Carthage's economic success and its dependence on seaborne trade led to the creation of a powerful navy to discourage both pirates and rival nations.

This, coupled with its success and growing hegemony, brought Carthage into increasing conflict with the Greeks, the other major power contending for control of the central Mediterranean.

No Carthaginian records of the war exist today because when the city was destroyed in 146 BC by the Romans, the books from Carthage's library were distributed among the nearby African tribes.

They had traded with the Elymians, Sicani and Sicels and had ultimately withdrawn without resistance to Motya, Panormus and Soluntum in the western part of the island when the Greek colonists arrived after 750 BC.

This prosperity enabled some of the Greek cities to start to expand their territories again, ultimately leading to the events known as the First Sicilian War.

Thirty years later Prince Dorieus, having lost the Spartan throne, showed up to colonize Eryx – after being expelled from Libya by Carthage in 511 BC following a three-year struggle.

By using ethnic cleansing, deportation and enslavement,[7] Gelo transformed the former Ionian cities into Dorian ones and made Syracuse the dominant power in Sicily.

To forestall any conflicts between Akragas and Syracuse, Gelo and Theron married into each other's families, creating a united front against the Sicels and Ionian Greeks of Sicily.

The major part of the resources and manpower of Greek Sicily was thus concentrated in the hands of these two aggressive tyrants, a threat to all other Sicilian powers.

To counter this Doric threat, Anaxilas of Rhegion from Italy, who had captured Zankle from Gelo in 490 BC, allied himself with Terrilus, the tyrant of Himera, and married his daughter.

Thus, three blocs of power were delicately balanced in Sicily by 483 BC – Ionians dominating the north, Carthage the west, Dorians the east and south.

Carthage responded to the call for aid by Terrilus, tyrant of Himera, after Theron deposed him in 483 BC to set up an expedition to Sicily.

En route to Sicily, the Punic fleet suffered losses, possibly severe, due to poor weather.

The loss caused changes in the political and economic landscape of Carthage, the old government of entrenched nobility was ousted, replaced by the Carthaginian Republic.

The booty from the war helped to fund a public building program in Sicily, Greek culture flourishing as a result.

Gelo died in 478 BC and, within the next 20 years, the Greek tyrants were overthrown and the Syracuse-Akragas alliance fragmented into 11 feuding commonwealths under oligarchs and democracies.

While the Greek cities in Sicily bickered and prospered for 70 years after "Himera", Carthage had conquered the northern fertile half of modern-day Tunisia, and strengthened and founded new colonies in North Africa, such as Leptis and Oea, modern Tripoli.

While Syracuse and Akragas, the strongest and richest cities of Sicily, took no action against Carthage, the renegade Syracusan general Hermocrates raised a small army and raided Punic territory from his base Selinus.

By 398 BC, Dionysius had consolidated his strength and broke the peace treaty, commencing the Siege of Motya and capturing the city.

Dionysius also faced difficulties of his own, and a peace treaty was concluded that basically ensured Carthage and Syracuse left each other alone in their respective spheres of influence.

Dionysius asked Carthage to evacuate all Sicily, so war was again renewed, and Himilco, son of Mago, destroyed the Syracusan army at the Battle of Cronium in 376 BC.

The subsequent peace treaty forced Dionysius to pay 1000 talents as reparations and left Carthage in control of Western Sicily.

In 311 BC, he invaded the last Carthaginian holdings on Sicily, which broke the terms of the current peace treaty, and he laid siege to Akragas.

In the same year, he laid siege to Syracuse itself.In desperation, Agathocles secretly led an expedition of 14,000 men to the mainland of Africa, hoping to save his rule by leading a counterstrike against Carthage itself.

After Agathocles sued for peace, Carthage enjoyed a brief, unchallenged period of control of Sicily, which ended with the Pyrrhic War.

Because Carthage always employed largely mercenary soldiers, no similar population impact is noted, but the loss of Sicily after having spent centuries and sums untold fighting Greeks for control of the island was catastrophic.