Tom Holland

They find a galley and it's kind of, it's like a kind of Ikea flat pack.

And this is how they build their fleet, but they just go on and on and on.

And by the end of it, they've won.

And the treaty that they force on Carthage in 241 BC essentially institutionalizes Roman control of Sicily.

And this is a key moment in the emergence of what will become the Roman empire.

Because a large swathe of the island, about three quarters of it, comes under the authority, in Latin, the provincia of a Roman governor.

And this word provincia is the word from which the English word province will ultimately derive.

So in effect, kind of the three quarters of Sicily that the Romans have seized becomes Rome's first overseas province.

I think so.

I think there are kind of certain parallels with the Versailles Treaty because Carthage loses a lot of territory.

She's forced out of Sicily permanently.

And Sicily had always been the place where she went for her sporting contest with Syracuse.

This is no longer going to happen.

And also there is a very, very punitive indemnity, which takes the Carthaginians a long time

to pay and generates enormous resentment.

But this settlement is actually quite bad news for Syracuse as well, because Syracuse had allied herself with Rome, but she ends the war rather like Britain ends the Second World War in relation to America.

So Syracuse is a natural ally for Rome.

And she emerges pretty secure as a friend of their own republic.

So the reason that the Romans only occupy three quarters of Sicily is that that other quarter is territory that belongs to Syracuse and is recognized as such by Rome.

But it is clear that relative to Rome, Syracuse no longer ranks as a great power.