Hiero II of Syracuse

King of Syracuse from approximately 270 BCE until his death in 215 BCE, ruling the Greek city for more than half a century, among the longest reigns in the ancient Mediterranean. Rose to power as a general against the Mamertines, the Campanian mercenaries who had seized Messana and were raiding Greek Sicily; his campaign against them in 265–264 BCE was the proximate trigger for the Mamertine appeal that produced the First Punic War. Initially aligned with Carthage in the early stages of that war, Hiero shifted to a Roman alliance after the Roman successes of 263 BCE and remained Rome's most reliable Sicilian ally for the rest of his reign, a relationship so settled that Polybius treats it as a fixed feature of the western Mediterranean political landscape. Patron of Archimedes and of substantial public works at Syracuse. Died at age 92 or 93; his successor's failure to maintain the Roman alliance produced the disastrous siege of Syracuse under his grandson, ending the city's independence in 211 BCE.