THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS. 121 



of the soldiers in the Forum. The King of Syracuse, 

 who held the same position in eastern Sicily as Rome 

 on the penisula, marched against Messina. The 

 Mamertine bandits became alarmed : one party sent 

 to the Carthaginians for assistance, another party 

 sent to Rome, declaring that they were kinsmen, and 

 desiring to enter the Italian league. 



The Roman Senate rejected this request on account 

 of its " manifest absurdity." They had just punished 

 their soldiers for imitating the Mamertines : how, then, 

 could they interfere with the punishment of the 

 Mamertines ? But in Rome the people possessed the 

 sovereign power of making peace or war. There was 

 a scarcity of money at that time : a raid on Sicily 

 would yield plunder; and troops were accordingly 

 ordered to Messina. For the first time Romans went 

 outside Italy : the vanguard of an army which subdued 

 the world. The Carthaginians were already in Messina : 

 the Romans drove them out, and the war began. The 

 Syracusans were defeated in the first battle, and then 

 went over to the Roman side. It became a war 

 between Asiatics and Europeans. 



The two great republics were already well acquainted 

 with each other. In the apartment of the iEdiles in 

 the capitol was preserved a commercial treaty between 

 Carthage and Rome, inscribed on tables of brass, in 

 old Latin ; in the time of Polybius, it could scarcely 

 be understood, for it had been drawn up twenty-eight 

 years before Xerxes invaded Greece. When Pyrrhus 

 invaded Italy, the Carthaginians had taken the Roman 

 side, for the Greeks were their hereditary enemies. There 

 were Carthaginian shops in the streets of Rome, a 

 city in beauty and splendour far inferior to Carthage, 

 which was called the metropolis of the western world. 



