Explanation: During the first two Punic Wars, the North African polity of Carthage, settled by Phoenician colonists from the Levant, and the Italian polity of the Roman Republic, engaged in a large-scale struggle for supremacy over the Mediterranean, or at least their corner of it.
In the course of both wars, Rome took massive, brutal, backbreaking losses... and stubbornly continued to conscript citizens and innovate in their military tactics and technology until they managed to stumble on a winning formula - or simply exhaust Carthage beyond Carthage's own capacity to continue. Notably, in the Second Punic War, it's estimated that a fifth of the adult male citizen population of Rome died in combat - yet at no point did the Roman Republic seriously consider suing for peace. Stubborn bastards!
The Third Punic War was a shameful curbstomp of a reduced city-state (Carthage) by a massive superpower (Rome), it's not nearly as impressive.