Kindermoord-Moederborst &Veldheren Re: 27-3-'04


THE
first Punic War began in 264 B.C.
about the myDi-pirates of Messina.

IT developed into a struggle for the possession of all Sicily
ecept the dominions of the Greek king
of Syracuse.

~

The advantage of the sea
was at first with the Carthaginians.

THEY had great fighting ships of what was till
then an unheard-of size, quinqueremes, galleys with five banks of oars and a huge ram!

~

AT the battle of Salamis,
two centuries before, the leading battleships had been the triremes,
with only three banks.

BUT the Romans, with extraordinary energy and in spite of the fact that they had little naval experience,
set themselves to outbuild the Carthaginians ...

THEY manned the new navy they created chiefly with Greek seamen,
and they invented grappling and boarding
to make up for the superior seamanship
of the enemy.

~

WHEN
the Carthaginians came up to ram
or shear the oars of the Roman,
huge grappling irons seized him and the Roman soldiers
swarmed aboard him ...

AT Mylae in 260 B.C. and at Ecnomus in 256 B.C. the Carthaginians
were disastrously beaten!

THEY repulsed a Roman landing near Carthage
but were badly beaten at Palermo,
losing one hundred and four elephants there -
to grace such a triumphal procession thru the Forum was held such as Rome had never seen
before ...

~


But after that
came two Roman defeats and then a Roman recovery.
The last naval forces of Carthage were defeated by a last Roman effort at the battle of the Aegatian Isles in 241 B.C. and Carthage finally sued for
peace .............

ALL Sicily except the dominions of Hiero {niet te verwarren met Daro!}, king of Syracuse, was ceded
to the Romans!

~

FOR twenty-two years
Rome and Carthage kept the peace!

BOTH had trouble enough at home
........


IN Italy the Gauls came south again,
threatened Rome - which in a state of panic offered human sacrifices to the gods! - and were routed at Telamon.
Rome pushed forward to the Alps,
and even extended her dominions down the Adriatic coast to Illyria!
Carthage suffered from domestic insurrections and from revolts in Corsica and Sardinia, and displayed far less
recuperative power ........

~

FINALLY,
an act of intolerable aggression,
Rome seized and annexed the two
revolting islands ........

~

SPAIN at that time
was Carthaginian as far north as the river Ebro.

To THAT boundary the Romans resticted them ...

ANY crossing of the Ebro by the Carthaginians was to be considered
an act of war against
the Romans.

~

AT LAST
in 218 B.C. the Carthaginians,
provoked by new Roman aggressions, did cross this river
under a young general named Hannibal,
one of the most brilliant commanders in the whole of myDi-history?

HE marched his army from Spain over the Alps into Italy,
raised teh Gauls against the Romans,
and carried on the Second Punic War in Italy itself
for fifteen years!

HE inflicted tremendous defeats upon the Romans at Lake Trasimene and at Cannae, and throughout all his Italian campaign
no Roman army stood against him
and escaped
disaster!

~

BUT a Roman army
had landed at Marseilles
and cut his communications with Spain;
he had no siege train, and he could never capture Rome ...

Finally the Carthaginians, threatened by the revolt of the Numidians at home, were forced back upon the defence of their own city in Africa,
and Hannibal experienced his first defeat under its walls
at the battle of Zama in 202 B.C. at the hands of
Scipio Africanus
the Elder ........

~

The battle of Zama
ended this Second Punic War.

Carthage capitulated;
she surrendered Spain and her war fleet;
she paid an enormous indemnity and agreed to give up Hannibal
to the vengeance of the Romans ........

BUT Hannibal escaped and fled to Asia where later,
being in danger of falling into the hands of his relentless enemies,
he took poison
and died!

~

FOR fifty-six years
Rome and the shorn city of Carthage were at peace ...

AND meanwhile Rome spread her empire over confused and divided Greece, invaded Asia Minor,
and defeated Antiochus III, the Seleucid monarch, at Magnesia in Lydia!

SHE made Egypt, still under the Ptolemies, and Pergamum and most of the small states of Asia Minor into 'ALLIES,' or, as we would call them now,
"Protected States."

~

MEANWHILE Carthage,
subjugated and enfeebled,
had been slowly regaining something of her former prosperity.

HER recovery revived the hate and suspicion of the Romans ...

She was attacked upon the most shallow and artificial of quarrels {!} in 149 B.C., she made an obstanate and bitter resistance,
stood a long siege and was stormed.

The street fighting, or massacre, lasted six days;
it was extraordinaly bloody,
and when the citadel capitulated only about 50,000 of the Carthaginian population remained alive out of a quarter of a million.

THEY were sold into slavery {!}, and the city was burned and elaborately destroyed: the blackened ruins were ploughed and sown as a sort of ceremonial effacement .............

~

SO ended the Third Punic War.

Of ALL the SEmitic states and cities that had flourished
in the world
five centuries before only ONE little country remained free
under native rulers {Asterix & Obelix?!}:

THIS was Judea, which had liberated itself from
the SEleucids and was under the rule of
the native Maccabean princes ...

BY THIS TIME it had its Bible almost complete, and was developing
the distinctive traditions of the Jewish world
as we know it NOW?

It was natural that the Carthaginians, Phoenicians and kindred peoples
dispersed about the world should finf a common link in their practically
identical language and its literature of hope and courage?

To a large extent they were still traders and bankers of the world!

The Semitic world had been submerged rather than replaced!?!

JERUSALEM, which had always been rather the symbol than the centre of Judaism, was taken by the Romans in 65 B.C., and after various vicissitudes of quasi-independence and revolt was besieged by them in A.D. 70 and captured after a stubborn struggle ............

The TEMPLE was destroyed!

A later rebellion in A.D. 132 completed its destruction, and the Jerusalem we know today was rebuilt later under Roman auspices ...

A temple tp the Roman god, Jupiter Capitolinus, stood in the place
of the Temple, and Jews were forbidden to inhabit
THE CITY.

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engel
07 jul 2004 - bewerkt op 11 jan 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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