Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome, Episode 22, Prelude to the Second Punic War.

Roman Carthage had spent the years after the First Punic War, dealing with their own problems

and paying little official attention to one another.

But the focus of the two great powers would soon turn to each other once again and lead

to a confrontation, this time over Spain.

This confrontation would be the spark for what is arguably the most important period in

Roman history, the Second Punic War.

Entering the war, Rome was a regional power on the rise, but still recognizably the same

political entity that had emerged from the devastation of the Galaxaca 170 years before.

However, at the end of the war with Hannibal, a 20-year trial of immense physical and psychological

endurance, Rome transformed into the invincible juggernaut that would conquer the Mediterranean.

Hannibal would prove to be Rome's most impressive enemy, and after surviving the bold Carthaginian

invasion of Italy, the Romans simply turned and steamrolled the rest of the known world.

The importance of the Second Punic War is also measured by the fact that after Schipio's

final victory at Zama in 202 BC, Roman elites almost immediately began to lament the loss

of Roman virtue and nobility.

The total domination Rome had achieved after defeating Carthagin, allowed steadfast frugality

to be usurped by excessive debauchery.

Never again would the literati look at their contemporaries with anything but contempt,

and the idea that Rome had fallen from grace was from that point on simply taken for granted.

It speaks volumes then of the impact the Second Punic War had on the Romans that it would

essentially mark the close of an alleged golden age where all men were clones of Cincinnati,

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