Augustus was the first Roman Emperor who ruled from 27 BC until 14 AD. His reign initiated an era of relative peace known as the Pax Romana, or Roman peace, despite continuous frontier wars, and one year-long civil war over the imperial succession. Augustus was born into an equestrian family as Gaius Octavian in Rome on September 23, 63 BC. His father, Gaius Octavius, was the first in the family to become a senator, but died when Octavian was only four. On his mother side, he was great-nephew of Julius Caesar. Since Octavius’ father was a plebeian, Octavius himself was a plebeian, despite the fact that his mother, being Julius Caesar’s niece, was a patrician. Octavius gained patrician status when he was adopted by Julius Caesar in 44 BC.

Augustus was undoubtedly one of the most talented, energetic and skillful administrators that the world has ever known. The enormously far-reaching work of reorganization and rehabilitation which he undertook in every branch of his vast empire created a new Roman peace with unprecedented prosperity.

A tribune was one of the ten officials, in the Roman Republic, that had the power to summon the Plebeian Council and to act as its president, which also gave them right to propose legislation before it. He could convene the Roman Senate and introduce proposals. His main power was to veto any act of the Senate or the magistrates. But he could only veto the act and not the measures. Thus he had to be physically present when the act was happening. As soon as the tribune was no longer present, the act could be carried out as if there had never been a veto.

A tribune could only use his authority in the city of Rome. His power to veto did not affect provincial governors. The Plebeian Tribune was elected by the Plebeian Council. Because tribunes were considered to be the embodiment of the plebeians, they were sacrosanct. Thus, any person who harmed or interfered with a tribune could be killed, as it was considered a capital offence to harm a tribune, disregard his veto, or to interfere with him.

The sacrosanctity of a tribune was only in effect as long as the Tribune was within the city of Rome. If the Tribune was abroad, the plebeians in Rome could enforce their oath to kill any individual who harmed or interfere with him.

Tribunes were the only true representative of the people and had the authority to enforce the right of due process of law. The Tribune was the main guarantor of the civil liberties of Roman citizens against arbitrary state power.

Tribunes were required to be plebeians, and until 421 BC this was the only office open to them. In the late Republic the patrician politician Clodius arranged for his adoption by a plebeian branch of his family, and successfully ran for the tribunate. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla was dictator he severely curtailed the tribunes of the plebeians by invalidating their power of veto and making it illegal for them to bring laws before the Concilium Plebis without the Senate’s consent. Afterwards, the tribune was restored to its former power during the consulship of Crassus and Pompey.

Julius Caesar was a Roman General and politician of the late Roman Republic. He ruled Rome first as a consul in the First Triumvirate, and later, after defeating Pompey, as a dictator. Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15, 44 BC.

Back in Rome, Julius Caesar was appointed consul for another term and then dictator. He used his power to carry out much-needed reform, relieving debt, enlarging the senate, building the Forum Iulium and revising the calendar. Dictatorship was always regarded as temporary position but in 44 BC, Caesar took it for life. His success and ambition alienated the strongly republican senators. A group of these, led by Cassius Longinus and Brutus, assassinated Caesar on the Ides, 15 of March, 44 BC. This sparked the final round of civil wars that ended the Republic and brought about the elevation of Caesar’s great nephew and designated heir, Octavian, as Augustus, the first emperor.

The Third Punic War was the third and last of three major armed conflicts between the Roman Republic and Carthage. It was fought between 149 and 146 BC. In order to prevent any further threat to their existence, as it had happened before in the previous conflict when Hannibal tried to destroy Rome, and in case their enemy emerged again defiantly, the Romans completely destroyed Carthage.

In 149 BC, the Romans landed an army at Utica and proceded to besiege the city of Carthage. This was the outbreak of the Third Punic War. For three years the Carthaginians endured the siege, until Scipio Aemilianus took the city by storm in 146 BC.  The city was burned for 17 days, the city walls, its buildings and its harbour were utterly destroyed. The Romans spread salt on the fields around, then plowed the earth to mix it with the salt so that nothing would grow there and Carthage would never again arise into existence. The remaining Carthaginians were sold into slavery.

The Second Punic War was the second of the three major wars fought between the Roman Republic and Carthage from 218 to 201 BC. It was marked by Hannibal’s invasion of Italy with his army of elephants and mercenaries in an attempt to destroy Rome. Despite the Carthaginian victories over the Romans at battles such as Cannae, Hannibal was finally and thoroughly defeated at the Battle of Zama by the Roman legions under the command of Publius Cornelius Scipio after his long campaign in Spain.

The cause of the Second Punic War was the growing Carthaginian military presence and interests in the Iberian peninsula. In 237 BC, the Carthaginian General Hammilcar Barca landed in southern Spain and conquered the territories occupied by the Tartesians in the east for Carthage. But Hammilcar was killed in combat during a siege and was replaced by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who founded the city of New Carthage (Carthagena) and signed a boundary treaty with Rome, establishing the Ebro River as the border of the Carthaginian territorial interests in Spain. Hasdrubal was killed and was replaced by Hammilcar’s son, Hannibal, who had sworn eternal hatred to Rome at the altars of the gods.

The Second Punic War broke out when Carthage sieged and took Saguntum, a Greek Iberian coastal city with diplomatic ties with Rome. After great tension within the city government culminating in the assassination of the supporters of Carthage, Hannibal laid siege to the city of Saguntum in 219 BC. Following a prolonged siege and a bloody struggle in which Hannibal himself was wounded and the army practically destroyed, the Carthaginians finally took control of the city. Many of the Saguntians chose to commit suicide rather than face the subjugation by the Carthaginians. Rome sent two senators to Carthage to demand that Hannibal be handed over and compensation for the damage done. But they were expelled.

For the Second Punic War, Hannibal organized a big expeditionary force which numbered as many as 75,000 foot soldiers and 9,000 horsemen, including 36 war elephants. Hannibal departed with this army from New Carthage northwards along the coast in late spring of 218 B.C. He went with his army through the Pyrenees, made his way into what is today France, crossed the Rhone River, then the Alps. Hannibal’s army poured into Italy. The Gallic tribes in norther Italy joined Hannibal’s forces against Rome. The first objective of the insurgents were the Roman colonies of Placentia and Cremona, causing the Romans to flee to Mutina, which the Gauls then besieged. In response, Praetor L. Manlius Vulso marched with 2 Roman legions and allies, 1,600 cavalry and 20,000 infantry, to Cisalpine Gaul. This army was ambushed twice on the way from Ariminium, lost 1,200 men.

The Carthaginians were intercepted by a newly raised Roman force under Publius Cornelius Scipio, whom Hannibal had evaded earlier in the Rhone River Valley, and who had not anticipated such an early arrival on the other side of the Alps. In the ensuing Battle of Ticinus the cavalry forces of Hannibal’s army defeated the cavalry and light infantry of the Romans in a minor engagement. Scipio, severely injured in the battle, retreated across the River Trebia with his heavy infantry still intact, and encamped at the town of Placentia to await reinforcements. As a result of Rome’s defeat at the Ticinus, all the Gauls except the Cenomani were induced to join the Carthaginian cause. Then the Roman Senate ordered the consul Sempronius Longus to bring his army back from Sicily, where it had been preparing for the invasion of Africa, to join Scipio and face Hannibal.

Roman forces under the command of Sempronius Longus were defeated at the Battle of Trebia when a hidden detachment led by Hannibal’s brother Mago attacked them from the rear, losing half of his men. Sempronius Longus and Publius Cornelius Scipio, who were still wounded, left the Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) in the aftermath. In 217 BC, Hannibal advanced southward, crossed the Apennines, and arrived at the uplands of Etruria. There the Carthaginian provoked Flaminius into a hasty pursuit without proper reconnaissance. Then, in a defile on the shore of Lake Trasimenus, Hannibal sprang an ambush on the Romans. In the battle of Lake Trasimene Hannibal destroyed most of the Roman army and killed Flaminius with little loss to his own army.

The defeat at Lake Trasimene put the Romans in an immense state of panic, fearing for the very existence of their city. The Senate decided to resort to the traditional emergency measure of appointing a dictator. The man appointed was Quintus Fabius Maximus, who invented the Fabian strategy: refusing open battle with his opponent, but constantly skirmishing with small detachments of the enemy. This course was not popular among the soldiers, earning Fabius the nickname "delayer", since he seemed to avoid battle while Italy was being ravaged by the enemy. Fabius’ constant harassment of Hannibal’s force handicapped the latter’s command abilities and gained many prisoners. But Fabius became unpopular in Rome, since his tactics did not lead to a quick end to the war. The Roman populace derided the "delayer," and at the elections of 216 BC elected as consuls Caius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, both of whom advocated pursuing a much more aggressive war strategy.

In 216 B.C., Hannibal took the initiative and seized the large supply depot at Cannae in the Apulian plain. Thus, by seizing Cannae, Hannibal had placed himself between the Romans and their crucial source of supply. Consuls Aemilius Paulus and Varro resolved to confront Hannibal and marched southward to Apulia. After a two days’ march, they found him on the left bank of the Aufidus River, and encamped six miles away. Hannibal capitalized on Varro’s eagerness and drew him into a trap by using an envelopment tactic which eliminated the Roman numerical advantage by shrinking the surface area where combat could occur. Aemilius Paulus and his legions were defeated at the Battle of Cannae. Then Hannibal sent a delegation to Rome to negotiate a peace and another one offering to release his Roman prisoners of war for ransom, but Rome, despite the heavy losses, rejected all offers. Nevertheless, the Carthaginian General did not march strait onto Rome, for he considered that he did not have enough forces to lay a long siege.

Hannibal regarded it as essential to take the city of Nola, a Roman fortress in Campania, a region that linked his various allies geographically and contained his most important harbour for supply. Hannibal tried three times, by assault or siege, to take this city, which was defended by Marcus Claudius Marcellus in the battle of Nola (216 BC), Battle of Nola (215 BC) and battle of Nola (214 BC), but failed each time. The essence of Hannibal’s campaign in Italy was to fight the Romans with indigenous resources. His subordinate Hanno was able to raise troops in Samnium, but the Romans intercepted these new levies in the Battle of Beneventum (214 BC) and eliminated them before they came under the feared leadership of Hannibal. Hannibal could win allies, but defending them against the Romans was a new and difficult problem, as the Romans could still field multiple armies greatly outnumbering his own forces. Thus Fabius was able to take the Punic ally Arpi in 213 BC.

Meanwhile, Publius Cornelius Scipio had been sent to the Iberian peninsula in a campaign against Hannibal forces there. His plan was to raise a big army there and attack Carthage, in order to force Hannibal to leave Italy and engage him in battle in northern Africa. Scipio had arrived in Iberia in 210 BC. In a brilliant assault Scipio succeeded in capturing the center of Punic power in Iberia, Cartagena, in 209 BC, winning three important battles, the Battle of Carthagena, the Battle of Baecula (208 BC), and the Battle of Ilipa (206 BC), where he defeated a combined army under the command of Mago Barca, Hasdrubal Gisgo and Masinissa, thus bringing to an end the Carthaginian hold in Iberia.

Within a year of his landing in Africa, Scipio twice routed the regular Carthaginian forces under Hasdrubal Gisco and his Numidian allies. The main native supporter of the Carthaginians, king Syphax of the Massaesylians (western Numidians), was defeated and taken prisoner. Masinissa, a Numidian rival of Syphax and an ally of the Romans, seized a large part of his kingdom with their help. These setbacks persuaded some of the Carthaginians that it was time to sue for peace. Others pleaded for the recall of the sons of Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal and Mago, who were still fighting the Romans in Bruttium and Cisalpine Gaul respectively.

Hannibal was placed in command of a combined force of African levies and his mercenaries from Italy. But Hannibal was opposed to this policy and tried to convince them not to send the untrained African levies into battle. In 202 BC, Hannibal met Scipio in a peace conference. Despite the two generals’ mutual admiration, negotiations failed. The the two armies engaged at the Battle of Zama. In contrast to most battles of the Second Punic War, the Romans had superiority in cavalry and the Carthaginians had superiority in infantry. The Roman army was generally better armed and a head taller than the Carthaginian.

At Zama, which was the decisive battle of the Second Punic War, Scipio wisely countered an expected Carthaginian elephant charge, that caused some of Hannibal’s elephants to turn back into his own ranks, throwing his calvary into disarray. The Roman cavalry was able to capitalize on this and drive the Carthaginian calvary from the field. However, the battle remained closely fought. But Scipio’s cavalry returned from chasing the Carthaginian calvary and attacked Hannibal’s rear. This two-pronged attack caused the Carthaginian formation to disintegrate and collapse. After their defeat, Hannibal convinced the Carthaginians to accept peace.

The peace terms that put an end to the Second Punic War were extremely hard for the Carthaginians, who were forced to accept the Roman hegemony in Spain, to hand over their whole fleet, to commit themselves not to engage in any war without authorization from Rome, and to pay a war indemnity of 10,000 talents.