The Cambridge History of Warfare

Incredibly enough, in the third century BC, Rome expanded simultaneously eastwards against the Greeks and Macedonians and west and south against Carthage, the great commercial and military power that had grown out of a Phoenician colony in present-day Tunisia. The three Punic wars (264–241 BC, for Sicily; 218–201 BC, for Italy and Spain; and 149–146 BC, for Carthage itself) were a struggle for the central Mediterranean which culminated in the abject destruction of Carthage. Throughout these conflicts, superior Roman military organization and infrastructure repeatedly demonstrated that the smallholders who made up the legions – as long as they fought in or near Italy – could overcome poor generalship and poor tactics, winning wars even when they lost major battles.