Ancient wars

War has a way of dragging out extremes in human behavior. Sometimes it inspires breathtaking engineering feats; other times, it leaves scars so deep that entire landscapes are reshaped for centuries. The Great Wall of China, for example, wasn’t built to impress tourists. It was an enormous “keep out” sign for northern invaders, a wall forged by fear, ambition, and the determination to survive. And that is only one example in a long list of times humanity literally reshaped the face of the Earth for the sake of conflict.

The long struggle known as the First Punic War marked the beginning of a historic clash between two rising Mediterranean powers—Rome and Carthage. This confrontation unfolded over more than two decades and permanently altered the balance of power across the ancient world. The broader series of conflicts between these empires came to be called the Punic Wars, a name rooted in the term “Punic,” which itself derived from the Latin Punicus, referring to the Phoenician ancestry of the Carthaginians. Although Carthage began as a modest coastal stopover, its strategic position and merchant networks allowed it to expand into one of the wealthiest and most influential cities on the Mediterranean coast.

The figure of Achilles stands at the center of Greek mythology as one of its most celebrated warriors, a man whose name became synonymous with strength, courage, beauty, and tragic vulnerability. The legends surrounding him paint a portrait of a hero who seemed almost invincible, a warrior capable of shifting the balance of an entire war by simply stepping onto the battlefield. Yet, woven into his legacy is the reminder that even the greatest heroes carry a weakness—what we now call an “Achilles heel.” Much of what the world knows about him comes from Homer’s epic The Iliad, which recounts a turbulent and emotionally complex version of Achilles during the final stretch of the Trojan War, capturing both his glory and his flaws with striking depth.