Siege of Lilybaeum (250–241 BC)

The Siege of Lilybaeum lasted for nine years, from 250 to 241 BC. The Roman army laid siege to the Carthaginian-held Sicilian city. Rome and Carthage had been at war since 264 BC, fighting mostly on Sicily. The Carthaginians sued for peace and the war ended after 23 years with a Roman victory.

About Siege of Lilybaeum (250–241 BC) in brief

The Siege of Lilybaeum lasted for nine years, from 250 to 241 BC. The Roman army laid siege to the Carthaginian-held Sicilian city. Rome and Carthage had been at war since 264 BC, fighting mostly on the island of Sicily or in the waters around it. The main source for almost every aspect of the First Punic War is the historian Polybius, a Greek sent to Rome in 167 BC as a hostage. The Carthaginians sued for peace and the war ended after 23 years with a Roman victory. Since 2010, several artefacts have been recovered from the nearby site of the Battle of the Aegates, the final battle of the war. Their analysis and the recovery of further items continue. The Roman Republic had been aggressively expanding in the southern Italian mainland for a century before the war and had conquered peninsular Italy south of the River Arno by 272 BC. During this period Carthage came to dominate southern Iberia, much of the coastal regions of North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, and half of Sicily. The Romans also slowly made control of most of Sicily, including the major cities of Akragas and Panormus. In 260 BC the Romans built a large fleet and over the following ten years defeated the Carthagenians in a succession of naval battles. The war ended with the Treaty of Lutatius in 146 BC, but by the terms of the Treaty, Carthages had to withdraw its forces from Sicily and evacuated the city the same year. In 146 BC Carthage’s written records were destroyed along with their capital, Carthage, in.

146 BC. Other sources include coins, inscriptions, archaeological evidence and empirical evidence from reconstructions such as the trireme Olympias. The modern consensus is to accept it largely at face value and the details of the battle in modern sources are almost entirely based on interpretations ofPolybius’s account. Only the first book of the forty comprising The Histories deals with the Firstpunic War. Later, histories of thewar exist in fragmentary or summary form and they usually cover military operations on land in more detail than those at sea. Modern historians usually also take into account the histories of Diodorus Siculus and Dio Cassius, although the classicist Adrian Goldsworthy states that \”Polybious’ account is usually to be preferred when it differs with any of our other accounts\”. The modern historian Andrew Curry considers that Polybious turns out to be fairly reliable and a remarkably well-informed, industrious, and insightful historian. He is considered broadly objective and largely neutral as between Carthaginia and Roman points of view, including as it does the views of earlier, pro-Carthaginian historians such as Philinus of Agrigentum. He was an analytical historian and wherever possible interviewed participants in the events he wrote about. The accuracy of his account has been much debated over the past 150 years.

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