First Punic War
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Search complete. 47 mentions across 23 episodes found for "First Punic War".
Nov 2, 2026
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Rome and Carthage.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
First Punic War, 264 to 241.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Footnote.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
The word Punic is derived from Phoenici.
5 MINS LATER
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
The city itself was occupied by a fleet and garrison of Carthaginians under Hanno.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
The Romans, though the Mamertines no longer needed their aid, landed at Messana and dislodged the Carthaginians.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Thus opened the First Punic War.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
The Romans at once formed a double alliance with Syracuse and Messana, thus gaining control of the eastern coast of Sicily and getting their first foothold outside of Italy.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And so Rome entering into this situation changes the paradigm completely.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And really, the First Punic War is a massive event.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
strategic geopolitical battle that ends up with the Romans having their first overseas province, which was what Sicily becomes, and the Carthaginians licking their wounds very much back in North Africa, looking to how they can make up for the loss of territory.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And I think that's something that's another really important lesson from this moment of history is that we get the development on the lead-in to the next war between Rome and Carthage because of this First Punic War.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
The amazing thing is that Sicily was the prize, and it was such an important prize for what we have already talked about, how strategic that central zone of the Mediterranean really was.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
The Romans couldn't really keep going without it, and the Carthaginians needed to hold on to their ports there, really, their strategic ports that they had been allied to for centuries.
9 MINS LATER
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And he was outdone by his son.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
But at the time that he lived, he was one of the famous commanders in the Hellenistic Mediterranean.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
There's no question around the year 219 BC that Rome and Carthage are about to go to war again.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
The 20-year terms from the treaty that was signed at the end of the First Punic War ended in 221 BC.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
So there's no treaty between them.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
Carthage isn't paying Rome any war payments.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
What happens in 218 is that Hannibal Sachs' city in Spain, called Saguntum, it is supposedly allied to the Romans, even though it's inside the territory agreed upon by the Romans and the Carthaginians in a previous treaty agreement There's all sorts of confusion about what actually happens, but that's what happens to trigger the Romans declaring war on Carthage.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And Hannibal knows that he can't allow the Romans to come to the Iberian Peninsula or to invade Africa, that Carthage is vulnerable.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And this has been proven in the First Punic War and in a previous war against Greeks.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And so he knows he needs to take the fight into Italy.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And you have then Rome and Syracuse against Carthage and Sicily.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And that is basically the First Punic War.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
I mean, in a nutshell, there's massive, massive conflict.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
sea battles, massive land sieges.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And they have to sue for peace and they give up their land in Sicily and their allied ports.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
So this is a huge loss for the Carthaginians, huge loss of wealth and pride and strategy and strategic control and all these things.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
And so that's the first Punic War in a very quick nutshell, I promised.
Eve MacDonaldGUEST
But it has a legacy where it carries on into the second Punic War, like one really leads to the other.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
But just as the East India Company found it necessary to conquer the neighboring territory in order to secure peaceful trade, so Carthage extended its conquests all down the western coast of Africa and the southeast part of Spain, while Rome was expanding into Italy.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
To continue our conchological analogy, by the time of the First Punic War, Rome and Carthage had each expanded into a shell, and between the two intervened the eastern section of the island of Sicily.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
As the result of this, Rome became master of Sicily, and then the final struggle took place with Hannibal in the Second Punic War, which resulted in Rome becoming possessed of Spain and Carthage.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
By the year 200 BC, Rome was practically master of the western Mediterranean, though it took another century to consolidate its heritage from Carthage and Spain and Mauritania.
Gary ArndtHOST
That changed as Rome expanded southward into regions where Carthage already had significant interests.
Gary ArndtHOST
The First Punic War began in 264 BC over competing interests in Sicily, an island strategically positioned between Italy and North Africa.
Gary ArndtHOST
The war lasted 23 years and was fought primarily at sea and in Sicily, although Rome also launched an unsuccessful invasion of North Africa.
Gary ArndtHOST
The Second Punic War, the subject of this episode, began in 219 BC, when the Carthaginian general Hannibal attacked Saguntum, a city on the eastern coast of Iberia that had established diplomatic ties with Rome.
Kristen HandNARRATOR
The Armenians, supposing that all were proceeding to the lower point, overlooked those remaining above, who crossing the upper ford without molestation defended their comrades as they also passed over.
Kristen HandNARRATOR
When Appius Claudius, consul in the First Punic War, was unable to transport his soldiers from the neighborhood of Rhegium to Messina because the Carthaginians were guarding the straits, he caused the rumor to be spread that he could not continue a war which had been undertaken without the endorsement of the people, and turning about, he pretended to set sail for Italy.
Kristen HandNARRATOR
Then when the Carthaginians dispersed, believing he had gone, Appius turned back and landed in Sicily.
Kristen HandNARRATOR
When certain Spartan generals had planned to sail to Syracuse, but were afraid of the Carthaginian fleet anchored along the shore, they commanded that ten Carthaginian ships which they had captured should go ahead as though victors with their own vessels either latched to their side or towed behind.
Devorah AllenVOICE_ACTOR
Regulus, who had cast into chains many a Carthaginian captive, soon yielded himself a prisoner to their chains.
Kevin S.NARRATOR
Regulus was the Roman general in Sicily in the First Punic War, taken prisoner in 255 BC and put to death in 250.
Devorah AllenVOICE_ACTOR
Do you think that power to be any power, whose possessor cannot ensure his own escape from suffering at another's hands what he inflicts upon some other? Further, if there were any intrinsic good in the nature of honors and powers themselves...
Devorah AllenVOICE_ACTOR
they could never crowd upon the basest men, for opposites will not be bound together.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
But just as the East India Company found it necessary to conquer the neighboring territory in order to secure peaceful trade, so Carthage extended its conquests all down the western coast of Africa and the southeast part of Spain, while Rome was expanding into Italy.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
To continue our conchological analogy, by the time of the First Punic War, Rome and Carthage had each expanded into a shell, and between the two intervened the eastern section of the island of Sicily.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
As the result of this, Rome became master of Sicily, and then the final struggle took place with Hannibal in the Second Punic War, which resulted in Rome becoming possessed of Spain and Carthage.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
By the year 200 BC, Rome was practically master of the western Mediterranean, though it took another century to consolidate its heritage from Carthage and Spain and Mauritania.
Dan CarlinHOST
I mean, just listen to this list of what Rome was involved in during that time period, and you start to get an idea for how much was actually going on, you know, in the Roman government trying to deal with all this stuff.
Dan CarlinHOST
Okay, in 264, the First Punic War starts, and it lasts till 241.
Dan CarlinHOST
In 241, Rome defeats Carthage, gets Corsica and Sardinia.
Dan CarlinHOST
now part of its system.
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