Polybius of Megalopolis, an Achaean statesman from southern Greece taken as a hostage to Rome, wrote The Histories to explain how, in fifty-three years, Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean. This is Book 1 of that series. He wanted Greeks to understand the power that had swallowed them.

Book 1 opens in Sicily with the Mamertines, Campanian mercenaries who seized Messana (Messina) and called in both Rome and Carthage. The First Punic War lasts twenty-three years. Romans, no sailors, bolt a boarding-bridge — the corvus — onto their ships and turn sea-fights into land ones. Regulus invades Africa and meets Xanthippus the Spartan, who shows Carthage how to use elephants. Fleets drown. At Drepana, Publius Claudius Pulcher throws the sacred chickens into the sea and loses a fleet; Rome builds another. At the Aegates Islands, off western Sicily, Lutatius finally breaks Carthage. Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father, does not forgive. Then mercenaries in Africa start a second, crueller war.