Battle of Selinus

Battle of Selinus
Part of The Sicilian Wars
Date 409 BC Location Selinus Territorial changes Dorian Greek city Selinus destroyed
Belligerents
Syracuse Selinus	Carthage
Commanders and leaders
Unknown	Hannibal Mago
Strength
25,000 men	40,000 men
Casualties and losses
16,000 killed, 6,000 captured	Unknown

The Battle of Selinus, which took place early in 409 BC, is the opening battle of the so-called Second Sicilian War. The 10-day-long siege and battle was fought in Sicily 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 Dorian Greeks of Selinus. The city of Selinus had defeated the Elymian city of Segesta in 415 BC, an event that led to the Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415 BC and ended in the defeat of Athenian forces in 413 BC. When Selinus again worsted Segesta in 411 BC, Carthage, responding to the appeal of Segesta, had besieged and sacked Selinus after the Carthaginian offer of negotiations had been refused by the Greeks. This was the first step towards Hannibal's campaign to avenge the Carthaginian defeat at the 1st battle of Himera in 480 BC. The city of Selinus was later rebuilt, but never regained her former status.

The island of Sicily contained the Elymians, Sikans and the Siculi living in respective communities before the Phoenicians had started their colonisation of Sicily after 800 BC. The Phoenicians had initially planted trading posts all over the coast of Sicily, but never penetrated far inland and ultimately withdrew without resistance to the Western half of the island (concentrating in the cities of Motya, Panormus and Soluntum) with the arrival of the Greek colonists after 750 BC. The Ionian Greeks took the lead in colinising Sicily among Greeks when they planted Naxos in 735 BC, and spread north and west along the island coast until the city of Himera was founded in c648 BC, bordering the Phoenician territory of Soluntum. The Dorian Greeks founded Syracuse in 734 BC, and spread south then west along the coastline until Selinus was founded around 654 BC, bordering the Phoenician territory of Motya. While the Ionian Greeks on the whole had friendly relations with the native Sicilians and the Phoenicians, the Dorian Greeks were comparably more aggressive, pushing inland at the expense of the natives to expand the Greek domain. Conflicts among the Greeks colonies and between the natives and Greeks erupted, but these were localised mostly affairs without any decisive results or intervention from non Sicilian powers. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians traded with everyone in Sicily and on the whole all the island colonies prospered. This prosperity caused some of the Greek cities to start to expand their territories again, ultimately leading to the events known as Sicilian Wars.

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