Alike in a political and in a military point of view Rome was justified in shifting its northern boundary from the low and easily crossed Apennines to the mighty mountain-wall that separates northern from southern Europe, the Alps, and in combining with the sovereignty of Italy the sovereignty of the seas and islands on the west and east of the peninsula; and now, when by the expulsion of the Phoenicians from Sicily the most difficult portion of the task had been already achieved, various circumstances united to facilitate its completion by the Roman government.
Sicily a Dependency of Italy In the western sea which was of far more account for Italy than the Adriatic, the most important position, the large and fertile island of Sicily copiously furnished with harbours, had been by the peace with Carthage transferred for the most part into the possession of the Romans.

King Hiero of Syracuse indeed, who during the last twenty-two years of the war had adhered with unshaken steadfastness to the Roman alliance, might have had a fair claim to an extension of territory; but, if Roman policy had begun the war with the resolution of tolerating only secondary states in the island, the views of the Romans at its close decidedly tended towards the seizure of Sicily for themselves.

Hiero might be content that his territory--namely, in addition to the immediate district of Syracuse, the domains of Elorus, Neetum, Acrae, Leontini, Megara, and Tauromenium--and his independence in relation to foreign powers, were (for want of any pretext to curtail them) left to him in their former compass; he might well be content that the war between the two great powers had not ended in the complete overthrow of the one or of the other, and that there consequently still remained at least a possibility of subsistence for the intermediate power in Sicily.

In the remaining and by far the larger portion of Sicily, at Panormus, Lilybaeum, Agrigentum, Messana, the Romans effected a permanent settlement.
Sardinia Roman The Libyan Insurrection Corsica They only regretted that the possession of that beautiful island was not enough to convert the western waters into a Roman inland sea, so long as Sardinia still remained Carthaginian.

Soon, however, after the conclusion of the peace there appeared an unexpected prospect of wresting from the Carthaginians this second island of the Mediterranean.