"HANNIBAL AT THE GATE!" (Hannibal ante portas!) - this phrase entered the history of military art not in vain: the greatest commander of antiquity was the most dangerous enemy of Rome, the warriors of Carthage defeated the Roman armies several times and stood at the gates of the Eternal City, threatening its very existence, and the Punic Wars themselves , which lasted a long hundred and twenty years, demanded from the Romans an enormous effort of all forces. It was this deadly battle between the two most powerful states of Antiquity, during which the fate of the Eternal City more than once hung in the balance, that tempered the Roman legions, turning them into the most perfect fighting machine of the Ancient World. It was after the triumph over Carthage that the legionnaires gained the glory of INVICTUS - "invincible": from now on, the heavy tread of their iron cohorts terrified any enemy, and the predatory Roman eagles spread their wings over the entire Oikumene.This book is the first in Russian literature encyclopedia of the great confrontation between Rome and the Carthaginian state. For the first time, on the basis of a wide range of sources, not only the passage of Hannibal's army with elephants through the Alps and the Battle of Cannes, but also the course of all three Punic wars, which can be called global without exaggeration on the scale of the ancient world, as well as the tactics and weapons of the parties, are analyzed in detail.