IMPERATIVE

Most men in history need an introduction. He did this, she did that, he discovered this land...etc. But a few, don't. Alexander the Great. Queen Elizabeth. Charles Darwin. Emperor Justinian... ...Julius Caesar.  Arguably, one of the three greatest generals in history, Caesar added much of Western Europe to the Roman Republic and set the stage for the transition to Empire. Much of what we call the "Western world" today was his creation. From Britain to France to Germany...he brought them out of the Stone Age and put them on the path to future greatness and civilization.  But instead of becoming a long-term ruler, he was assassinated by his own Senators on the Senate floor. How did it end like that? Did he deserve it? Surely, the great general who secured so much land for the Republic deserved better? It all began in Egypt. After his famous conquests, Caesar was dispatched to Alexandria to deal with the internal squabble playing out between two would-be Pha

The Punic Wars. Perhaps the first "World War" the world had ever seen. It occurred in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC and involved the then-world superpower Carthaginian Empire and the burgeoning Roman Republic. The Romans controlled most of Italy, parts of Spain, parts of the Adriatic Coast and parts of Magna Grecia (Greek-settled parts of Southern Italy) at this time.  Scant little, really. Nothing in the guise of what would become the Roman Empire, almost 400yrs in the future. Even then, Rome had already learnt the importance of maintaining client states and good relations with various tribes and city-states. As it stood, Rome's growing power and influence was always going to bring it into direct conflict with the established power of the region, Carthage. Earlier in the millennium, Phoenicians (from present-day Lebanon) had settled along the coast of Africa and one of the cities they founded became a great empire of its own. Carthage. Truly a great city that had

Everyone thinks of the Romans as "winners". They conquered the world, they never lost wars and they were a race of winners.  Untrue.  Rome's success wasn't built on winning. Rome was built on going on with determination in spite of losing many wars and many lands. Early in Roman history, the Greeks and the Carthaginians (a Middle Eastern power based in North Africa) both invaded Italy and almost  destroyed the country, leaving Rome with very little land in central Italy (many hundreds of years before it became the Empire we know). But the Romans never gave up. They kept losing battles and soldiers, but they kept coming back to the battlefields. They never gave in. And eventually, after decades and even hundreds of years of slow and grinding warfare, the Romans eventually conquered Greece and completely destroyed the Carthaginians (literally. They wiped out every city and every living being). The key to Roman success was thinking not about success but about how to ne