Battle of Himera (409 BC)

Second Battle of Himera (409 BC)

Second Battle of Himera 409 BC. Political boundaries and path of troop movement are inexact because of lack of primary source data. Source file for this image is created by Marco Prins-Jona Lendering and used as per permission given

Date	409 BC
Location	Himera
Territorial changes	Ionian Greek city Himera destroyed

Belligerents

Himera
Syracuse

Carthage

Commanders and leaders

Unknown

Hannibal Mago

Strength

16,000

60,000 (Ancient sources)

Casualties and losses

3,000 + 3,000 executed

6,000+

The Second Battle of Himera was fought near the city of Himera in Sicily in 409 BC between the Carthaginian forces under Hannibal Mago (A king of Carthage of the Magonid family, not the famous Hannibal of the Barcid family) and the Ionian Greeks of Himera aided by an army and a fleet from Syracuse. Hannibal, acting under the instructions of the Carthaginian senate, had previously sacked and destroyed the city of Selinus after the Battle of Selinus in 409 BC. Hannibal then attacked the city of Himera, site of the great Carthaginian defeat of 480 BC and utterly destroyed that place. Himera was never rebuilt, a new city of Thermae was built to the west of the ruined city, which contained a mixed population of Greeks and Phoenicians.

Phoenicians of Western Sicily had aided the Elymians against the Dorian Greeks of Selinus in 580 BC, when a Greek colonization attempt of Lilybaeum was defeated. The invasion of Spartan Dorieus was again defeated by Carthage near Eryx in 510 BC, and a war followed where Carthage destroyed the city of Hereclea Minoa. Carthage had signed treaties with the cities of Selinus, Himera and Zankle by 490 BC. The pretext for launching the great Punic Sicilian expedition of 480 BC was the restoration of the deposed tyrant of Himera. The Sicilian Greeks under the tyrants Gelo of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas had crushed the Punic expedition in the 1st battle of Himera in 480 BC.

Carthage had stayed away from Sicilian Greek affairs following the defeat for 70 years, during which time Greek culture started to penetrate the Elymian, Sikanian and Sicel cities. The political landscape in Sicily also changed as Greek tyrants were replaced by democracy and oligarchy, the domain of Syracuse shrunk and infighting between Greek cities flared up in Sicily. Athens had sent fleets to Sicily in 427, 425 and 424 BC to intervene, which caused Hermocrates of Syracuse requesting all Sicilian Greek cities to remain at peace at the congress of Gela in 424 BC.

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