The First War

The First Punic War began over a small squabble on Sicily that neither Rome nor Carthage intended to turn into a generation-long war. When Italian mercenaries (the Mamertines) who had seized the Sicilian city of Messana appealed to Rome for protection against Carthage's interference, Rome crossed the Strait of Messina for the first time — committing itself, almost accidentally, to the most expensive war in its history. Carthage, which had dominated Sicily for centuries and regarded it as its own sphere of influence, could not accept Roman interference. Within months, a border incident had become a war between the two greatest powers of the western Mediterranean.

Rome's fundamental problem was that it had no navy. Carthage's fleet had dominated the western Mediterranean for generations; Carthaginian sailors were the most experienced in the world. The Roman Senate's response was characteristically audacious: it built a fleet from scratch in 60 days, reportedly copying the design of a Carthaginian quinquereme that had run aground conveniently. To compensate for its sailors' inexperience, Roman engineers invented the corvus — a spiked boarding bridge that could be dropped onto an enemy ship, converting every sea battle into an infantry melee. At Mylae in 260 BC, Duilius used it to destroy the Carthaginian fleet that had come to crush Rome's amateur navy.

The war stretched on for 23 years — longer than either side had imagined. Rome launched an invasion of Africa in 256 BC that came within a campaign season of taking Carthage itself; the Spartan mercenary Xanthippus arrived, reorganised the Carthaginian army, and destroyed the Roman invasion force at Tunis. Rome lost multiple fleets to storms — the ancient sources record perhaps 700 warships and 100,000 men lost to the sea, numbers so staggering that modern historians have doubted them, though the scale of Roman naval losses was clearly enormous. Each time, the Senate raised money and built another fleet. The war finally ended in 241 BC when Rome won the naval Battle of the Aegates Islands, cutting off the Carthaginian army in Sicily. Carthage negotiated; Sicily became Rome's first overseas province.