The Mamertines had previously, as I above narrated, lost their support from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhegium&groupId=927&placeId=1659">Rhegium</a> and had now suffered complete disaster at home for the reasons I have just stated. Some of them appealed to the Carthaginians, proposing to put themselves and the citadel into their hands,
while others sent an embassy to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>, offering to surrender the city and begging for assistance as a kindred people.
The Romans were long at a loss, the succour demanded being so obviously unjustifiable.
For they had just inflicted on their own fellow-citizens the highest penalty for their treachery to the people of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhegium&groupId=927&placeId=1659">Rhegium</a>, and now to try to help the Mamertines, who had been guilty of like offence not only at Messene but at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhegium&groupId=927&placeId=1659">Rhegium</a> also, was a piece of injustice very difficult to excuse.
But fully aware as they were of this, they yet saw that the Carthaginians had not only reduced <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Libya&groupId=686&placeId=427">Libya</a> to subjection, but a great part of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Spain&groupId=983&placeId=1735">Spain</a> besides, and that they were also in possession of all the islands in the Sardinian and Tyrrhenian Seas.
They were therefore in great apprehension lest, if they also became masters of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sicily&groupId=973&placeId=1724">Sicily</a>, they would be most troublesome and dangerous neighbours, hemming them in on all sides and threatening every part of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Italy&groupId=656&placeId=1199">Italy</a>.
That they would soon be supreme in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sicily&groupId=973&placeId=1724">Sicily</a>, if the Mamertines were not helped, was evident; for once Messene had fallen into their hands,
they would shortly subdue <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Syracuse&groupId=994&placeId=1753">Syracuse</a> also, as they were absolute lords of almost all the rest of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sicily&groupId=973&placeId=1724">Sicily</a>.
The Romans, foreseeing this and viewing it as a necessity for themselves not to abandon Messene and thus allow the Carthaginians as it were to build a bridge for crossing over to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Italy&groupId=656&placeId=1199">Italy</a>, debated the matter for long,
Walbank Commentary