Rome Vs Carthage... Is Just A Thread On AH Forums

What if these two powers never fought each other? Like, say Rome was more interested in expanding north and Carthage was more interested in commerce (which it was really), and both powers did not see the need for any war?

I know, there is the Sicilian Problem, but I mean, plenty of empires share borders and don't see the need to kill each other... right?

But yeah. Assume Rome does not expand into Sicily, Corsica, or Sardinia, and instead goes for Gaul and Germania, and does not build anything besides a token fleet. Carthage does not go further into Hispaniola. But plenty of trade happens between the two powers. How would this affect history (perhaps a broad question, how about affecting the Mediterranean for the next few centuries or so)?
 
It seems unlikely, since it would mean taking the path of most resistance, rather than least. At the time, ocean-going travel was the fastest method, so it was almost inevitable that an expansionist power like Rome would move out into the Mediterranean, which would bring it into conflict with Carthage.

There would have to be a damn good reason why the Romans wouldn't go south or east, and I have a hard time imagining what it would be. Plague, maybe? Pronounced famine? I don't know.
 
It seems unlikely, since it would mean taking the path of most resistance, rather than least. At the time, ocean-going travel was the fastest method, so it was almost inevitable that an expansionist power like Rome would move out into the Mediterranean, which would bring it into conflict with Carthage.

There would have to be a damn good reason why the Romans wouldn't go south or east, and I have a hard time imagining what it would be. Plague, maybe? Pronounced famine? I don't know.

Really? I just thought they could get along. :D
 
I could just say 'IIRC' but I don't want to talk myself up so.

According to an aside in a medieval economic history book I was reading, The Punic Wars had a huge effect on the Roman Republic and Empire's socioeconomic organisation by driving free peasants off their land and into Rome. The land passed into the hands of the rich, made into great estates, and the decline of the peasantry from then on became a constant, endemic trend.
 
Well, if you have no Punic Wars, there's no Scipio Africanus to stand in the way of the Gracchi brothers and their land-redistribution schemes.
 
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