We are now, I would have you see, at a point of some particular interest in the great story, for it is the first time that Greek and Roman have been facing each other and fighting each other in any large force and as nation against nation.

Pyrrhus, after his victories, called on Rome to surrender. His army was then on the Roman territory of Latium. Rome replied that she would hold no parley with a foe as long as any of his troops were on her soil. It was a proud reply, worthy of her future greatness, to a victorious enemy at her very gates; but she had formed a strong confederation of several states that acknowledged her as their sovereign and was still formidable. Pyrrhus won another victory, but again gained little by it, and finding that his project did not prosper in Italy itself he went over to Sicily.

He came to that island on the invitation of the Greek city states there, who wished his help to rid them of the Carthaginians, but here again, although he won victories, he could not establish his power. He made himself thoroughly unpopular with the Greeks, who had called him in, by the despotic manner in which he tried to lord it over them, and, what was still worse for him, his attacks on the Carthaginians drove them to make an alliance with the Romans against him. A result of that alliance was that when, after three years of unproductive fighting in Sicily, he went back to the mainland of Italy, his fleet was attacked and severely handled by the Carthaginians. He fought one more battle against the Romans and their confederates, in Italy, but he did not receive much support from the Tarentines or any of the Italian-Greek cities. This time it was not even a "Pyrrhic victory" for him, but a decisive defeat, and he went back to his native Epirus after a six years' absence. He was killed some years later in a political revolution in Greece.

The total result of the enterprise of Pyrrhus was to establish Rome more firmly than ever as the mistress state of Italy, and to bring her into alliance, which was very soon to be broken, with the great sea-power of the Carthaginians.

The story of Rome herself, within the city walls, during all the years from the expulsion of the Etruscan kings down to the date, about 280 B.C., to which we have now come, was one of perpetual struggle between the patricians, the aristocratic party, and the plebs, the party of the people, the populace. The patricians had all the power after the first driving out of the Tarquins, as the Etruscan kings were called, because they had been the chief managers of the revolution against them, but all through the later years the populace grew in power, and took the power out of the hands of the patricians. The constitution of the state became, as we should say, more and more democratic. The power fell more and more into the hands of the "demos," the plebeians, the common people.

The Romans, as you saw, had made an alliance with the Carthaginians at the time of the invasion of Italy and Sicily by Pyrrhus; but it was a friendship that lasted only a very short while. Our story is now coming to a point at which it will be very largely occupied by wars between these two nations who are now, for the moment, friends. The Romans continually accused the Carthaginians of treachery and of broken faith. The Roman name for the Carthaginians was "Punici," which is somehow derived from the name, Phœnicia, of the country from which, as you know, the colony of Carthage was founded. So bitterly did the Romans resent their acts of treachery that the words "Punica fides," that is to say, Punic, or Carthaginian, faith, were used as a kind of proverb to express a faith or fidelity which was no faith at all—a promise made only to be broken. Probably they were not very true to their engagements; they were a very bold, enterprising people, wonderful sailors, considering the ships that they had. They went round Africa, they planted colonies all along the shores of Spain, they went to the Cassiterides, or tin islands, which are said to have been our own British islands. It is a marvellous record of adventure.

But they do not seem to have been as highly civilised as the Romans, who had been very largely influenced by this time by that civilisation and culture of Greece which we have seen spreading itself very widely. Greece had some influence even with them, for among the temples for the worship of those gods Baal and Astaroth, which they had brought with them from Phœnicia, was a temple to the Greek god Apollo. But in thinking over the whole story of the intercourse and the fighting between Rome and Carthage we ought to remember that it is almost entirely from the Roman point of view that we have the story told. We do not know much of what the Carthaginians might have had to say about the Romans. They might perhaps have said something about broken faith on the Roman side also. It is likely that neither party was very particular about keeping promises which it was more convenient not to keep.

First Punic war

However that may be, it was almost inevitable that trouble must break out between them before long; for here was the great and growing land power of Rome on the northern side of the Mediterranean stretching down the long leg of Italy; here was Carthage, with its powerful navy, its determined sailors, and its adventurous courage, on the southern shore; and there was Sicily, supposed to be independent of both, lying like a football just at the very toe of Italy, ready to be kicked, and reaching nearly over to the Carthaginian coast. It was an unfortunate position for that island, and may remind us of the position of Palestine as the bridge between the great ancient empires of Egypt and Babylonia. There is this difference between the positions of the two, that the fighting round about Sicily was sure to be largely naval, an affair of sea-fights. It was not so in Palestine.

Pyrrhus was driven back home to Epirus out of Italy in 275 B.C. In 268 B.C., only seven years later, began the first of those great struggles between Rome and Carthage which are known as the Punic Wars. There were three of these wars, interrupted by truces which—owing, as the Romans said, to the infamous "Punica fides"—never were lasting. The true reason doubtless was that both powers were too masterful in character to endure a rival. One or other had to have the upper hand. There were times in the struggle when it looked very doubtful indeed which would have it.