[Lurker]

Romans also had things like representative goverment, private property, legal status for citizens, etc.

They also had such wonders as chattel slavery, mass murder as a form of public entertainment, and the 'representative government' you speak of was more akin to the Politburo under Stalin.

The Emperor could legally have just about anyone in the Empire murdered just for kicks.

Granted they had art and architecture but there really wasn't all that much to admire about Roman society.

L

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

You seem to have confused the Republic with Imperial Rome. The first Roman Emperor was not in office until over 150 years after the war with Hannibal. In 150 years WE might have an Emperor! In addition, while gladiatorial combat did exist, it was rather a minor entertainment, as a ritual at funerals. The first permanent gladiatorial arena in Rome was built more than 250 years after Hannibal. While Rome did have slavery, that was true of all civilizations up to and including ours.

The Republic was real enough that it was the basis of much of the thought of our founders, and did not collapse into tyranny and chaos until more than a century after Hannibal. In addition it does seem that Carthage had retained the Canaanite practice of human sacrifice of their young, reviled by the Romans, and their original next door neighbors, the Jews, who referred to this as 'making a Holocaust'.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Romans also had things like representative goverment, private property, legal status for citizens, etc.

They also had such wonders as chattel slavery, mass murder as a form of public entertainment, and the 'representative government' you speak of was more akin to the Politburo under Stalin.

All your "wonders" and my "things" made them far and away closer to what we consider modern civilization than anything else at the time. By the time of the Punic Wars, even the Greeks had mostly regressed under the Macedonian dynasties.