Dr. Eve MacDonald
speaker
1,045 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 13 Sep
Dr. Eve MacDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So the Carthaginians have a Grigento at this point, and the Romans laid siege Romans and Syracusans lay siege to it.
And the Carthaginians
really hire a whole new army in order to deal with this situation and they land
And they encircle
The besieging army of the Romans.
And so we have early in the war this sort of story of a a really incredible siege of this very famous beautiful city decorated with monumental temples.
And it's a long and complicated story in which it gets very much um into uh the gory details of the starving people inside and the attempts by Carthaginian generals to break the siege of the Romans and the eventual sort of uh Roman garrison uh the Carthaginian garrison inside of um Agrigento busting out to try and beat.
beat the Romans, losing, and then the city is left open to the Romans.
And the Romans were told, although it's of course this must be an exaggeration, enslave the whole population, fifty thousand people, and sack the city.
And it's this idea in the Roman sources of the wealth of Agrigento being paraded through Rome in a triumph.
that becomes the moment when the Roman people support this effort and war in Sicily.
So I think that's important to talk about is that up until then they were maybe we get the impression the Roman people were a little skeptical about the Roman endeavors in Sicily.
But all of a sudden they see all this wealth flooding back into the city and of course all these enslaved people and all of this happens and so yeah, that's uh it's sort of the first big urban city to fall.
Well, it does.
So the first key battle on the sea, now Carthage uh would uh really prefer, we think, to fight naval battles, and they're incredibly adaptable maritime power.
So they fight using um really skilled uh sailors and they they build ships really quickly and well, and in fact, we're told
told that the Romans adapt their navy when they build it in this period to Carthaginian standards because the Carthaginians are building the sort of best standard warships at the time.
But interestingly, at this first battle in Mylai, which is the Milazzo Peninsula, now that sticks up in the north of the island of Sicily.
Off the Malazzo Peninsula Milee, the first battle is fought between the Carthaginians and the Roman navies.
And it's this new adaptation of the Romans, which is called the Corvus, that our historians focus on.
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