Rome and Carthage, 279/278 – 264 BC

Abstract

Between the 6th and the 3rd centuries BC, Rome and Carthage defined their political and commercial relations through a series of agreements. "The Philinus treaty" signed in 306 BC and the agreement agreed upon in 279/278 BC revealed the existing tensions and suspicions between the two states at the end of the 6th century BC and in the first decades of the 3rd century BC. The treaties established Italy as an exclusively Roman sphere of influence and Sicily as an area subjected to Carthaginian interests, where the Romans were not allowed to intervene. After King Pyrrhus had left Italy in 275 BC, both Rome and Carthage took into account a possible Roman-Punic war. The existing tensions and suspicions grew in intensity in 272 BC when a Carthaginian fleet appeared in the harbour of Tarentum while the Roman legions were besieging the city. In order to prevent a possible war, the Romans urged the pacification of the southern peninsula and rushed to include the Greek cities of southern Italy in the Roman treaties network. Therefore, having to face the most powerful fleet in the Western Mediterranean, in 267 BC the Roman Republic established four quaestores classici with the mission to reorganize the existing naval forces in the Italic Peninsula.