Tom Holland

And this is the war that the Romans call the Punic War, because Punicus is the Latin for Carthaginian.

Carthaginians originally came from Phoenicia in what is now Lebanon, and so it's a kind of derivation from Phoenician.

Well, the Romans have immense reserves of manpower.

So they are now the dominant power in Italy.

And they have essentially constructed this framework of alliances.

Defeated cities are offered various degrees of citizenship or associated status.

And essentially, loyalty on the part of defeated cities to Rome is very amply rewarded.

They get given chunks of spoil or whatever.

Also, the Romans have an incredibly dogged system.

in fact, implacable resolve never to accept defeat, never even to accept disrespect.

It's almost a kind of mafia attitude.

The classic example of how far they are prepared to go in the search of victory is the fact that even though they are the elephant to Carthage's wail, over the course of the First Punic War, as it comes to be called,

They transform themselves into a naval power.

I mean, they do it in a slightly makeshift way.

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.