The First Punic War and the Conquest of North Italy

Abstract

The year 264, which marks the beginning of Rome’s overseas conquests, may also be taken as the point at which Roman history emerges from shadow-land into daylight. By this time documentary materials for the writing of history had begun to accumulate (pp. 57ff.), and the earliest Roman annalists, writing at the end of the third century, could obtain information about the First Punic War from actual eye-witnesses.