The Second Pinic War: The Causes Of The Second Punic War

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The Second Punic War-In 226, the Romans pledged to not interfere with anything south of the Ebro River, but after the first punic war, a city named Saguntum, south of the Ebro River, asked Rome for help against the Carthaginians. The Roman Senate responded favorably, and ignored the pledge. The Romans helped, but the Carthaginians won when Saguntum fell under their siege. This lead to the Romans declaring war, which was the Start of the Second Punic War. This war last from 218 BC until 201 BC, and caused Rome greater stress than the first war. Carthaginian General Hannibal marched a force of troops and elephants through the Alps to invade Italy. At the battle of Cannae in 216, Hannibal killed over 30,000 romans in one day. Hannibal also had …show more content…

Because Hannibal stayed for a decade, more than 50 percent of Roman adult males spent at least seven years serving in the military. This disrupted the Roman agriculture greatly because the wives and children could not manage the upkeep of the farm, so the family would go into debt and ultimately had to sell their land to upper class land owners. These wealthy land owners would then take the lands and create huge estates called latifundias. Around this time, there was also an influx in the Roman population, so Rome was not only had landless and poor families, but it was full of these people, which made Roman politics very divided. The Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, tried to solve this problem. Tiberius won plebeian tribune in 133 BC, and upset the Senate greatly through his reforms. He redistributed public lands to landless Romans, financed this reform without permission from the senate, and decided to stand as tribune for the following year which was unconstitutional. Ultimately, his agrarian reforms, and other policies made the Senate so made that they arranged to murder him, and did in 133 BC. His brother, Gaius was elected tribune in 123 and 122 BC. Gaius continued Tiberius’s agrarian reforms, pushed public works for the poor so they could have employment, proposed to give citizenship to some Italians, and establish trials for senators …show more content…

Because they decided to go against the rich and powerful senate by giving power and land to the poorer people, and power to the etruscans, they were both killed by the senate. This shows that during this time, the Senate was so powerful that they were not to be messed with. The rich were oppressing the poor, and did not like it when any power was given to these people. By them killing the Gracchi brothers it definitely sent the message that the senate is not to be messed with. This also furthered the division of the time. There were now to groups of people, the populares, which were the people who promoted the ideas of the common people, and the optimates, which were the people who promoted the interest of the rich or nobles. Overall, the murder and forced suicide of the Gracchi brothers created even more political unrest, division, and violence throughout the

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