imera, and Their Effects

But the subjugation, with which the coalition of the Etruscan and
Carthaginian nations had threatened both Greeks and Italians, was
fortunately averted by the combination of peoples drawn towards each
other by family affinity as well as by common peril. The Etruscan
army, which after the fall of Rome had penetrated into Latium, had
its victorious career checked in the first instance before the walls
of Aricia by the well-timed intervention of the Cumaeans who had
hastened to the succour of the Aricines (248). We know not how the
war ended, nor, in particular, whether Rome even at that time tore up
the ruinous and disgraceful peace. This much only is certain, that
on this occasion also the Tuscans were unable to maintain their ground
permanently on the left bank of the Tiber.

Soon the Hellenic nation was forced to engage in a still more
comprehensive and still more decisive conflict with the barbarians
both of the west and of the east. It was about the time of the
Persian wars. The relation in which the Tyrians stood to the great
king led Carthage also to follow in the wake of Persian policy
--there exists a credible tradition even as to an alliance between
the Carthaginians and Xerxes--and, along with the Carthaginians, the
Etruscans. It was one of the grandest of political combinations which
simultaneously directed the Asiatic hosts against Greece, and the
Phoenician hosts against Sicily, to extirpate at a blow liberty and
civilization from the face of the earth. The victory remained with
the Hellenes. The battle of Salamis (274) saved and avenged Hellas
proper; and on the same day--so runs the story--the rulers of Syracuse
and Agrigentum, Gelon and Theron, vanquished the immense army of the
Carthaginian general Hamilcar, son of Mago, at Himera so completely,
that the war was thereby terminated, and the Phoenicians, who by no
means cherished at that time the project of subduing the whole of
Sicily on their own account, returned to their previous defensive
policy. Some of the large silver pieces are still preserved which
were coined for this campaign from the ornaments of Damareta, the
wife of Gelon, and other noble Syracusan dames: and the latest times
gratefully remembered the gentle and brave king of Syracuse and
the glorious victory whose praises Simonides sang.

The immediate effect of the humiliation of Carthage was the fall of
the maritime supremacy of her Etruscan allies.