously marched over the Alps with his Carthaginian army riding on elephants (McGill). This not only devastated Rome as a society but also ruined its land. Yet, as a result of this economic downfall, the farmers moved from their rural farmland to cities in order to look for work, leading to Roman urbanization. Because of shift of common farmers from farm to city, the aristocrats took over the devastated land for a relatively cheap price, creating a new sector of landowners with large plots of land while leaving others without any or too little land to compete with these mass producers. With these new plots of land, aristocrats needed laborers to work the land, so they replaced the farmers with slaves. This then led to an extreme change in the social system of Rome, for the slaves were unpaid, creating a wealth gap, and the farmers in the city remained unemployed, furthering inequality in Rome. While the aristocrats became wealthier with unpaid laborers, the farmers became poorer as they unsuccessfully located jobs in the city, and severe social change overtook Rome, increasing inequality and the wealth gap in society (McGill). However, this shift did have a positive outcome for Roman citizens and society as a whole. In order to employ the debt-ridden farmers, Rome declared war on Greece, providing its citizens with military-based jobs as well as further expanding the Roman territory. This adaption marks

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