From the invasion of Pyrrhus to 146 BCE – when Roman armies destroyed both Carthage, at the end of what was called the Third Punic War (from the Latin Punicus, or ‘Carthaginian’), and, almost simultaneously, the wealthy Greek city of Corinth – there was more or less continuous warfare involving Rome and its enemies in the Italian peninsula and overseas. One ancient scholar isolated the year ‘when Gaius Atilius and Titus Manlius were consuls’ (235 BCE) as the only point in this period when hostilities were not taking place.
