The History of Rome Volume 2 Author:Theodor Mommsen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 28 CHAPTER II. THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY. state of Fob upwards of a century the feud between the Cartha- Sicily. ginians and ... more »the rulers of Syracuse had devastated the beautiful island of Sicily. On both sides the contest was carried on with the weapons of political proselytism, for, while Carthage kept up communications with the aristocratico- republican opposition in Syracuse, the Syracusan dynasts maintained relations with the national party in the "Greek cities that had become tributary to Carthage. On both sides armies of mercenaries were employed to fight their battles —by Timoleon and Agathocles, as well as by the Phoenician generals. And as like means were employed on both sides, so the conflict had been waged on both with a disregard of honour and a perfidy unexampled in the history of the west. The Syracusans were the weaker party. In the peace of 314. 440, Carthage had still limited her claims to the third of the island to the west of Heraclea Minoa and Himera, and had expressly recognized the hegemony of the Syracusans over all the cities to the eastward. The expulsion 275. of Pyrrhus from Sicily and Italy (479) left by far the larger half of the island, and especially the important city of Agrigentum, in the hands of Carthage ; the Syracusans re- tamed nothing but Tauromenium and the south-east of the Campanian island. In the second great city on the east coast, Messana, mercenaries, a band of foreign soldiers had established themselves and held the city, independent alike of Syracusans and Carthaginians. These new rulers of Messana were Campanian mercenaries. The dissolute habits that had become prevalent among the Sabellians settled in and around Capua (i. 364), had made Campania in the fourth and fifth centuries—what Etolia, Crete...« less