First Punic War - Background

Background

By the middle of the 3rd century BC, the Romans had secured the whole of the Italian peninsula, except Gallia Cisalpina (Po Valley). Over the course of the preceding one hundred years, Rome had defeated every rival that stood in the way of their domination of the Italian peninsula. First the Latin league was forcibly dissolved during the Latin War, then the power of the Samnites was broken during the three prolonged Samnite wars, and the Greek cities of Magna Graecia who were unified after Pyrrhus of Epirus finally left Italy, requiring the Greek Cities in southern Italy to submit to Roman authority at the conclusion of the Pyrrhic War.

Carthage considered itself the dominant naval power in the western Mediterranean. It originated as a Phoenician colony in Africa, near modern Tunis, and gradually became the center of a civilization whose hegemony reached along the North African coast and deep in its hinterland, and also included the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Corsica, a limited area in southern Spain, and the western half of Sicily. The conflict began after both Rome and Carthage intervened in Messana, the Sicilian city closest to the Italian peninsula.