After its conquest of most of the Italian peninsula-including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia-Rome focused its military might on countries beyond its borders. Starting around 230 B. C.E., it fought Illyria, a kingdom along the northern Adriatic Sea. The Republic wanted to end Illyrian pirate raids on Roman ships. With its successes, Rome won influence in several Greek cities in Illyria. Rome then slowly extended its control further into the Balkans, the region of Europe bordered by the Adriatic, Black, and Mediterranean Seas.
Roman troops also fought the Republic’s neighbors to the north, the Gauls. This tribe was related to the Celtic people who first settled Ireland and England. The Gauls lived in what is now France and Belgium, as well as the northern edge of modern Italy. The Romans battled the Gauls for centuries, and after 200 B. C.E. Roman troops advanced farther into their lands.
For more than 50 years, Rome’s most threatening foe was Carthage. The Carthaginians were descendants of the Phoenicians. Starting around 1200 B. C.E., the Phoenicians built a series of city-states based on their sea trade in the Mediterranean. Carthage was a Phoenician city that built its own empire along the coast of North Africa and parts of the Iberian Peninsula-modern-day Spain and Portugal. As Rome became a major power in the western Mediterranean, it fought several wars with Carthage. These wars are now known as the Punic Wars, after the Roman name for the Carthaginians: Poenus. After defeating Carthage in 202 B. C.E., Rome was the master of the region, although it did not take direct control of all Carthaginian lands until a little more than 50 years later.
Rome had several advantages as it expanded across Italy and then beyond its borders. The city developed around farmlands that provided plenty of food for a growing population. Rome also had access to a major
River and the sea, helping its trade. It had a central location on the Italian peninsula and could easily send troops in any direction. The Romans believed their gods had chosen them to rule a growing empire. Rome’s leaders granted political rights to most defeated foes, making them more willing to peacefully accept Roman rule. That peace, in turn, helped the empire’s trade expand, and wealth from the outer areas flowed back to Rome. Rome was able to draw on the best ideas of the people around it-especially the Greeks-and add its own strengths of discipline and organization.
World History
