the desperate combats to which the thousands of spectators were wont to
pay wrapt attention, and it was a much more vivid word than it now is.]
this would be for Rome and Carthage to contend upon!" It did not
require the wisdom of an oracle to suggest that such a contest would
come at some time, for the rich island lay just between the two cities,
apparently ready to be grasped by the more enterprising or the
stronger. As Carthage saw the gradual extension of Roman authority over
Southern Italy, she realized that erelong the strong arm would reach
out too far in the direction of the African continent. She was,
accordingly, on her guard, as she needed to be.

At about the time of the beginning of the war with Pyrrhus, a band of
soldiers from Campania, which had been brought to Sicily, took
possession of the town of Messana, a place on the eastern end of the
island not far from the celebrated rocks Scylla and Charybdis, opposite
Rhegium. Calling themselves Mamertines, after Mars, one form of whose
name was Mamers, these interlopers began to extend their power over the
island. In their contests with Hiero, King of Syracuse, they found
themselves in need of help. In the emergency there was a fatal division
of counsel, one party wishing to call upon Rome and the other thinking
best to ask Carthage, which already held the whole of the western half
of the island and the northern coast, and had for centuries been aiming
at complete possession of the remainder. Owing to this want of united
purpose it came about that both cities were appealed to, and it very
naturally happened that the fortress of the Mamertines was occupied by
a garrison from Carthage before Rome was able to send its army.

The Roman senate had hesitated to send help to the Mamertines because
they were people whom they had driven out of Rhegium, as robbers, six
years before, with the aid of the same Hiero, of Syracuse, who was now