Carthage was a Phoenician city founded in 814 BC.  From the founding of the Roman Republic, Carthage had long supported Rome in its bid to secure independence and strength in Italy.  As late as 279 BC, the two states were allied against Pyrrhus of Empirus to contain his expansionist goals.  But, as Rome’s military strength grew, so did the relative enmity.
At this time, Carthage was by far the greatest sea power on the Mediterranean.  Its naval authority and vast merchant fleet and trade routes brought wealth and power to the African city-state.  Carthage control extended over North Africa from Lybia to Gibralter, much of southern Spain and the Islands of Corsica, Sardina and part of Sicily.
When the Sicilian city of Massena revolted against Carthage in 264 BC,  the Romans took  advantage of the Carthaginian difficulties and once again entered in a supporting role. The invasion touched off a series of 3 wars that would last over 100 years.  Some of the greatest  battles and commanders in world history were placed on center stage.  Hannibal and Scipio Africanus were immortalized.  The ingenuity and technology brought on by this level of warfare advanced the Roman Legions to incredible power in the western world.
Fueled by the Carthagian (Punic) Wars, Roman expansionist aims widened, and as a direct consequence, Illyricum on the Adriatic, Macedonia and Greece all became targets for Roman acquisition.  The years of 264 BCV to 146 BC would transform Rome from a young Republic to an intimidating Empire. 

urrently, the first evidence of Homo Sapiens, man able to think, giving credence to his existence is about 100,000 years ago.  This evidence is in the form of weapons, tools, habitats and devices used to live.  As the numbers grew, the primary and constantly pressing need was for food.  Some members who found themselves in fertile areas (e.g. The Indus Valley) learned how to grow food and feed their animals without constant nomadic movement to acquire sustenance.  
Refinement of this bedrock ability to grow food broke his shackles to foraging and allowed him to stay and build in one place.  Not having to move-on, enable individual man to coalesce into groups, and groups into tribes.  We shall see that tribes for many centuries would be the primary form of man’s socialization, usually with groups possessing similar goals, traits, values, religion and purposes.  What is often overlooked by the casual reader of ancient history is that the formation of tribes was occurring across the world, but at differing rates of sophistication and maturation which, in turn, would be a source of almost indescribable suffering, destruction, carnage and death as well as surprising growth, discovery and achievement.