The First Punic War - OverSimplified (Part 2) - Historian Reacts

welcome back everyone to part two of our look at the brand new oversimplified punic wars if you did not see part one of my reaction there's a link in the description that will take you back to that before we dive into this today i do want to address something real quick because it seems to be a frequent topic of conversation a lot of times when these new videos come out because they're highly viewed you know 100 000 views on my reaction in the first 24 hours and i occasionally get the comments from people saying that i'm ripping off oversimplified and i'm taking advantage of their new video listen not only for myself but for everybody else who's doing these reaction videos over simplifies getting all of that money they claim all of the content as their copyright so the ads that run on this video today the money's going to oversimplified last year just my reactions alone made oversimplified i'm guessing about sixty thousand dollars so uh they're the only thing i'm gaining from this is i'm learning and i'm probably gaining some new subscribers who are discovering the channel this way so with that in mind if you do want to support this channel there's a lot of ways you can do that number one first and foremost please subscribe and check out some of my other content but also consider there's a link in the description to patreon and you can support this channel that way so if you want to support what i'm doing and i don't just do reactions i've got a lot of other content too so if you're new to the channel please stick around check out some of the other content that i have historic site videos i've got some original content as well so please check that stuff out so yeah totally support what oversimplified does and i'm glad that they are getting what they deserve for the work that they've done this reaction is just my way of kind of using the tool that they have provided and uh just trying to add to it a little bit but i'm not making any money off of it so anyway let's go ahead and dive into part two after the gigantic battle at cape ecnomas the romans were now free to land on african soil and so they did the carthaginians chose to focus on defending the city of carthage itself so the romans immediately took the city of aspis and were then free to raid and plunder the countryside they took over 20 000 slaves and a ton of booty but then some orders arrived from the senate send home the booty oh but i want to stay no steve not you they mean the treasure well we are not watching any more of this so the other console left with the booty leaving regulus and his forces on their own and they began advancing towards carthage along the way according to the ancient writer livy they encountered a literal dragon now livy was a roman historian so his account may be slightly exaggerated but this i believe so we talked about this yesterday i'm going to back up for a second here uh sources need to be considered in all these cases i mentioned it before who's the source what side are they on what biases do they have how close to the actual events are they writing you know if they're writing about an event that happened 300 years earlier and they're just getting information that's been passed down it may not be accurate but i'm really curious about the dragon thing so i think we need to dive into this a little bit deeper so here's the first thing we need to consider with this the oldest source that we have for these events that are being written about comes secondhand as a fragment fragment from alice gelias who copied the version of quintus elias tubero tubero was writing in the late 1st century bc so we're talking about well over a hundred years after these events well gallius's attic knights was assembled in the second century a.d so now we're talking three 350 years after these events now here's what tubero writes the consul atlas regulus when encamped at the by gratis river in africa fought a stubborn and fierce battle with a single serpent of extraordinary size which had its layer in that region that in a might struggle with the entire army the reptile was attacked for a long time with hurling engines and catapults and that when it was finally killed its skin 120 feet long was sent to rome so there you have it now i will say this this is hardly the only reference we have to giant reptiles dinosaurs you might say they are are 20th century accounts that come from places like the congo in africa where you have missionaries talking to uh natives in that region who are describing things deep in the jungle that can only be described as dinosaurs so is there truth to some of this stuff my experience with history is that where there's smoke there's some kind of fire even if the smoke doesn't really accurately describe the fire i think they probably fought something i think there's some truth to this what it exactly was and whether it was blown out of proportion how strong and how powerful and how much might it took to take it down is another thing story though it really is and i'll actually if i remember to i'll throw a link in the description to this account that i'm reading so you can study more of this on your own his account may be slightly exaggerated but so i want to actually back up and read what it says down at the bottom here olivier was a roman historian so his account may be slightly exaggerated it's also possibly a translation issue perhaps the begradus dragon was just a really big snake which is what it kind of sounds like then again maybe it never happened at all a lot of ancient history is disputed like that but hey since you took the time to pause the video and read this i want to let you know you're real swell and i'm sorry i told you to shut up okay awesome but this i believe as the romans continued to plunder the carthaginian people flooded into the city now not only was it in a major panic but it was so crowded the people began to starve and that's the problem you get all the civilians inside the city now you don't have enough supplies for your army uh and now there's a lot greater chance of disease spreading which are the two big factors in sieges disease and starvation don't panic everyone look i know you're all starving but i still have food for me so you know it's not all bad whoa you're wasting your tomatoes and you idiots wonder why you're starving oh well it's just more food for me things weren't looking good for carthage they had to do something to stop the romans rampaging throughout their land so they decided finally it was time to put an end to it they headed out and set up on rough hilly terrain overlooking the roman camp and they prepared for battle now while the carthaginians were the traditional masters of the sea on land they weren't always the brightest and i want to stop and back up to something we talked about yesterday because yesterday he was talking about how the romans copied the technology for the carthaginian ships and somebody was pointing out to me that had done some research on this topic that the way the ships were built they were almost like a an assembly line type of thing right where you had certain pieces that fit here and so it was actually really easy to reverse engineer because of how they were built uh it made it really easy to copy and mass produce those so interesting thing again that we don't really have time to dive into but might be worth looking into on your own case in point setting up in this position overlooking the roman camp was just about the stupidest thing they could have done why well there's something you gotta understand about carthage the carthaginian land forces actually suffered from a multitude of different issues first of all since the carthaginians were rich rich rich they could afford to pay a huge number of foreign mercenaries to fight for them these mercenaries actually made up the vast majority of carthage's forces and therefore carthage's land armies were a melting pot of many different cultures this however meant that if a battle wasn't going their way there could be loyalty issues man i ain't getting paid enough for this you be lyric slingers better not be thinking of running away what did he say i don't know man i don't speak phoenician and this is why i often praise people the likes of dwight eisenhower eisenhower never really held a combat command in wartime but what made him a brilliant general and the right guy for the time in world war ii was that he was able to bring together a multinational coalition now granted a lot of them were english speaking between the us the americans and canadians who made up the majority of that force but also dealing with the french and you had polish and you had other forces as well being able to bring all that together with competing interests and competing uh commands and and uh desires and and uh kind of focus as far as where you want things to go and making that work it's a very difficult thing to do and multinational coalitions fail much more often than they succeed so let's get out of here [Music] clearly there were also language issues the military generals tended to be carthaginian but they made a lot of strange decisions for example one of the most feared assets of the carthaginian army were the war elephants to a roman soldier who had never even seen an elephant before this was like fist fighting a literal monster yet the carthaginians continually kept placing the elephants in the rear where they were no use in a similar fashion the neighboring region of new media provided carthage with the most skilled cavalrymen in the world so why do they put them in the rear well i don't really know for sure but i think one of the reasons is if you have a limited resource and it's valuable you tend to be afraid to use it think world war one with these massive dreadnoughts these battleships that are built that cost a ton of money and resources that are not easily replaced you're afraid to lose them and so you end up not using them and so they really become more of a deterrent than an actual effective military weapon but the carthaginians often chose to fight on rough uneven terrain where horses and elephants were less effective and so in this case when the carthaginians again chose the rough terrain near the roman camp the romans easily sent them packing wow regulus we're mere miles from carthage you sure are amazing yes steve i know steve steve what's the matter we've almost won i just wish i could be as great as you regulus steve you're amazing i mean look at this thing it's unbelievable i know but i mean like at war stuff i'm such a noob my tanks always get blown up i can't even fly an aircraft straight there comes another tanks aircraft what are you talking about steve i'm talking about free-to-play online multiplayer combat game and this video's sponsored really good game is the most comprehensive vehicle combat game ever made don't just drive the tank become one with the tank done a lot of streams on my gaming channel vth gaming check it out link in the description uh with uh fellow uh viewers on war thunder a lot of fun you can be tanks you can be planes you can be ships it's great you can play as more than 2 000 battleships aircraft tanks and helicopters in dynamic player versus player combat with amazing 4k graphics each vehicle is incredibly detailed and modeled down to their individual components and for history nerds like you and i the vehicle collection in war thunder spans over a hundred years of military development from the 1920s to the present day i love the detailed damage mechanics in war thunder you ever think about how the exact angle a shell hits an armored vehicle affects the resulting damage war thunder has every bullet and shell is simulated with realistic destruction that's the kind of thing that gets me up in the morning and by using my link in the description below new and existing users can get an exclusive oversimplified decal to make their t50 tank look extra spicy plus you'll get a huge bonus pack including premium vehicles and boosters so play war thunder now on pc xbox and playstation and as always by using my link you'll be supporting my channel so thank you now where were we oh yeah invading africa getting some booty and sending the carthaginians packing everything was looking up for regulus a roman victory seemed like it was only a matter of time but then regulus realized something he had been consul for almost a year and his term was coming to an end he knew that if his successor took over and he finished the job then he would get the naked statues not regulus so see again how military strategy takes a back seat to the politics involved again this is this is something that's happened throughout history look at world war ii look at how the timing of certain invasions and the routes that were taken and and the choices that were made were affected by things like what's the post-war world gonna look like how are we gonna divide europe between us and the and the soviet union and you know it when all of that stuff plays into it it's not just about what's the most effective way to win the war it's about what's the most effective way to win the war by also getting what we want politically and there was no way regulus was going to allow that so he jumped the gun you there carthaginian boy i want you to deliver a message to your elders i marcus attilius regulus demand the total and unconditional surrender of carthage unconditional surrender jeez at least lay siege and starve us all to death first just deliver the message you punk he demands your total surrender what jeez at least like siege and starve us all to death first hey that's what i said well boys this roman thinks we're out but we're not out are we boys no we'll do what we always do in times like this hire somebody else to solve our problems for us darren bring in the spartan regulus's overly harsh demands had had the unintended effect of reinvigorating carthaginian resolve they brought in a mercenary from the famed land of sparta please tell me he's gonna look like gerard butler from 300 please tell me that's the case named xanthopus to help dig them out of this situation and we all know what spawns there we go yes sparta i love it but showed up and immediately took charge he had to look around and said you idiots put the elephants in front of the army so they can smash into the romans and stop fighting on rough uneven terrain find a big flat field so your superior cavalry can do their job sometimes you have to bring in the outside help to tell you what you need to hear the americans did this during the revolution you know people like uh baron von steuben who probably wasn't really who he claimed to be but still was able to come in and say the same kinds of things that people like washington had been saying but it took bringing in a european a german who had the gravitas and who had the aura of being somebody who really knew what he was talking about to kind of whip the colonists into shape and what's this i hear about you giving a speech telling everyone they're going to die hey i was just telling the people the truth you're a politician lie to the people and so xanthopus led out the newly reformed carthaginian army to meet regulus in the battle of the bagradas river the elephants now in the front smashed into the roman lines causing disarray the cavalry with total freedom of movement outflanked the roman infantry thanks to this impressive spartan the battle was a total carthaginian victory i want to know who this spartan is we need to look a little deeper into that so his name was zen thippis of carthage he was a greek possibly spartan mercenary general hired by the carthaginians to aid in their war against the romans during the first punic war and he leads them to this victory and i don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves but it seems that he gets killed later on so there you go and xanthopus for his stunning victory because the leadership got jealous regulus the roman consul was captured during the battle legend has it he was brought before the carthaginian council and they made a proposition well reggie not looking so good anymore is it looks like we beat you pretty bad huh up yours you punic pansies now now regulus nobody likes a sore loser do they no how about this we're gonna send you back to rome and you convince the roman senate to surrender to us if you fail though you gotta come back so we can torture you to death okay okay sure promise i promise pinky swear hey guys by the way in that battle uh from everything i've read it looks like the carthaginians lost maybe a thousand and the roman casualties were like over ten thousand so interesting whoa regulus we thought you got captured i did but they sent me back to convince you to surrender should we surrender no never surrender give them hell boys they're at the end of their rope anyway i gotta go be tortured to death now what yeah part of a deal i made it's a long story oh hey wait regulus no no it's cool guys i promised regulus this is ancient times we massacre entire populations we chop pets in half you can break a promise no tim you never break a promise that's too far that's too far children are sacrificed we slaughter entire populations we conquer people but you can't break a promise regulus went back to carthage and was tortured to death so we make fun of that but there was a unique sense of honor here uh in in things like that and and while certain things were understood to be part of war there were also certain things that a man of honor would do and it doesn't make any sense to us now but and for keeping his promise he was immortalized as the leading symbol of roman virtue meanwhile after their defeat in africa the remaining roman survivors still in africa were still in africa and they needed to be rescued so the romans sent their fleet to pick him up and bring him home they successfully fended off a carthaginian fleet grabbed the survivors and made their way to sicily a great success but then things took a turn for the worse ah sir that cloud looks kind of angry fear not coward if we romans can build a war fleet from scratch and defeat the carthaginian empire at their own game why then even mother nature herself will crumble before us i laugh in the face of mother nature ha ha see come on guys laugh at mother nature with me the times that weather has been the deciding factor in wartime i mean the spanish armada in 1588 that was weather wasn't the might of the british navy that played a part but it was weather uh you know the uh the times that japan was gonna be invaded uh throughout history and weather turned back the invading fleets you know the d-day landings were delayed by a day because of weather and almost didn't it happen at all if the weather had continued to be bad who knows what might have happened the weather obviously played a huge factor with napoleon's defeat because of his invasion of russia stalingrad the weather 284 ships nearly 80 percent of the roman fleet was destroyed as many as a hundred thousand men drowned in a terrifying act of nature never before had rome lost so many men in a single incident and you have to think put yourself in the mindset of that day you're obviously to think that if you're carthaginian the gods have protected us baal or whoever you you know you it is that you attribute this to the romans a lot of them are going to think that you know fate or the roma you know the gods were against us in this a hundred thousand casualties for any other nation would be crippling any other nation would hastily sue for peace any other nation would spend decades trying to recover but rome was not just infamous for its unrelenting determination in the face of overwhelming odds rome said well i guess we'll just have to build another fleet and they did in just three months they built 220 more ships an astonishing feat the romans sent out their brand spanking new war fleet and they got caught in another storm this time no way they do it the fleet was lost and still the romans did not give up this is a big part of why rome is going to be so successful in growing their empire and i know my friend mr terry i caught a couple of minutes of his uh reaction yesterday because it was premiering and i stopped in just to kind of check the chat and say hi and everything um was saying something about empires and he makes a good point which is that we use the term empire and we can get very literal with that and say well if you don't have an emperor you're not an empire but you can also use the word empire to talk about any large political entity that conquers other peoples and has lots of different people groups and nationalities and things like that within it and and for rome to grow its empire in the loosest sense obviously when it's still a republic it requires this kind of unrelenting attitude in order to be able to grow and overcome and conquer the carthaginians couldn't believe it their enemy had just lost hundreds of thousands of men had two fleets almost entirely destroyed and they still wouldn't surrender and if i'm the carthaginians at this point i'm evaluating myself and asking do we have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to a power like that who does not seem to know what quit means what giving up means what losing means are we willing to sacrifice the way that they have in order to win this as one roman poet put it the victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so in typical roman fashion after a short break they were once again building another fleet however for now after all the disasters at sea the focus began shifting back to the land campaign in sicily the carthaginians overconfident from recent successes attempted to retake panoramas but the romans countered the terrifying war elephants by throwing stuff at them and scaring them away so again here we see the evolving of tactics to deal with new threats so okay elephants weren't a big deal because they weren't using them properly then they started using them properly so now we say okay how do we counter this threat this is how we see technology and tactics evolving every war does this every war looks totally different at the end than it does at the beginning if it's a protracted any kind of a long war because people adjust and whoever adjusts better and makes the proper uh changes that are needed is going to come out on top having stopped the carthaginian advance the road was now open to the final carthaginian stronghold on the island lily bayam lilly byam was an extremely well fortified city in 250 bc the romans laid siege the carthaginian defense however was fierce and skilled blockade runners kept the city supplied progress was so slow that the siege would last another nine years to make matters worse the carthaginians later sent possibly the greatest military general of the devil a man named hamilkar barka to the island he engaged in a skillful campaign of guerilla warfare behind enemy lines and for the remainder of the war he was a major thorn in the roman side for now with the deadlock siege at lily by him i got a little ahead of myself there that's hannibal's dad not hannibal and the new roman fleet at sea things seem to be at a standstill and the romans had to do something to break the deadlock thankfully the roman consul claudius pulcher had an idea he tried to get things moving by attacking the carthaginian fleet at trepana now before a battle to predict if they would win it was common for the romans to look for signs from the gods this could mean observing the weather or inspecting some cow livers you know typical religion stuff in this case pulcher reportedly tried to feed some sacred chickens but unfortunately for him they wouldn't eat a crumb a very bad sign well he said if they won't eat then let them drink stupid chickens we'll observe the weather instead gods give me a sign uh ignore that okay how about this if i can get this piece of paper into that trash basket we'll win okay if i can stick we laugh at this stuff now but i can remember as a kid trying stuff like that right like all right god if you really want me to ask this girl out i'll make this next basket no lie i did that and it seems ridiculous now but you know that's how you think sometimes and there's actually a story about that from the bible too there's a um a story of a man who his name was gideon and gideon is has his angel appear to him and and tells him he's a mighty warrior while he's hiding in a hole from invading armies and tells him he wants to lead this force and getting his like all right well if you really want me to do that i'm going to lay this fleece out and if i wake up tomorrow morning and the fleece is wet but the ground is dry then i'll know and then it happens all right well if the fleece is dry and the ground is wet then i'll know and you know that kind of stuff those stories exist through many cultures stand here silently for five seconds and do nothing we'll win culture chose to ignore the signs from the gods and in the following battle the superior carthaginians tore them to shreds it also didn't help that by now the romans had removed the corvus to stabilize their ships and without their secret weapon it was a disaster and pultrum was disgraced to make matters worse the victorious carthaginian fleet then went on to intercept a roman supply fleet on its way to lilly byam as they approached however they saw the signs of an incoming storm so they took shelter the romans on the other hand said onward men set sail we've got to deliver these supplies step how many storms do you need to destroy your ships before you figure this out but sir those clouds don't you think we ought to have learned our lesson by now yes brian we ought to have but we haven't another fleet and 50 000 men lost in another storm disaster now at this point there still really isn't a clear winner sure the romans have captured most of sicily and cornered the carthaginian land forces at lilly biome but the continued disasters at sea were critically depleting their resources and without a strong fleet rome could not win meanwhile hamilkar barka was still knocking about and creating even more problems so where do we go from here how does this war finally end by now the two sides had been fighting for 23 years they were exhausted their money their resources their strength were all utterly spent the carthaginians in particular were eager to see the war end so they could get back to trading and making money so after the latest roman disaster at sea they said look there ain't no way in heck the romans can come back again they can't possibly afford to build another fleet they're done they're building another fleet recall the navy repurpose them as merchant ships and let's get back to making some money assuming the romans would soon make peace an anti-war faction within the government recalled a large portion of the navy leaving hamilkar on his own the victors appeared to be declaring themselves victorious meanwhile the vanquished remember the quote from earlier that if you don't admit you've lost you haven't lost yet no matter what the other side says getting ready for round five the romans built another fleet this time heavily relying on patriotic donations from the upper classes to afford it and once again they put to see the romans have built another fleet oh for goodness sake clarence can't you see i'm busy rolling around in this pile of money but sir i don't care anymore clarence i just don't care the carthaginian politicians made a fairly lackluster final effort with a poorly built fleet to supply their forces in sicily but when the brand new roman fleet caught them at the battle of the egates even without their signature corvus they dealt them the final blow and that was that 23 years of war neither side could afford to keep fighting but the romans showed that they intended to anyway the carthaginians had no choice but to throw in the towel the war had been long and hard for both sides but in the end it was roman determination that one the fight the romans had spent the entire war trying to find a way to deliver the knockout blow they learned how to build a fleet and engage in naval combat they developed ingenious new ways of waging war they attempted an invasion of the carthaginian heartland and whenever disaster struck them they always came back again and again the carthaginians on the other hand spent the entire war watching whatever room did and then figuring out how to respond they were much more passive and so it's no wonder then that when both sides were close to collapse rome was the one who figured out how to go that little bit further and you know this is a life lesson right here i mean this is how some people get ahead in life because some people are just willing to do more to work harder to give and sacrifice more than other people are willing to and that's why i tell people all the time just even with youtube you know youtube is not something where people see overnight success there are exceptions to that and it does sometimes happen but you know my first youtube channel my gaming channel after two years i had four thousand subscribers uh and after another two years i had barely hit ten thousand uh you know but i understood that and i'm not trying to build to my own horn here i'm just saying i understood it was gonna take time and a lot of work to see any success and now you know we've got the growth here with vlogging through history and stuff like that didn't happen overnight and a lot of people don't succeed not because they don't have the ability but because they just give up too quickly in 241 bc the carthaginian politician sent word to hamilkar barka that he was on his own and could choose to make peace with the romans if he wished hamilkar was stunned he felt betrayed by the politicians some sources say he refused to even negotiate nevertheless terms had to be drawn up well hammy i'm glad you carthaginians have finally come to your senses and recognized who the true winner is how many fleets did you lose okay here are terms do you leave sicily to us and return all of our prisoners you're not allowed to make war against syracuse or her allies and you have to pay us 2 200 talents of silver over the next 20 years what's a talent of silver well to put it in perspective in the year 2022 that'll be worth around let's say 40 million us dollars by carumba that will us wow we got a real smart guy over here yeah that's kind of the point you dingus and we know what happens when you put crippling uh indemnities on someone after a war eventually it can come back to bite you ugh i guess i have no choice i accept great oh by the way we changed our minds you actually have to pay us 3 200 talents of silver over 10 years thanks for accepting dude see you later hey you didn't let me sound cool he didn't let me say i'm cool the treaty was extremely punishing and by switching up the terms at the last minute they enraged the carthaginians but still one of the longest and deadliest wars at the time was finally over the romans had won they achieved their aim of gaining sicily and even though it wasn't part of the peace deal they took advantage of a weakened carthage and grabbed corsica and sardinia as well roman expansion beyond the italian peninsula had just begun the romans hoped that now the carthaginians would forever be under their thumb unfortunately the harsh terms they placed on the carthaginians at the end of the war left a growing anger one that would come back to haunt them who can imagine a world in which putting crippling punishment on someone at the end of a war would lead to another war with that same group of people one day carthage will have its revenge that's nice dear i'm serious woman and maybe not in my lifetime but perhaps in his my beautiful son you are born into a momentous destiny you shall be rome's greatest enemy you'll tear roam limb from limb you'll burn their pathetic city into the ground you'll slaughter their people men women and children my child you are vengeance telling our baby he's vengeance but he is barbara he's vengeance that maybe so someday but for now our son has a name and you should call him that instead his name is so i guess that's gonna be our next over simplify video it sure seems that way doesn't it i mean i can't imagine he's setting this up any other way the second punic war coming soon very cool i'm excited in the meantime i'm going to be studying up on this because i want to be prepared when that one comes out i want to know a bunch of stuff about it so i'm going to be diving down some punic war rabbit holes in the next coming months so i hope you enjoyed that please hit like and like i said if you would consider subscribing checking out patreon things like that i'd greatly appreciate that thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 500,543

Keywords: oversimplified reaction, history reaction, punic wars, roman history, history teacher reacts, first punic war, oversimplified reaction punic wars, oversimplified reaction first punic war, the romans, the first punic war, historian reacts, reaction to oversimplified, oversimplified reaction punic, oversimplified reaction mr terry, oversimplified reaction vlogging through history, oversimplified reaction tommykay

Id: FtPWYIR4QIc

Length: 37min 46sec (2266 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022