The Carthaginian state impressed the ancient world with its wealth, and also for its stability and endurance. Its tenacity evoked respect even from Greeks and Romans, its age-long enemies. This chapter first provides a glimpse of Carthaginian state's public and private life. The district around the forum and harbours, which contained living quarters as well as public buildings, was the heart of the bustling commercial and industrial life of the city. Then, it discusses the Romano-Carthaginian treaties. Rome and Carthage lived in harmony during the centuries of their earliest contacts. During most of the sixth century Rome was politically controlled by Etruscan rulers, and Carthage and the Etruscan cities were united by a common rivalry against the Western Greeks. The First Punic War, in 264 BC, set in train a transformation of relationships throughout the Mediterranean world. This was the first phase of a new age of expansion, in which already Roman horizons had been extended beyond Italy.

The Senate took advantage of Carthage's difficulties in the Mercenary War to seize Sardinia. Polybius rightly regarded the latter action as unjustified and the subsequent Carthaginian resentment as a major cause of the Second Punic War. The treaty between Hannibal and Philip V of Macedon clearly envisaged Rome's continuing existence after a Carthaginian victory. Hannibal left Carthago Nova sometime in May, and reached the Rhone in September. Scipio, with an army destined for Spain, arrived by sea at the mouth of the Rhone at the same time. Scipio now sent the major part of his forces to Spain under the command of his brother Gnaeus, while he himself returned to Italy. Sicily and Sardinia were the prizes won by Rome as a result of the First Punic War and its aftermath. They were finally organized as provinces in 227 but in Sicily the kingdom of Syracuse, like the city of Messana, remained an independent state, bound to Rome by treaty.