The name of Sicily immediately arouses associations: the Mafia, the "Godfather", vendettas, and perhaps one can hear the rumble of Etna, the highest active volcano in Europe. But Sicily is much more than that. This fertile island, with its beautiful scenery, bears witness to the manifold important cultures that have flourished there for the past 8000 years. Its favourable position between the eastern and western Mediterranean, its proximity to Africa - Tunisia is only 160 kilometres (100 miles) away - make it a natural crossroads for trade and history, a meeting-place between East and West.

One of the outstanding periods in the long history of Sicily was the 300 years from the 6th to the 3rd century BC. It was a time of constant wars. The Phoenicians and the Greek colonies were locked in a series of power struggles. The various cities and their rulers vied with each other for influence. But despite that, it was a time of exceptional cultural flowering. Tyrants like Hieron I and Dionysius I gathered the most famous artists of their day at their courts. Syracuse became the most important city in the West at that time. The most beautiful works of Greek art at the time were created in Sicily.

Before the foundation of early Phoenician or Greek colonies in the 8th century BC, the Mediterranean island of Sicily was inhabited by indigenous peoples, the Sicani, the Siceli and the Elymi. The foundation of the city of Segesta is attributed to the Elymians. Segesta always played a special part in the conflicts between Greeks and Carthaginians, and later between Greeks and Romans. The earliest traces of human presence in Sicily date from the time around 8000 BC.

Phoenicians from Tyre and Sidon set up the first colonies in Sicily at about the same time as the Greeks. The Phoenicians, a Semitic people from the Levantine coast, had long dominated Mediterranean trade. As seafarers, they found the strategically favourable situation of Sicily between the eastern and western Mediterranean especially attractive. First and foremost, the Phoenicians sought well-situated trading bases. In the 8th century BC, the east coast of Sicily, facing the Greek coast as it did, became an important focus of Greek settlement. There were many reasons for the movement of Greek colonisation. Mercantile interests, pure desire for adventure and discovery, coupled with the desire of the mother cities to get rid of politically and socially inconvenient groups in society, were no doubt uppermost. Greek settlement began with the foundation of Naxos by Chalkis around 735 BC. At about the same time, the colonial city of Syracuse was founded from Corinth. Other Greek cities also founded colonies in Sicily - for example, Rhodes and Crete financed the development of the city of Gela in 688 BC. In the succeeding years the Greeks steadily forced the Phoenicians out of the eastern coastal areas of the island.

The eastern part of the island was not a single uninterrupted area of Greek rule. Each individual city (polis) retained its independence after its foundation and was enmeshed in alliances or rivalry with others. In the era of the foundation of the Greek colonies, monarchy had ceased to be the dominant form of government. In its place, a political tendency towards oligarchy had developed, which often developed further into tyranny, the rule of individual aristocrats. Together with tyrants, there arose a new political concept for Sicily. The tyrants recognised the political and economic advantages of having as extensive a territory as possible. The concept of the Greek "polis" was thus replaced by the idea of a territorial state. The attempt to put the idea of a territorial state into practice led to many unsuccessful efforts on the one hand to unite the Greek cities of Sicily, and on the other hand to drive the Carthaginians from the island.

According to its founding legend, the city of Carthage was founded between 825 and 820 BC as a trading colony of Tyre in North Africa. Archaeology, however, has demonstrated that Carthage was not founded before 730 BC. A colony independent of its mother city, it soon flourished and from the 7th century BC started to found colonies of its own. The army general Malchus was commissioned by the powerful trading city in 559-529 BC to carry out the first Carthaginian intervention in Sicily and thus to initiate Carthage's Sicilian policy. The Phoenician cities in Sicily - previously independent trading partners of Carthage - thus entered for the first time into political and military dependence on the mother city. In 409 BC the term "epicracy" was first used as a proper name for the area of Carthaginian rule in western Sicily. Since Carthaginian policy was orientated primarily towards trade, the Phoenician cities to a large extent retained their separate internal life. Their obligations towards Carthage consisted merely in military cooperation and the payment of tributes. In the conflicts with the Greek cities on the island, a primarily defensive policy arose that was focused exclusively on maintaining the security of the epicracy.

The first direct Greek-Carthaginian war broke out in 480 BC, when the Punic (Carthaginian) general Hamilcar landed in Panormos on Sicily with a large army of mercenaries. Before that, the tyrant Theron of Acragas had for the first time established a territorial state that stretched right across the island, and in alliance with the Syracusan tyrant Gelon was threatening the Carthaginian part of Sicily. Led by Gelon, the Greek armies defeated the Carthaginians near the city of Himera and destroyed their fleet. In a peace treaty, the Carthaginians were obliged to pay great sums in reparations, but their area of settlement remained untouched. The pattern of that war was to prove typical for future relations between Greeks and Carthaginians on the island. Large quantities of gold and silver flowed in reparation payments to Sicily, which did not possess its own sources of these metals. The Carthaginian gold and silver gave an important impulse to the coinage of the Greek colonial cities.

The succeeding period of peace drew to an end 70 years later. The Carthaginians got involved in rivalries between the smaller cities. Syracuse, which was concerned to maintain its dominant position, pursued an increasingly confrontational policy towards the epicracy. From 408-407 BC onwards, the Greek irregular leader Hermocrates for the first time promoted the idea of the common struggle of all Greeks against their hereditary enemy, Carthage, and carried on a kind of guerrilla war against the Carthaginians. The military intervention of Carthage in 406-405 BC brought no decisive result, and in 397 BC the Syracusan tyrant Dionysius I declared war on Carthage with the aim of freeing all the Greek cities. But this conflict, too, ended without any major changes. In 383 BC Dionysius provoked another war, which however Syracuse lost. After the defeat, the river Halycus was defined as the border between the Greek and Carthaginian areas on the island.

During the chaos following the death of Dionysius in 367 BC, the Syracusan mother city, Corinth, sent Timoleon as an arbitrator in 344 BC, who not only united the Greek cities within a very short tine, but decisively defeated the Carthaginians, who had made use of the troubles to occupy large areas of the island. In the peace of 339 BC, the "status quo ante bellum" was restored, and the river Halycus was confirmed as the Greek-Carthaginian border. In addition, a political reorganisation of the Greek cities took place. After the fall of their tyrants, they even formed a league of cities under the leadership of Syracuse.

After the death of Timoleon, a renewed power struggle broke out in Syracuse, from which Agathocles emerged victorious, partly through Carthaginian support, and in 316-315 BC declared himself tyrant. He pursued an expansive policy, which brought him into increasing conflict with Carthage. Since it could now be clearly seen that Greek unification would always be prevented by Carthage, it was obvious that such a unification would only succeed once the Carthaginian epicracy had been removed. In Carthage, too, it was realised that the danger of a great empire united around Syracuse was arising once more. The harbour of Syracuse was blockaded, and a strategic bridgehead was set up near the city. The Carthaginians were determined to reduce Agathocles's power, which had been steadily growing since 318 BC.

In 310 BC, a large force of Carthaginian troops landed in Sicily, and Agathocles was forced on to the defensive. In August 310 BC, therefore, he sailed to Africa with 60 ships and his elite troops, aiming to force the Carthaginians to withdraw their units from Sicily by a direct threat to their heartland. With the support of the Ptolemaic strategist Ophellas, Agathocles succeeding in conquering the Carthaginian territory, though he did not manage to capture the city itself thanks to its strong defences. Bad news of the advance of the Carthaginians towards Sicily led him in 307 BC to entrust the supreme command to his son and return to Syracuse. Once there, he managed to turn the tables on the Carthaginians, and he conquered the whole of the Carthaginian territory except for the mountain fortresses of Lilybaeon and Panormus. Once most of the other cities had been pacified soon afterwards, the time seemed ripe for a return to Africa. The troops he had left there had become exhausted in besieging Carthage and had been decisively defeated. Their relief by Agathocles ended in a fiasco. In contrast to his sons, he himself succeeded in escaping to Sicily, while his former troops deserted to the Carthaginians. The Carthaginian success in North Africa now encouraged the Carthaginians of western Sicily, together with the Syracusan emigrants, to rise against Agathocles. Seeing the hopelessness of his position, Agathocles finally offered the Carthaginians an understanding. The peace treaty of 306 BC provided for the return of the Carthaginian territory in exchange for an indemnity of 300 gold talents. Once more, the "status quo ante bellum" had been restored. After this victory over his internal opponents, Agathocles assumed the dignity of king, the first ruler of Sicily to do so.

After the death of Agathocles in 289 BC, the Syracusan empire disintegrated. In the ensuing chaos, the Carthaginians intervened, thus provoking the intervention of the Greek general Pyrrhus, who had been fighting in lower Italy. He landed in Sicily in the autumn of 278 BC, was elected supreme commander at once, and rapidly conquered the entire Carthaginian area except for Lilybaeon. After a series of disagreements with his allies, Pyrrhus left Sicily in spring 275 BC, and peace was concluded with Carthage, restoring the "status quo ante bellum" of 306 BC. Hieron was now tyrant in Syracuse, and was now waging war primarily against the plundering Mamertines - former mercenaries in the pay of Agathocles, who after being received with friendship in the city of Messana had subjected the town to a bloody occupation and used it as a base for their depredations. In the year 269 BC the decisive battle at the river Longanus took place. The Messenians were decisively defeated, but the Carthaginian admiral Hannibal, who wished to preserve the equilibrium between the Mamertines and the Syracusans, forced the retreat of the Syracusan troops and at the request of the Mamertines left a garrison in Messana, which in time was to become the cause of the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage.

Despite the intricacies of events, wars and politics in Sicily during the 400 years considered here, up to the 3rd century BC, there emerges a clear picture of a Greek-Carthaginian balance of power during that period.

The Greek part of the island consisted of many different autonomous city-states, which displayed a considerable inner instability. The political instability was in great measure due to the fact that the cities were rivals from the very start, since they had been founded by rival Greek mother cities. In their external affairs this had the consequence that new arrangements of alliances were constantly emerging. Although the dominance of the city of Syracuse became clear at an early date, thanks to its strategic advantages as a harbour, and although various tyrants pursued the concept of a territorial state, the idea of a Greek nation made no headway. Agreements were only reached on a military basis and always only for a short time.

Since the 7th century BC, Carthage had been the protecting power for the Phoenician interests in the western Mediterranean. Its overwhelmingly large fleet formed the backbone of Phoenician dominance in the Mediterranean. Both inside and outside Sicily, the policy of Carthage concentrated on purely mercantile interests. In Sicily the Carthaginians restricted themselves to securing their area of influence and protecting the important trading bases without which the Carthaginian transport system could not have been maintained. Carthaginian policy towards the eastern part of the island may be described as purely defensive, although it also embodied measures such as preventive wars. The supreme goal was to influence political affairs in the eastern, Greek, part of the island, to protect the epicracy from danger. It is remarkable that sooner or later after every conflict the "status quo ante bellum" was restored, in which the territorial possessions of both sides were guaranteed.

The Greek-Carthaginian wars of those times cannot be considered wars in the modern sense of the word, since the existence of one or other of the two peoples on the island was de facto never at stake. The two sides were obviously equally strong. Neither side was in a position to finally defeat its opponent, although that was attempted many times. In addition, Greek and Carthaginian colonies in Sicily depended on each other as trading partners. That equilibrium, marked by constant skirmishes, lasted for 300 years, until a new, united power intervened in affairs. Only when Rome intervened in the conflict, when the Carthaginians were defeated and the cities of Sicily became dependent on Rome, did the equilibrium between the rival powers, which was accompanied by a unique flowering of culture, start to crumble. The time was ripe for a new period of history.