The Cursus Honorum

If students have the Polybius text, in book 6, pages 312-314, different levels of office are described.  compare these, if possible, with Mr Blaney's political hierarchy.

There is a  Wikipedia page describing the Cursus Honorum, the political hierarchy in Rome, but I think it is a later formalization of rules that didn't exist during the Punic Wars.

See also, this chart.


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And this one:

Polybius and Narnia

Perhaps C.S. Lewis was not as groundbreaking and original as people had thought.  Polybius mentions Narnia during his description of the Second Punic War.  This Narnia has a Wikipedia page.  There, you can find a map showing Narnia's location.
From Wikipedia:

In 299 BC it became a Roman Municipality, and took the name Narnia. In 209 BC, it was destroyed by the Romans, for refusing to help pay for the war against Carthage. It was later rebuilt, and during the Roman times it was an outpost for the Roman army.

This site seems to have good descriptions of soldiers fighting for, with and against Rome.

Roman Military Camp

From here.
More in a Google Image search.

Hannibal and his elephants

Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with his elephants is the part of the story best remembered. In fact, he lost half his elephants in the crossing and the rest died soon after arriving in Italy.

This high death rate in the crossing made me wonder what to compare it to.  I am more of a biologist than a historian so the fate of  migratory birds and butterflies in their epic seasonal journeys seemed a good comparison.

The Michigan Dept of Natural Resources says:

Migration accounts for the majority of annual adult mortality in land birds (Sillett and Holmes 2002). This biannual journey is the most energetically expensive process in a bird's life.

All this means is that death on one of the migratory trips is likely, not that any single one is especially dangerous.  I am not sure how to learn more and this is not really a biology blog ... too bad about that, by the way.

I don't think the picture below depicts a battle in Roman territory between the Romans and Carthaginians, but maybe it does depict a battle in Carthage.

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first homework assignment

Watch this video, then look at the photos in your textbook.  Now, draw a picture of Rome, Circa 250 B.C. on a 5 metre by 1.5 metre sheet of paper.  You may need to tape or glue many A4 pages together.  This image is due on January 9.

Welcome GLPS students!

Here I plan to place my research notes as I prepare for our class.

To be clear, I have nothing against Carthage or modern-day Tunisia, but I do like the idea of the senator finishing every speech with the phrase "...and Carthage must be destroyed."