First Punic War
Roman intervention at Messana opens the First Punic War
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Rome's first army to cross from Italy went over in borrowed vessels. Polybius says the Romans did not yet possess a single decked warship of their own.
264 BCE: an appeal Rome hesitated over
In 264 BCE the Mamertines controlling Messana appealed to Rome after a rival faction admitted a Carthaginian garrison. The Senate hesitated — these were Campanian mercenaries who had seized the city from its inhabitants — but Rome's popular assembly authorized assistance.
Before the main Roman army arrived, the Mamertines forced the Carthaginian commander Hanno to leave Messana. Polybius says Carthage subsequently crucified him for abandoning the citadel.
The night crossing
Carthage then allied with Hiero of Syracuse, and their forces besieged the city. The consul Appius Claudius Caudex crossed the Strait of Messina by night, with Carthaginian forces watching the water and two armies enclosing Messana on land.
He entered the city and, after negotiations failed, defeated the Syracusan and Carthaginian armies separately and lifted the siege. Hiero withdrew once his force had been beaten.
Where the war actually starts
Polybius identifies this expedition as Rome's first crossing from Italy with an armed force, and as the starting point of the war with Carthage over Sicily.
It was a sequence rather than a declaration on a known day: rival Mamertine appeals, Hanno's removal, a siege, the crossing, two battles. No surviving source supplies a month.
Polybius also wrote roughly a century later from earlier accounts now lost, and his narrative openly criticizes both the pro-Carthaginian Philinus and the pro-Roman Fabius.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 4 sources 2 audit passes
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What the sources leave uncertain
- No surviving source supplies a month or day; 264 BCE is the securely accepted campaign year.
- Polybius wrote about a century later and relied on earlier, now-lost accounts. His narrative explicitly criticizes both the pro-Carthaginian Philinus and the pro-Roman Fabius.
- Ancient narratives differ over precisely how Hanno was removed and how formal negotiations or declarations unfolded.