Messana

Greek-founded city at the north-eastern corner of Sicily, controlling the strait between Sicily and the Italian mainland, a strategic position that made it the natural staging point for any military movement between the two. In 288 BCE the city was seized by the Mamertines, a band of Campanian mercenaries discharged from the service of Agathocles of Syracuse, who massacred or expelled the male population and held the city as a base for raiding Greek Sicily. The Mamertines' subsequent appeal for help against Hiero II of Syracuse, directed both to Carthage and to Rome in 265/264 BCE, was the proximate trigger for the First Punic War. Throughout that war and after, Messana served as the principal Roman foothold in Sicily, and the strait it controlled became known to Roman generations as the gateway to the empire's first overseas province.