The day has arrived. After Pyrrhus's retreat from Italy in 275 BC, Carthage and Rome found themselves to be new neighbors with only a two mile stretch of water in the Strait of Messina separating them from each other. Although it is debatable whether the First Punic War was inevitable, its causes were rooted in many things, including the Romans’ belief that they stood alongside the Greeks against the barbarian world and its inhabitants such as Carthage as well as political rivalry and fear. Sparked by a local quarrel between Syracuse and the Mamertines, a group of rogue mercenaries who had seized control of the city of Messana, the First Punic War escalated from a regional skirmish into a full-scale conflict which would become one of the longest and costliest wars of Antiquity.

Link to the Layman's Historian website

Link to my Map of the Mediterranean World Circa 300 BC

Link to the Episode 20 page on the Layman's Historian website

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