Episode 15. The First Punic War: Rome Goes to Sea

SOURCE NOTES:Polybius, Histories Book 1 (c. 140 BCE) — The essential primary source. Available free online via Perseus Digital Library.Dexter Hoyos, Mastering the West: Rome and Carthage at War (2015) — Best modern overview.Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265–146 BC (2000) — Accessible and reliable on military detail.Richard Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed (2010) — Good on the Carthaginian perspective and the war's structural causes.John Lazenby, The First Punic War (1996) — Detailed specialist study, good on the naval battles.On the Egadi Islands excavations: Sebastiano Tusa and Jeffrey Royal, 'The landscape of the naval battle at the Egadi Islands (241 BC),' Journal of Roman Archaeology (2012).Modern Works:Dexter Hoyos's Mastering the West remains the most balanced overview of all three Punic Wars. His earlier Rome, the Gracchan Crisis, and the Struggle of the Orders is useful for the political context. Adrian Goldsworthy's The Fall of Carthage is more accessible and very good on the military narrative. For the naval dimension specifically, the work done since 2010 on the Egadi Islands wreck site, which has recovered several bronze rams from the Battle of the Aegates Islands, has given us genuine archaeological confirmation of Polybius's account of the battle's location and character. The rams are now in the Museo Regionale Interdisciplinare di Trapani in Sicily.