Hellenistic period Balkans, Philip allied himself with Carthage after Hannibal had dealt the Romans a massive defeat at the Battle of Cannae (216 BC) during the Second Punic War. Forcing the Romans to fight on another front when they were at a nadir of manpower gained Philip the lasting enmity of the Romans—the only real result from the somewhat insubstantial First Macedonian War (215–202 BC). Once the Second Punic War had been resolved, and the Romans had begun to regather their strength, they looked to re-assert their influence in the Balkans, and to curb the expansion of Philip. A pretext for war
Sexuality in ancient Rome reviled throughout Latin literature. In general the Romans had more flexible gender categories than the ancient Greeks. A late 20th-century paradigm analyzed Roman sexuality in terms of a "penetrator–penetrated" binary model, a misleadingly rigid analysis that may obscure expressions of sexuality among individual Romans. Even the relevance of the word "sexuality" to ancient Roman culture has been disputed, but in the absence of any other label for "the cultural interpretation of erotic experience", the term continues to be used. Ancient literature pertaining to Roman sexuality falls mainly into four categories: legal texts; medical texts; poetry; and political discourse. Forms of