The incident which set Rome on the path to becoming a Mediterranean power was a relatively insignificant one. A group of Italian mercenaries, who called themselves the Mamertines (after the Oscan name for Mars), had seized the city of Messana (modern day Messina) which overlooked the straits between Sicily and Italy. In 265 BCE, the ruler of Syracuse, Hiero, had tried to dislodge them. While some looked to Carthage for help, others appealed to Rome. The senate was reluctant to intervene as it had already condemned one group of Roman citizens who had seized a Greek city and felt it would be inconsistent to now uphold the Mamertines seizure. On the other hand, it was all to clear that a Carthaginian takeover in Messina would threaten Roman control of the straits. The debate was taken to the popular assembly, and after speeches by the consuls stressing the threat to Rome and the hope of plunder it was the assembly that committed the state to action, the only example we have when the citizen body, rather than the senate, set Rome on the path to war.

Faced now with a Roman response, the Carthaginians withdrew their garrison from Messana and the Romans then occupied the city. Although Carthage and Syracuse were long standing enemies, the occupation was sufficiently provocative to force them into an alliance. When they besieged Messana, the outbreak of war, the First Punic War (264 BCE - 241 BCE) was inevitable.

Carthage's main interest was the preservation of her commercial empire, and Rome, without a navy, could offer no threat to this. The only possible focus of the fighting was Sicily, and for the first three years, the campaign was concentrated here. There were some Roman successes in the early years. Rome managed to pry Hiero of Syracuse away from Carthage and make him an ally as well as take the city of Acragas, which had been held by a Carthaginian garrison. Rome then sold the entire population of Acragas into slavery. The campaigns of this period ended in a stalemate. Carthage held control of the sea and Rome's chances of subduing the coastal cities were limited as a result.

After the capture of Acragas, Rome decided to eliminate this barrier and began to build a fleet. With no naval tradition and no experience in ship building and using a grounded Carthaginian ship as a model with crews being trained on the land, Polybius tells us that one hundred quinqueremes were built in only sixty days.

The first encounter of the two fleets at Mylae off the coast of Sicily in 260 BCE was a Roman victory which was followed by an even more crushing success off Cape Ecnomus when eighty Carthaginian ships were either sunk or captured. The way was now open for an invasion of Africa. Troops were landed there in 256 and at first moved successfully toward Carthage. However, the Carthaginians had imported a Spartan mercenary to train their army and they ended up crushing the Roman invaders in 255 BCE. Further disasters struck Rome when a fleet sent to rescue the survivors was destroyed in a storm and thousands of trained oarsmen were drowned. The year 249 proved disastrous for Rome with a major defeat at the battle of Drepana off the west coast of Sicily and the loss of almost all the remaining fleet in a storm later in the year.

The war now became one of attrition, symbolized by the nine year siege by the Romans of the Carthaginian fortress of Lilybaeum on the west coast of Sicily. The attacking forces were harassed by the only outstanding general of the war, the Carthaginian Hamilcar, who successfully held the Romans at bay. By 242, Rome made a final effort to raise a new fleet. At a battle off the Aegates Islands in the following year it met with what was the last of the Carthaginian forces, a fleet heavily laden with supplies for Sicily. A Roman victory resulted when most of the Carthaginian ships were either sunk or captured and this victory decided the outcome of the war. Carthage could no longer protect Sicily and ceded it to Rome. Syracuse survived as an independent ally of Rome.

The twenty three year conflict was costly for both sides but Rome was victorious and Sicily became the first of its many provinces. The hatred and tensions between Carthage and Rome continued to fester, however, and war erupted again in 218 BCE......but that's another story.



Roman People, Second Edition, Robert S. Kebric, Mayfield Publishing Company, 1997

The Oxford History of the Classical World, Boardman, Griffin, and Murray, Oxford University Press, 1986

The Penguin Encyclopedia of Classical Civilizations, Arthur Cotterell, Penguin Books, 1993

Egypt, Greece and Rome, Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean, Charles Freeman, 1996