Treaties between Rome and Carthage

In the 4th century BC, after a series of military conquests, Carthage controlled many territories west of the gulf of Sirte, in present-day Libya, and much of the coasts of Numidia and Iberia.

Primarily interested in commerce, Carthage had no standing army and used mostly mercenary forces composed of Numidian cavalry, Libyans and Iberians.

For the first several centuries of its history, Rome was involved in a lengthy series of wars with its neighbours, which resulted in the Roman Army's specialization in land warfare.

The Roman economy and social structure began to incorporate the results of those wars by taking loot or tribute, redistributing conquered land and in all cases requiring the subjugated peoples to supply troops in support of Rome (becoming socii, or allies).

The Aegean, Adriatic and Ionian Seas were largely controlled by the maritime cities of the Greeks (in Greece; Asia Minor; and, after Alexander the Great, Egypt).

The western Mediterranean was the commercial zone of the Carthaginians, with the exception of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which Carthage shared with the Etruscans and the Greek colonies of southern Italy.

[citation needed] The first treaty between the two city-states was signed the year the Roman Republic was founded, in 509 BC, as dated by the Varronian method.

The presence of Greek cities along the coasts of southern Italy and the eastern part of Sicily limited Phoenician commerce to the region's interior.

[3] Rome had been and still was shaken by internal strife, especially between the patricians and the plebeians for access to public office and therefore to political activity and the management of land and spoils of the incessant wars.

It was also in conflict with the Etruscans, who, blocked by the Gauls from northern Italy and by the Romans from Latium, applied themselves aggressively to the Tyrrhenian Sea to control traffic there.

[citation needed] It is therefore to the credit of Carthaginian diplomacy that the revision to the 509 BC treaty imposed additional restrictions on Rome.

[citation needed] The Samnite Wars officially ended in 290 BC, and the subsequent actions of Rome within its territory had reduced the pressure of the Italian populace on the Greek cities in southern Italy, and particularly Taranto.

In 282 BC, ten Roman ships appeared in Tarantine waters, violating the treaty, but they were either destroyed or forced to escape.

Pyrrhus's attack on Rome was heralded as a success: the Battle of Heraclea in Lucania against the legions under Publius Valerius Laevinus was won thanks to the use of elephants, which the Romans had never seen and called them Lucanian bulls.

The former, trying to change its lot and taking advantage of the fact that Pyrrhus had married Agathocles's daughter, offered him the crown of Sicily in exchange for helping it throw off the Carthaginians.

The treaty also implied that Carthage was offering Rome the help of its navy against Pyrrhus since Roman generals, such as Publius Cornelius Scipio, commonly used the sailors of its transport ships alongside the soldiers in battle.

The treaty, on the other hand, betrayed Carthage's relative weakness in conceding that Rome was an equal, which was probably a result of its difficulties in Sicily.

[citation needed] In 275 BC, after the defeat of Maleventum (Beneventum), Pyrrhus returned to Epirus, and Rome was left master of the entire Italian peninsula south of the Tusco-Emilian Apennines.