The two centuries of Carthaginian war with the Greek cities of Sicily — punctuated by intervals of treaty arrangement, prosecuted as a sequence of substantial expeditions and counter-expeditions, never resolved by either party's substantial victory — were the principal external preoccupation of the Carthaginian state from the early fifth century BC to the eve of the First Punic War. The principal antagonist was Syracuse — the largest and most powerful Greek city of Sicily, ruled by a sequence of tyrants and democrats whose substantial ambition was the unification of Sicily under Syracusan hegemony. The Carthaginian objective was the maintenance of the western Sicilian commercial positions and the prevention of Syracusan dominance over the whole island. The wars produced no permanent settlement and the conflict was finally resolved only by the entry of the Roman Republic into Sicilian affairs in 264 BC.
Himera, 480 BC
The first major Carthaginian expedition to Sicily was the campaign of 480 BC under the general Hamilcar, son of Mago. The strategic context was the substantial expansion of Syracuse under the tyrant Gelon (485–478 BC), who had absorbed several neighbouring Greek cities and was substantially threatening the western Punic positions on the island. The Carthaginian response — possibly coordinated with the Persian invasion of Greece under Xerxes that was prosecuted in the same year, though the evidence for explicit Carthaginian-Persian coordination is disputed — comprised a large expeditionary force (the figures in Herodotus and Diodorus are exaggerated, but a substantial estimate is approximately 50,000 troops with substantial cavalry and elephant contingents) that landed at Panormus and marched east against Himera on the northern Sicilian coast.
The Battle of Himera was fought in the summer of 480 BC — the Greek tradition synchronised the battle with the Battle of Salamis in the Persian War, on either the same day or within days of it; the chronological synchronisation is probably literary rather than historical, but a substantial coincidence in the same campaigning season is credited. The Carthaginian camp was attacked at dawn by a combined Syracusan and Acragantine force under Gelon and Theron of Acragas, in a successful tactical surprise — the Carthaginian general Hamilcar was killed in the fighting (the traditional account has him perform a self-immolation on the camp altars in despair at the defeat), and the army was substantially destroyed. The Greek tradition reports 150,000 Carthaginian dead — a substantial exaggeration; the credited estimate is 20,000 to 30,000 — and the captured Carthaginian forces were enslaved en masse, with the substantial Carthaginian elite ransomed at substantial cost. The peace terms imposed by Gelon included a substantial Carthaginian war indemnity of 2,000 talents and the suspension of human sacrifice (the Greek sources specifically mention this — possibly a literary embellishment, but consistent with the substantial Greek hostility to the Punic religious practices that the Tophet had institutionalised).
The interregnum
The seventy years between the Battle of Himera and the next major Carthaginian campaign (410 BC) were a period of Carthaginian retrenchment in Sicily — the western Punic positions were maintained but the substantial expansion that the 480 BC expedition had been intended to achieve was abandoned. The internal Sicilian Greek politics during this period — including the substantial Athenian Expedition of 415–413 BC, which produced the substantial Athenian disaster at Syracuse — were conducted without substantial Carthaginian intervention. The Punic positions in western Sicily, however, were progressively eroded by the substantial Greek city of Selinous in the south-west, which by the late fifth century BC was pressing on the Punic positions at Motya and Panormus.
The 410–340 BC wars
The substantial Carthaginian re-engagement in Sicily began with the campaign of 410–405 BC under the general Hannibal Mago (the grandson of the Hamilcar of Himera) and subsequently Himilco. The campaign was a substantial response to the Selinountian pressure on the western Punic cities and was prosecuted as a substantial total war: Selinous itself was sacked in 409 BC (with a substantial massacre of the civilian population — a punitive action remembered by the subsequent Greek tradition with substantial horror); Himera was destroyed in the same year (revenge for the 480 BC defeat — the Greek population was killed or enslaved, and the city was abandoned); Acragas (Agrigentum) was sacked in 406 BC after an eight-month siege. The Carthaginian forces reached the eastern Sicilian Greek cities and besieged Syracuse itself in 405 BC, before a plague in the besieging army (a recurrent feature of Punic Sicilian campaigns — the climate, the encamped sanitation and the substantial troop concentration were a substantial epidemiological problem) produced the substantial withdrawal of the expedition.
The Peace of Dionysius (the new Syracusan tyrant) and Himilco of 405 BC produced a substantial new territorial settlement: Carthage retained approximately the western half of Sicily, including the destroyed cities of Selinous, Himera and Acragas (which were not permitted to be rebuilt by Greeks); Syracuse retained the eastern half. The substantial subsequent wars between Carthage and Dionysius I — campaigns of 397 BC (in which Dionysius substantially advanced against the Punic positions, taking Motya by storm — the substantial destruction of the principal Punic island city), 392 BC, 383–376 BC and 368–367 BC — were prosecuted with substantial inconclusive results. Dionysius died in 367 BC with the substantial Punic positions in western Sicily diminished but not eliminated.
Timoleon and Agathocles
The substantial Greek campaigns of the mid-fourth century BC under Timoleon of Corinth (343–337 BC) substantially restored Syracusan and Greek positions in eastern and central Sicily against the substantial Carthaginian advances of the post-Dionysius period. The principal battle was the Crimisus in 341 or 340 BC, in which Timoleon's substantially smaller force (approximately 12,000) defeated a Carthaginian army of approximately 70,000 by exploiting a tactical surprise during the Punic forces' river crossing. The substantial peace of 338 BC again restored approximately the territorial division of the 405 BC settlement.
The substantial Carthaginian challenge of the late fourth century BC came from the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles (317–289 BC). After substantial military setbacks against Carthaginian forces in Sicily through 311–310 BC, Agathocles took the substantial unprecedented step of a counter-invasion: he assembled a substantial Greek expeditionary force of approximately 14,000 troops, ran the substantial Carthaginian naval blockade of Syracuse, and landed at Cape Bon on the substantial North African coast — within easy reach of Carthage itself — in August 310 BC. The substantial campaign in Africa lasted three years (310–307 BC), during which Agathocles substantially threatened the Carthaginian heartland, won several substantial battles against the Punic field forces, and conducted extensive operations across the substantial agricultural hinterland of Carthage. The substantial Carthaginian recovery — substantially produced by the substantial defection of substantial Greek allies and by the substantial divided command of the African expedition — produced the eventual substantial Greek retreat in 307 BC. The substantial peace settlement of 306 BC restored the substantial pre-war territorial arrangements but left the substantial Carthaginian state with the substantial knowledge that an enemy expedition could substantially threaten the home territory.
Pyrrhus and Rome
The substantial Sicilian situation of the early third century BC was complicated by the substantial intervention of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who in 278 BC crossed from southern Italy to Sicily at the substantial invitation of the Greek cities and conducted a substantial three-year campaign against the Carthaginian positions. The substantial Pyrrhus campaign substantially recovered substantial portions of western Sicily for the Greek side, but the substantial difficulties of permanent occupation, the substantial Greek factional politics and the substantial competing claims of Pyrrhus's substantial Italian theatre produced his eventual substantial withdrawal in 276 BC. The substantial Carthaginian positions were substantially restored.
The substantial subsequent power that would intervene in Sicilian affairs was the substantial Roman Republic, which by the 280s BC had completed the substantial unification of the Italian peninsula south of the Po and was the substantial new principal power of the central Mediterranean. The substantial occasion for Roman intervention was the substantial Mamertine crisis at Messana in 264 BC — the substantial precipitating event of the First Punic War, which is the substantial subject of chapter V.
End of Chapter IV