3 102 B In 218 BC, Hannibal crossed the Alps from France to take the Romans by surprise from their rear. This epic crossing, through unbelievably difficult conditions, made Hannibal's name a legend. He took with his army thirty-four elephants: only one survived the journey and harsh winter but even this had a strong psychological effect on the Romans.
#Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps
4 101 X One day in 458 BC the legendary Cincinnatus was ploughing his fields, when he was summoned to save Rome and become dictator. He took up the challenge, defeated the Italian tribe of the Aequi who were blocking the Roman army and returned to his farm within sixteen days.
#Cincinnatus
5 101 B Marius (157-86 BC) served a brilliant career as a general in Spain, Africa and Gaul and undertook some extremely important military reforms. Previously soldiers had been conscripted only from the upper classes, which led to manpower shortages. Marius opened the army to all Roman citizens and paid them for their services.
#Marius, Statue of Roman soldier
6 0 6 20
#IW Pompey
7 0 6 21
#IW Julius Caesar
9 102 D Cleopatra, the femme fatale of antiquity, had been expelled from her rule as pharaoh of Egypt when Caesar arrived in 48 BC. He reinstated her and she bore him a son the following year. After his death she sided with Mark Antony against Octavian (later Augustus). When Antony died she committed suicide.
#Cleopatra
10 101 X The brothers Gracchi, Tiberius and Gaius, used their powers as tribunes of the people in 133 and 122 BC to redistribute land amongst the poor of Rome. They met with fierce opposition from the Roman establishment and both were murdered.
#The Gracchi
11 23 9 1
#MS Story of Rome
12 13 6 3
#CM Early Rome
13 102 C According to the account in Virgil's epic poem, 'The Aeneid', Aeneas, son of Anchises, a prince of Troy, and the goddess Venus, was destined to become a founding father of Rome. First, however, he had to endure a true odyssey. On his way he met Queen Dido of Carthage, with whom he had a passionate but doomed affair.
#Aeneas, image from Carthaginians KC
14 101 X For more than a century the kings of Pergamum had received the help of Rome against their powerful enemy, Macedonia. Rome had seized the opportunity to become involved in the affairs of the Greeks and always granted Pergamum aid. In gratitude, King Attalus III bequeathed his kingdom to Rome on his death in 133 BC.
#Attalus III
15 101 D In 73 BC the Thracian slave Spartacus escaped from a gladiator school and gathered a band of 90,000 discontented men. They crossed Italy and twice defeated the Roman armies. When they were finally captured, they were all crucified.
#Spartacus, Relief of gladiators
16 101 X Saguntum in Spain had close trade relations with the Greek colony of Massilia and was an ally of Rome. It was therefore besieged and captured by Hannibal in 219 BC. The city and its walls were destroyed, but Saguntum was recaptured and rebuilt by the Romans in 212 BC.
#Saguntum
17 101 X Trasimene, a large lake in Etruria, was the site of Hannibal's total annihilation of a Roman consular army along with the consul Flaminius in 217 BC.
#Trasimeno
18 23 37 2
# MS Cannae
19 101 X Baecula was the scene of a victory by Scipio Africanus over Hasdrubal in 208 BC. Screened by his light troops, Scipio's main forces divided and attacked the flanks of the Carthaginian army - a tactic not used before by a Roman general. Hasdrubal withdrew his army from total defeat and left Spain for Italy.
#Baecula
20 23 37 1
#MS The Second Punic War
21 102 A In 202 BC the great Roman general Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal's army at Zama. The support of the formidable Numidian cavalry, under prince Masinissa, proved decisive in the Roman victory, while the Carthaginians were severely hampered by their own untrained war elephants. After the battle, Carthage was forced to accept crippling peace terms.
