Dr Simon Elliott

I'm going to go 250, yeah.

The reason is because it's in the middle of the First Punic War.

The First Punic War begins in 264.

The Romans come into conflict with the Carthaginians.

Absolutely.

And the regional power in North Africa, the Carthaginians, who were originally from the Levant,

settled Punic, Carthaginian Punic Wars.

They're gradually expanding their own empire across the Western Mediterranean.

So you're looking at the Balearic Islands, Spain, Sicily, crucially.

And by this point, the Romans are more or less controlling all of Italy.

So they're now crossing into Sicily.

This shall not stand in the Roman world.

So you get the first Punic War, 264 to 241.

The wars against Pyrrhus are international, but they're in the peninsula.

Whereas now we're outside the peninsula, so they're now going out of their comfort zone.

But again, this is a very lengthy war, but again, that Roman ability to learn from your mistakes and then nick your opponent's ideas is absolutely nailed on here.

I think it's been led by the military.

This is a very militaristic culture.

A very, very martial culture.

If you used to use a modern analogy in popular culture, you'd say they were the Klingons, right?