At the latter date, the Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus, attempted to arouse the Greek colonies in Southern Italy against the growing power of Rome; but his interference only resulted in extending the Roman dominion down to the heel and big toe of Italy.
If Rome was to advance farther, Sicily would be the next step, and just at that moment Sicily was being threatened by the other great power of the West--Carthage.

Carthage was the most important of the colonies founded by the Phoenicians (probably in the ninth century B.C.), and pursued in the Western Mediterranean the policy of establishing trading stations along the coast, which had distinguished the Phoenicians from their first appearance in history.
They seized all the islands in that division of the sea, or at any rate prevented any other nation from settling in Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles.

In particular Carthage took possession of the western part of Sicily, which had been settled by sister Phoenician colonies.

While Rome did everything in its power to consolidate its conquests by admitting the other Italians to some share in the central government, Carthage only regarded its foreign possessions as so many openings for trade.

In fact, it dealt with the western littoral of the Mediterranean something like the East India Company treated the coast of Hindostan: it established factories at convenient spots.