Hi, I'm thinking of writing a TL were Carthage wins the 2nd Punic wars. I'm struggling to think of a POD. Maybe if the Carthage Elders helped Hannibal more? Crossing the Alps easier? Any Idea's helpful?
How could Carthage of won The 2nd Punic War?
- Thread starter Michael.D.Luffy
- Start date
A lot of those that have done this (including myself) have used the Battle of the Metaurus as a POD. Well, to be specific, the avoidance of it - Rome intercepted messages between Hasdrubal and Hannibal, and knew exactly where to go to cut Hasdrubal off from joining up with Hannibal. Had they met, there's a decent chance Carthage would have won - it'd still be a hard fight, but it's much more manageable than with the Metaurus still being fought, obviously.
Could always go with the Cannae POD. Another one could be the Battle of Dertosa, which, had Hasdrubal won, would have concentrated the Carthaginian army in Italy just a year after Cannae.
Thinking Could I have Rome stay as a Kingdom? Lucius Tarquinius Superbus isn't overthrow and rome is more of a city-state?
Any reason for the sudden flip from the Second Punic War to avoiding the Roman Republic? Not that I'm discouraging you from doing that - actually, I can't think of a timeline that's POD is that the Roman Republic doesn't form. Quite a few where Rome's taken down early, and I think a couple where that happens, but with an entirely different POD. But not that, exactly.
I'm not sure exactly but I think the main reason the kingdom fell was that Lucius Tarquinius Superbus wasn't popular? Maybe have so that he never ascended?
Maybe you could make one of Servius Tullius' daughters a son?
I take it this is the direction you want to go now, instead of the Second Punic War?
Yeah, as you said people have done the Punic wars before. I'll still do it from the perspective of Carthage. I think I'll have that as my POD then expand Carthage borders.
One Superbus in latin means aggorant. Second if Carthage had control of the sea and a reasonably large fleet, then that would have given Hannibal more options a greater ability to move troops around and would have been able to save more of his elephants that he lost going over the alps
Superbus is being written out.
Their naval power was gone after the first punic war anyway, only major spending on navy would of changed this, which would of stopped hannibal's army being so big.
Could Carthage have won if they'd gone for a naval war rather than Hannibal's land invasion? They did fairly well against the Romans at sea until the invention of the corvus and the Carthaginian navy will presumably find a way to defeat the corvus when rebuilding their fleet for the 2nd war.
No... Hannibal had it right, I think. The only way that anyone could beat the Romans was to beat them on their home turf. A great naval victory off the coast of Sicily just doesn't have as great an impact psychologically as say the Battle of Cannae on the Romans, even if just as many losses are taken (or more). More of a navy would help, just simply in that you might get more stuff to Hannibal while he's in Italy, but it's not going to win the war for Carthage.
EDIT:
You're going to need to change Carthage culturally for that to happen... at least if you mean for Carthage to control more or less all the territory that the Roman Empire at its height had. Carthage doesn't have the warmongering culture that Rome had that fueled them to conquer so much. Plus, Carthage has a very, very, very small citizen body in comparison to Rome, and is much more exclusive with regards to that - it'd be harder for them to be popular with any of their conquered. Personally speaking, I could just never see a Carthaginian Empire that rules places like Greece and Egypt. It's not their goal, and they probably aren't capable of doing so. They could colonize more in Great Britain, Gaul, and Southern Italy, to add on to Sicily, Sardinia, and Iberia. But full out conquest of some of the Mediterranean cultures is hard to see, especially when Carthage couldn't find its way past the Sicilian Greeks IOTL.
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I didn't mean for them to Conquer all of Rome's Empire. but I want them the be the Pre-Eminent country in the ancient world. Like The consequences of rome are still felt today, that's the Carthage I'm (eventually , I spend alot of time on first chapters) going to make
No way to have Carthage attack Italy from the sea if they have a decent navy going into the 2nd Punic War?
When you said going for a naval war, instead of Hannibal's invasion, I envisioned a war eerily similar to that of the First Punic War - which just wasn't going to work for Carthage this time around. That doesn't seem to be exactly what you meant. Regardless, I will point out a couple things: first, that this most likely entrusts the creation of a navy to the Carthaginian oligarchy, which was much more apathetic to the war than Hannibal, and some of whom were outright hostile to Hannibal and his faction; and second, does spending a lot of money to create a navy (which is very expensive to build and maintain) divert too much money not only from the armies, but also from the people of Carthage? Does the formal Punic State (as opposed to the Barcid regime in Iberia) have the resources necessary to fund the creation of a navy that can match or exceed the naval power of Rome?
You have to consider why they didn't do what you're suggesting IOTL. If Hannibal had built himself a navy, would he have the resources to march 90,000 men over the Alps, and to spend, what, fifteen years in a very hostile Italy? Would the Barcids still have the resources to field another large force in Iberia, to stop the Romans from simply overrunning the Barcid power base? And with the Punic government creating a large enough navy to do what you want them to do... again, do they have the resources necessary to do so, and to build a reasonably large army to match? Does the will of the people support perhaps taking some losses of their own to create such a navy? Does most of the government even want to do that? If they do build a great navy, does that actually hamper their ability to land a sizable force in Italy to help Hannibal (if Hannibal still invaded)? Because both the Barcids and the Punic government did land troops in Italy; that wasn't as rare as people think.
All I'm trying to say, is that if it were so easy for Carthage to just simply whip up a big enough navy to thoroughly defeat the Roman navy in this war, or at least match them, and that was all they needed to win the war, well, why didn't they do it IOTL? What are the costs, and what are the benefits, not only for Carthage as a whole, but for the Punic people and for their politicians, to a large Punic navy taking the seas throughout the war? Can a large navy make up for potential losses in numbers in the armies, as far as reaching the ultimate war-goal of defeating Rome to the point of surrender? I think these are important to think about, before we just decide that Carthage should have built a navy, and that they were idiots for not doing so IOTL.
Also, if you could explain a little more about your thoughts as to how such a war would play out, that'd be great, because then I could get a sense of exactly what I'm responding to. I'm an idiot, so be as explicit as possible.
EDIT:
Michael.D.Luffy said:
Generally, people want to make Carthage... well, exactly what I assumed you were saying. So I apologize for misrepresenting your thoughts. What you want is much more feasible than I had envisioned.
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Ok, i'm going to build up enough of my current ASB project and then start working on this. Thanks a bunch Monopolist you've been really helpful!
The Carthaginian defeat was mainly the result of one man - Scipio Africanus. He had served in the Roman legions in three battles - Ticinus, Trebia, and Cannae - that saw ltos of Romans get slaughtered. If Scipio dies at one of those battles instead, he isn't there to lead the Romans to victory in Spain or lead the invasion in Africa. Likely, Hannibal's brothers defeat Rome in Spain and are able to send him additional aid to Italy. Rome is not able to use Spanish resources or threaten Africa. Eventually, the Roman senate makes peace after along period of no victories, and their obvious inability to defeat Hannibal in Italy. The war leaves Carthage in control of all Africa, Spain, perhaps a returned Sardinia and Sicily, allies in Gaul, and perhaps some allied cities in Italy itself.
A lot of the problem is the Roman culture - after a series of beatings like Trebia / Cannae / Lake Transimere, any other ancient city state would have folded and sued for peace - not Rome. I'm not sure you'd defeat Rome without capturing, saking and salting the ground.
I second most of what Monopolist already said.
Hannibal got it right, and his plan almost worked. He went actually closer to bring the Roman power down for good than anybody else in eight centuries or so.
And actually his feats shocked the Roman mindset more than anybody's else before Alaric, or even the Arabs (if you count the Byzantines of the time as Romans, as I think it is fair to do).
The Roman power base was on land, and no amount of naval defeats would have ever shattered it. This was shown bloodily plain in the First Punic war.
Hannibal tried to shatter the Roman land power, and almost succeeded in it. Or, at least, came closer to it than anybody else, before or after, until the Goths. There are reasons why he failed, of course.
One of the main reasons was that the Romans weren't actually prepared to accept anything but bloody total victory, even when facing total defeat. The Roman aristocracy had gone way past the time where "defeat" ot even "white peace" were meaningful Latin expressions.
And the Roman ordinary people had a stake in that system by this point. Even some subjected Italic peoples had.
The Republic worked bloody well at this point, and this is shown by the mere fact that they were both willing and able to fight on after such a crushing defeat as Cannae was.
Most polities, even today, would have asked for terms after a Cannae-level defeat, as it has been already pointed out. Exceptions being in some of the bitter national/ideological wars of the past two centuries. The Soviet-Nazi conflict comes to mind. No battle in WWI, for example, was as crippling as Cannae, with the possible exceptions of Tannenberg and Caporetto, especially the latter.
And, as Cannae, the victor of those battles lost the war...
Hannibal got it right, and his plan almost worked. He went actually closer to bring the Roman power down for good than anybody else in eight centuries or so.
And actually his feats shocked the Roman mindset more than anybody's else before Alaric, or even the Arabs (if you count the Byzantines of the time as Romans, as I think it is fair to do).
The Roman power base was on land, and no amount of naval defeats would have ever shattered it. This was shown bloodily plain in the First Punic war.
Hannibal tried to shatter the Roman land power, and almost succeeded in it. Or, at least, came closer to it than anybody else, before or after, until the Goths. There are reasons why he failed, of course.
One of the main reasons was that the Romans weren't actually prepared to accept anything but bloody total victory, even when facing total defeat. The Roman aristocracy had gone way past the time where "defeat" ot even "white peace" were meaningful Latin expressions.
And the Roman ordinary people had a stake in that system by this point. Even some subjected Italic peoples had.
The Republic worked bloody well at this point, and this is shown by the mere fact that they were both willing and able to fight on after such a crushing defeat as Cannae was.
Most polities, even today, would have asked for terms after a Cannae-level defeat, as it has been already pointed out. Exceptions being in some of the bitter national/ideological wars of the past two centuries. The Soviet-Nazi conflict comes to mind. No battle in WWI, for example, was as crippling as Cannae, with the possible exceptions of Tannenberg and Caporetto, especially the latter.
And, as Cannae, the victor of those battles lost the war...