The Western World and Rome 26 1 Mediterranean world. ^ Meantime the Roman forces besieged and slowly recovered the unfaithful cities one by one, until Sicily was in their hands again. Hannibal's brother endeavors to push in with reenforcements Western aid from Spain, where he has been obliged to leave the Romans in Hannibar*^ possession. But he is intercepted, defeated, and slain. Finally, when Hannibal has been thirteen years in Italy, the Senate organizes an expedition against Carthage itself. Not even the Roman vic- recall of Hannibal to Carthage can now halt the victorious HannS Romans, and in 202 B.C . the merchant princes of Carthage are (^°^ ^•^•) compelled to accept an ignominious peace. Their power is forever broken , and they are never again a source of anxiety to the Roman Senate. Rome thus becomes mistress of the western Mediterranean, and her power so far exceeds that of all other states that the rivalry between nations, which makes up so large a part of the career of the ancient world, is soon to cease, because there is no one who dares to challenge the power of Rome. For over fifty years more the merchants of Carthage were The de- permitted to traffic in the western Mediterranean, and then the o/carthage iron hand of Rome was laid upon the doomed city for the last (^46 b.c.) time. It was completely destroyed, and the only formidable rival of Rome in the West disappeared (146 b.c.).^ Section 44. World Dominion and Civil War The third century B.C., which gave to Rome the naval and introduction military supremacy in the Mediterranean, nevertheless saw Rome erature^and herself conquered by Greek civilization. Greek slaves and cap- fivihzation ^ ■' ^ into Rome tives of war from the Greek cities in Italy and Sicily, now ruled by Rome, begin to be common in Roman households. Greek 1 The Egyptian navy of the Ptolemies (p. 230), after a century of supremacy in the Mediterranean, was at this time on the decHne. The armies of the Hellen- istic kings also were declining. They were no match for those of Rome. 2 As the result of a three years' war, commonly called the " Third Punic War." The Semitic left wing was thus annihilated by the western end of the Indo- European line (Fig. 49), and Europe again triumphed over Asia.
