After Pyrrhus’ departure from the West, the Mamertines as well as their countrymen in Rhegium had taken up their raids again, both on Sicily (Pol. I 8) as well as on the mainland where they destroyed Caulonia (Paus. VI 3) and captured Croton. In the latter city they also annihilated a Roman garrison (Zon. l. c.). This act provoked a response from Rome, and in 270 a Roman army marched against Rhegium and took it by siege. The Campanians were executed, and the previous inhabitants received the city back, albeit subject to Rome (Pol. I 7).
Meanwhile, a new tyrant had arisen in Syracuse, Hiero II, who took up the war against the Mamertines, defeating them decisively in 264 (Pol. I 8-9). The Mamertines, if they were to continue to hold Messene, now needed help against Hiero II, even if they had little cause to expect any from their possible allies: Carthage or Rome. Division of opinion ran deep, but the appeal finally went out to Carthage. It succeeded, and the Carthaginians installed a garrison in Messene. Hiero II swiftly broke off his campaign against the Mamertines for he could not risk a war against the Carthaginians. But he had at least united the Greek cities of Sicily under Syracusan control, and he was now proclaimed King of Sicily.
However, now that a Carthaginian garrison resided in Messene, second thoughts arose even among those Mamertines who had previously preferred an alliance with Carthage to one with Rome. So an appeal also went out to Rome. After some hesitation the Romans accepted it, and a Roman army marched towards Sicily to receive Messene’s submission. The Carthaginian garrison commander evidently deemed his position too weak to fight and simply withdrew (Pol. I 10-11).
Alarmed at this sudden turn in events, the Carthaginians sent an army and a fleet against Messene, and with that the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage began. The story of that conflict need not be told here; in what follows the fate of the Greeks in Sicily is the sole concern. For Hiero II, who now saw the opportunity to drive the hated Mamertines from Sicily forever, made an alliance with Carthage. Together Carthaginians and Syracusans began to besiege Messene early in 263.
By the end of that year, however, Roman troops forced both Carthaginians and Syracusans to break off the siege and a Roman army moved southwards through Greek Sicily (Pol. I 11-12). The Carthaginians were not prepared for a major campaign, and Hiero II alone could not meet the Romans in the field. Most of the other Greek cities hastened to find an accommodation with the Romans, and when the Romans began to besiege Syracuse (Pol. I 12) Hiero II too had second thoughts about his alliance with the Greeks’ ancestral enemies on the island, the Carthaginians, against whom so many of his predecessors had fought for so long.
Hiero II switched sides and made peace with Rome. The price was a hundred talents and the loss of all Greek cities which had already submitted to the Romans. Hiero II did, however, retain Tauromenium and a handful of towns near Syracuse (Pol. I 16; Diod. XXIII 4). But for all that Syracuse was effectively now subject to the Romans. In 241 the Romans finally won the First Punic War, and the Carthaginians consented to pay an enormous indemnity (3200 talents) and to withdraw from Sicily entirely (Pol. I 62-63). Thereafter the Romans placed Sicily under the control of, effectively, a governor, and Sicily thus became the first Roman province. Both Syracuse and the Mamertines in Messene remained formally independent, but both answered to the Roman governor.
World History
