What made Carthage such a special and tough enemy for Romans...

What made Carthage such a special and tough enemy for Romans? Why were they unable to do their usual stuff which was adapting to the enemy and instead resort to raising a huge ass army?

The Carthaginians were well organized and even though they had their political differences, were far more united than most of the enemies the Romans faced. Most of the time the Romans annexed new areas, they were entering into a complex web of local political groupings, helping some, fighting others, and eventually creating a gaggle of client-rulers who would eventually be romanized and annexed.

Carthage didn't have that sort of internal division that could make such an approach possible. The closest the Romans got was to subvert some of the Carthaginians own clients, such as the Numidians. That only left extirpation.

Hannibal. If not for Hannibal Carthage would have been pretty run-of-the-mill Roman enemy.

Retard

The romans feared the african warrior

Please remove that abomination of an image, user.

Sorry. Here's a more accurate version.

WE

Aren't african elephants sub saharan?

Hannibal and his brothers and that's it. This first war was easy enough once the Romans figured out how to into ships, besides dealing with the Barcas, Rome was handling the rest of the Carthaginians and Macedonians at the same time. The third was just mopping up.

The first war was a 23 year shitshow which cost the Romans hundreds of thousands of men. Polybius writes that it was bloodier than Alexander's conquests, and if his figure of 700 quinqmarine losses is accurate, that corresponds to about 294,000 men.

It was not "just Hannibal and brothers". The first war alone was way more difficult for Rome than dealing with any of the Diodochi states, by far.

The elephants the Carthaginians used was the north African forest elephant, which is now extinct due to them being killed for their ivory. It was a pretty small elephant, the average one being only 8 feet tall. If i remember right it lived north of the sahara in Carthaginian land

It's not accurate, Polybius was a bullshitter. Goldsworthy estimates about 50k citizen casualties total from census data. And that would have been plenty!

The First Punic War was a shitshow because it pitted a major naval power that didn't really want to commit to the war and so failed to effectively prosecute it, against a relatively minor power that was entirely committed to it but lacked the power to prosecute it rapidly. Carthage held all the advantages at first but couldn't make effective strategic use of them. They wound up wasting shit tons of money, time, and blood trying to contain Rome while Rome refused to take the hint and eventually outlasted them.

They still exist in Central Africa, or least a closely related subspecies do.

Interestingly, Hannibal had a different breed for his own use, presumed to be the Syrian elephant.

Also, are we sure that the changing climate of North Africa wouldn't have finished them off anyways? I'm sure the Romans pushed them to the brink, but surely they weren't long for the world after North Africa started to be less of a bread basket.

The ones between the African Savannah and India all died out.

> Goldsworthy estimates about 50k citizen casualties total from census data
And given that citizens were about 10% of the republic's population at most, and that most of the losses were naval ones, and that there were no property requirements to be one of the 300 rowers per quinqmarine, the notion that 50,000 citizen losses means 50,000 total losses, or anything close to that, is stupid.

And no, the first punic war was a shitshow because it was a predominantly naval war, and classical age naval wars were always about an order of magnitude more bloody than land wars. Loss rates were higher in battle, mostly owing to the risk of drowning, and you have colossal frictional losses to things like storms and such that don't have corresponding problems on land. Furthermore, because water transport is so much easier than land transport, especially for supplies, fleets can represent enormous concentrations of manpower that land armies never can. That storm loss post the withdrawal from Tunisia cost the Romans more men than Cannae did. And maybe it's not as exciting as a double envelopment battle, but those men are just as dead.

that's the joke.

Their "usual stuff" was a never-ending supply of trained soldiers. Not adapting (which isn't to say they didn't adapt, a lot).

The problem Carthage presented was that they kinda had the same thing in the way of mercenaries and a shit ton of money to replace the dead ones with.

I bet youre right about the climate changing would have killed them any ways. Theres no more forests in north africa or at least not on the level needed to support Elephants
Interesting, I didnt know that

Thanks anons, it's always bugged me a little.

>56% mutts, slavs, and other nonwhites are so mentally ill they think this looks white

>Eurabians are blackwashing Carthage
It all makes sense now.

It's still kind of a mystery of sorts, because at the time of Hannibal North africa was already too arid to support elephants. Even though nobody wants to believe it for "reasons" it's not entirely out of the question that the elephants were sourced from the south.

Also Carthaginians having access to and being the gatekeepers of the rest of africa to the south probably had alot to do with why they were such a formidable enemy.

Spotted the assmad Russian blogger/viral marketing intern. You about as white as Hannibal so I guess I see your angle finally.

...

It's not a Euro drawing this shit It's an american "artist" with an ebony fetish who even blackfaces Carthage, Rome and others in his mods for total war.

>probably had alot to do with why they were such a formidable enemy.
Not him, but not really. The bulk of Carthaginian wealth was centered around Mediterranean trade, and the bulk of their manpower (non-mercenary manpower, that is, the mercs came from all over) were drawn from what is now Tunisia. Elephants were nice, but weren't even present in a lot of their most famous victories, and the war they fought on most even terms with Rome was largely fought at sea, where elephants are completely worthless.

The reason they were a formidable enemy is kind of the obvious one, they were rich, they were well organized, they were comparatively united politically.

You are really grasping at straws here claiming everything is a conspiracy.

>They were rich.
>Got their wealth from the Mediterranean aka Roman territory

What did he mean by this?

Is the black history meme still a new thing to some people? Here of all places there are people not in on Black Hannibal

>Thinks they got their exotic trade items from Germany.

>Why were they unable to do their usual stuff which was adapting to the enemy
They did tho.
In the first war, they completely flipped the table on Carthage by stealing all their naval tech and ended up raping them on the seas.
In the second war, they adapted to Hannibal's tactical brilliance and cavalry advantage by favouring a strategy based around avoiding straight battles and just hassling and maneuvering Hannibal all the way down to a corner of Calabria, and they subverted the numidians.
In the third war, well it was a fucking slaughter. What was there to adapt, how to lose utterly?
>and instead resort to raising a huge ass army?
Memes. If you go look at the actual estimates it shows that the most problematic war, the second, saw both sides field over 700k soldiers and lose around 300k. Rome pretty much raised as many enemies as it required to stave off Carthage's continuous waves of mercs.

Where did I claim anything was a conspiracy?

Roman control of the Mediterranean only happened after the defeat of Carthage, they had trade links all over to places like modern Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Egypt, Greece, etc.

Since when is Germany on the "Mediterranean"?

The valuables that were traded on the Mediterranean market, were acquired from accesss to Africa and Africans at large. Their african links were ultimately the source of thier wealth.

Disputed territory generaly doesn't supply a source of consistent, stable, wealth generation.