Mamertines

The Mamertines (Latin: Mamertini, "sons of Mars", Greek: Μαμερτῖνοι) were mercenaries of Italian origin who had been hired from their home in Campania by Agathocles (361–289 BC), Tyrant of Syracuse and self-proclaimed King of Sicily.

After Syracuse lost the Seventh Sicilian War, the city of Messina was ceded to Carthage in 307 BC.

Taking advantage of the war-weary Sicilians, they looted the nearby settlements and captured trade ships on the strait, carrying their plunder back to their base.

Hiero II, tyrant of Syracuse, began to gather an army of citizens with which to rid the land of the destroyers of the peace and rescue his Greek kinsmen.

The faithless part of his army disposed of, Hiero marched his citizen soldiers back to the city where he drilled them to a better fighting condition.

Leading his confident army north, he found the Mamertines again at the Longanus River on the plain of Mylae where he easily defeated them, and proclaimed himself king.

However, unwilling to see Carthaginian power spread further over Sicily and get too close to Italy, Rome responded by entering into an alliance with the Mamertines.

After the First Punic War, however, their name was not quite forgotten in the ancient world since "Mamertine wine" from the vineyards of north-eastern tip of Sicily was still known and enjoyed in the 1st century.

In his novel Salammbô, Gustave Flaubert writes of the Greeks singing the 'old song of the Mamertines': "With my lance and sword I plough and reap; I am master of the house!