The Carthaginians, fearing Rome's expansion and her new power, invaded Spain anew under the leadership of General Hannibal Barca (who was the son of an equally famous father -the commander of Carthaginian forces during the First Punic Wars -General Hamiclair Barca -in 238 BCE). At this time in his life the younger Hannibal was only a mere twenty-four (24) years of age, having been born of both indigenous African parents in the year 262 BCE not 247 BCE. He was not of African-Asian stock. His father and mother were indigenous African stock

What did Rome’s expansion mean to  the North Africans during these periods, particularly to the Carthaginians? It meant that their eminent invasion from the Roman Empire was but a matter of time. This was obvious because Sicily, which is a natural geographic part of the Roman peninsula, was at the time under the colonial of Carthage. Carthage at this period had become the most feared nation in all of North Africa; just as Rome was equally feared in all of Europe. Of course Pyrrhus(Greece) also remained a natural challenge to young Rome. Yet, Carthage sent their fleet to help Rome against Greece, which had held an enclave on Italy's East Coast on the Adriatic Sea, after the disastrous defeat of Pyrrhus (Greece), took on its victims' cultural, political, and commercial characteristics. The latter development forced Rome to challenge Carthage for mastery of the Mediterranean commercial trade around the Tryrrhenia Sea. The area involved formed a triangular enclosure of the Mediterranean Sea that embraced both Rome and Carthage, the same triangle being the area that dominated Mediterranean trade.

With the fast growing commercial expansion of Carthage on the North African coast, from the frontiers of the Greek City of Cyrene westward to the Ethiopian Ocean. Carthage had become the dominant power of the "known world". As a direct result of said power, Carthage began to expand her empire to satisfy her trade needs. The following chronology deals with the periods and events of Carthage's expansion, contraction, and defeat at the hands of the Romans and Numidians (fellow Africans of North Africa).

Carthage, in 600 BCE had established, after annexing part of southern Spain, trading posts from the silver mines it confiscated from the Spaniards. It also took over British trading interests with Spain and commanded the strait of the pillar of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar). The strait and the ports of southern Spain were closed by blockade to all shipping, except Carthaginian. All ships not having Carthaginian clearance were rammed by her warships and sunk. Carthage also maintained a panish zone control and "sphere of influence" until 500 BCE, at which time Rome signed a treaty with Carthage, which excluded Rome's trading rights in the Carthaginian area. The treaty regulations finally infuriated the Roman Senate: for Roman merchant ships passing the Straits of Messing to the City of Messina were forced to receive Carthaginian clearance. The Mediterranean Sea had become, in fact, a kind of "CARTHAGINIAN LAKE". And Rome had also feared the Carthaginians' closing of the "Strait".

Rome attacked Carthage in 264 BCE This was the beginning of the Sicilian War: the attack had created an insurrection in Carthaginian controlled Sicily. Sicily was a colony of Carthage at that time. The Carthaginian military garrison from Sicily followed the attack and invaded Rome in the latter part of 264 BCE and occupied Messina (cloose to Rome). These indigenous Africans had, for the first time, invaded southwestern Europe and Polybius, HISTORY, 400 to 370 BC It must be noted that the Carthaginians were not Phoenicians, as contended by many European and European-American historians. It would be implied by the term "Punic Wars" since "Punic" is the Latin word for "Phoenicia".

Between 242 and 241 BCE somewhat of an uneasy peace ensued between Carthage and Rome. This was because the Romans had forced certain restrictions on Carthage after the Africans were defeated. For example: The Romans compelled the Carthaginians to surrender the entire island of Sicily and neighboring islands to Rome, and to pay an almost impossible sum of 3,200 talents (over three and one/half million dollars -$3,500,000) within a period of ten (10) years (by 231 BCE). Thus, after more than twenty-three (23) years of fighting (from 259 BCE to 241 BCE) the first battles of the struggle between Carthage and Rome were concluded. This victory gave Rome its first colony outside the Italian Peninsula. It was the beginning of a series of wars that were later called the "FIRST PUNIC WARS". The Romans invaded and annexed Corsica and Sardinia in 238 BCE, only a scant three (3) years after they had made a peace treaty with Carthage covering Mediterranean area limitations,

[Note: "Punic" is the Latin word for Phoenician, the name the Romans called the mixed African-Asian peoples of Khart Haddas, which they called Carthage. One has to remember that the original group of Asians in the area came from Phoenicia and amalgamated with the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Africans-the so-called "Negroes" and "Bantus", they met there. The Asians numbered less than 200 to 300 men, women, and children- the vast majority were sailors. However, in less than l00 years after their arrival, the Phoenicians and the Khart Haddans had all but developed one common African physical characteristic, as the Africans dominated the Asians. By any sense of United States of America's "RACIAL STANDARDS ", and according to "Western anthropology", the indigenous Carthaginians would have had to be classified as Blacks -African-Americans- who are called nefariously "NEGROES".]

which did not include these two territories (island outposts). But, the Romans had also seized Gaul (France) and the Po Valley. Roman power then extended from the Alps Mountain range at the north and the entire Italian Peninsula down to the Mediterranean Sea at the south.

General Hannibal Barca launched, in 220 or 218 BCE, the first battle of the Second Punic Wars when Roman and Carthaginian forces clashed along the Spanish-Roman borders. The young African general marched with a combined force of only seventy thousand (70,000) men and a few hundred elephants against Rome's more than three hundred thousand (300,000) man army. He had started in a direction that ran along the East Coast of Spain, from where he planned to cross Gaul (France) at the south, and invade Italy from the north. Some "Western historians", in order to make the Romans appear superior to the Carthaginians, raised this figure to more than 300,000 men.

After one year of exhaustive preparations (from 217 to 216BCE) the young general, Hannibal Barca, was ready for the big push into the heart of Rome after having pacified all of the Roman armies thrust against him while he was in the Po valley preparing for the push. Amongst the defeated was the Roman's most honored general, Consul Flaminius. The capture of his fortresses and the Apennines was a blessing that came to Hannibal. Hannibal followed the defeat of Flaminius by systematically cutting the Roman legions to pieces at the shores of Lake Trasimeno. The Roman army suffered its most humiliating defeat in this battle. The Consul was himself killed in the battle. Hannibal was now only a few days from the "gates of the Roman fortresses at Rome". But the general's army was too weak to begin the

siege of Rome. He, therefore, fought a few other battles to create some diversionary moves at inducing major desertions from the Romans to his side and at the same instance giving his men and animals (elephants) the much-needed chance to recuperate while expected supplies from Spain could arrive for the big push ahead.

Rome got its first real dictator in 217 B.C.E.17when the Roman Senate appointed Fabius "MARSHALL OF ALL FORCES" to stop the onslaught of the African invaders in northern Italy under the command of General Hannibal Barca. Fabius engaged Hannibal in a few small-delaying skirmishes (battles). However, in the meantime, Rome was also rebuilding her army and extending her naval fleet. The people of Rome, angry with the tactics of Fabius

who had been defeated battle after battle, began to call him "CUNTATOR" (the laggard).

By the year 216 BCE the Roman Consuls had organized a new and modern army of more than two-hundred thousand (200,000) men from allover their colonies, an army that was more than four (4) times the size of the remnant army of General Hannibal Barca that stood at the "GATES OF ROME". The Romans had taken advantage of the fact that Hannibal could not secure supplies or replacements for his soldiers. On the other hand, the Romans were able to

secure as many men as they were capable of training, and needed this was the sole ace in the hold, but they were also fortunate in having the strategic advantage of being on their own home territory. Added to this was the fact that the African invaders were completely surrounded by hostile captives from the various battles Hannibal was forced to engage his army in on the way into northern Italy during his crossing of the Alps. Thus in 216 BCE. Rome was able to hurl her newly rebuilt and modernized army of the north, of seventy thousand (70,000) men, against the Africans who had by this time only thirty-thousand (30,000) men - many of whom were ill-trained Europeans captured in the Alps and along the Po Valley. This started the "BATTLE FOR CANNAE" at the gates of Rome.

During the Battle for Cannae in 216 BCE General Hannibal Barca's cavalry chased the Roman horsemen into hasty retreat. This caused the main divisions of the Roman army to be caught in the center of the two main columns of the Carthaginians on each side, with their murderous elephant-equipped cavalry at the rear. The general had held two units of the Carthaginian reserves, his crack sharpshooters, in the rear of the entire battle scene.

These two African "FORCES OF DEATH", as they were called by the Romans who reported the battle events, closed in on approximately fifty-five thousand (55,000) Roman soldiers caught in the trap. By nightfall of the same day the Africans closed in and every last Roman soldier in the trap was annihilated. Historians of this era in history have claimed that...

"ROMAN BLOOD FLOWED LIKE A RIVER...

during this battle, as the Africans slaughtered their trapped adversaries.

The Africans' humiliating defeat of the Roman army (considered the best in the world at that time) forced many nations along both sides of the Mediterranean Sea into treaty alliances with the Africans of Carthage. It was just this reaction that forced Macedonia in the same year- 216 BCE -to sign a "TREATYOF ALLIANCE" with Carthage.

General Hannibal Barca (reputedly "the greatest general and military strategist of all times"), at the age of thirty (3O),

[This same strategy was employed in the l8th century CE by the African general, Tchaka, of the Zulu nation of the Monomotapa Empire against the invading colonialist slavers of Europe.]

had made Carthage the greatest single military power allover the Planet Earth -the "KNOWN WORLD". He had defeated "world's greatest military power". Rome, and had taken the honor for the Africans of Carthage. He had destroyed the Roman armies within less than two (2) short years (216-214 BCE). The Africans were "masters of the Mediterranean world", and now also "masters of the northern Italy, all the areas of the Alpine Pass, all of the Iberian Peninsula, and all of the western islands of the Mediterranean Sea."

General Hannibal Barca had established his mastery as a statesman over northern Italy by bringing in centralized authority over the area he controlled, something that area had not known before and in his military genius and command, caused the allies of Rome to desert in panic during 213 BCE.

The first to desert to Hannibal were the military leaders of northern Italy followed by many Greek city-states. Even Syracuse, in Sicily, forsook Rome and joined the general. Only one Roman (Latin) State in southern Italy remained in and truth loyal to Rome. That was Central Italy, which became the core of Roman nationalism and resistance. But the Roman Senators, all of them, stood their ground after the humiliating defeat and the tail turning of their allies of long standing to the African invaders. But this was not the first time the Africans had defeated the Romans and other Europeans in battle. It was, however, the most humiliating of any of their defeats.

By 207 BCE, after ten (10) long years of African rule and amalgamation of the African soldiers with the European women of the Iberian Peninsula and northern Italy, General Barca's hard core of his best African (Carthaginian) soldiers started to dwindle from many causes. The most damaging reason being his inability to secure reinforcements from Africa.20 As such, he was forced to use mainly deserters and other captured European soldiers to supplement his African "crack-shot" elite troops. But the Europeans could not take the rigorous training with the elephants and other military techniques that were totally foreign to them and there were not sufficient African troops to spare for the sole purpose of training the Europeans, nor sufficient time in which to accomplish such a feat.

The failure of the general to obtain sufficiently trained troops among the northern Italians forced him to dispatch his brother, Hasdrubal Barca, to Iberia (Spain) to gather Carthaginian troops holding that colony and Iberians whom they had time to train to relieve his men of the northern Italian frontier. Hasdrubal set forth to return to his brother the same year with the relief column to link up with the battle weary Carthaginians, only to march directly between a Roman army twice the size of his relief column on both sides of a mountain pass in Iberia. The Romans swooped down upon the Spaniards and Africans and annihilated each and every man, including Hasdrubal. This defeat was the turning point of the African's rule over Roman territory in northern Italy. It was also the beginning of the end to African rule in all of Europe until 711 CE, at which time the African-Moors invaded and annexed Spain and parts of southern France under the command of General Tarikh (for whom the "ROCK OF GIBRALTAR" is named).

During the year 203 BCE the Romans finally found a hero in a general, who was born, raised and educated in Carthage. He was also trained as an officer in the Carthaginian military academy General Barca attended. This man was none other than the world-famous Scipio Nasica, the same general who had defeated the Carthaginians twice before, having been sent earlier by the Roman government to Spain to cut off the chief supply of money and men from Carthage passing through the Iberian Peninsula to Hannibal. This was possible only because General Scipio Nasica knew all of the strategic moves General Hannibal Barca had learnt in the military academy in which they were both trained in North Africa -Carthage. He was also very much aware of the fact that General Barca's supply line was disrupted to the point that his rear flank all the way back to Carthage was left unprotected.

Having convinced the Roman Senate in 203 BCE not to attack General Hannibal Barca anymore in Northern Italy but in Carthage, General Scipio Nasica was allowed to invade Carthage, which he was to do with great success. This move forced General Hannibal Barca into hurried retreat as he returned to his native Carthage. Both Generals were of indigenous African heritage.