Tom Holland

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.

And that means that rather like Britain in the wake of the Second World War, Syracuse is obsessed with maintaining a special relationship with the new superpower.

So the Syracusans, their harbors are open to Roman galleys.

If the Romans are short of manpower or of grain or supplies or whatever, the Syracusans will go to great lengths to meet the needs of Rome.

I think probably, yes.

So Carthage, like Rome, has a Senate, an assembly of its greatest and most influential men.

And most of the people on this Carthaginian Senate, as you say, are, I think, reluctant in the immediate aftermath of the war to return to Rome.