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The end of the First Punic War didn’t represent a Roman turn to peaceful exploits and contemplation, despite massive manpower losses. Even though the Roman census of 237 BC revealed a decline of around 50,000 in the number of male citizens, or some 17% from the number twenty years before, Rome had plenty of allies and a fast-rising population that exploded whenever the Republic put a few years of peace together.
With the first war against Carthage still going on, in 245 BC, the republic founded the colony of Brundisium in a natural harbor previously occupied by a local Apulian tribe, as a key strategic port connecting the Italian peninsula with Greece; and, in 241 BC, the year in which peace was signed, it launched two consular armies against Falerii, an Etruscan city deemed to be insufficiently supportive of Rome.
Roman leaders then watched, with some perplexity, as Carthage struggled to quell the so-called Mercenary Revolt, an uprising by underpaid soldiers formerly in the city’s service. Mercenary unrest, over a lack of prompt payment, had already been dealt with by Hamilcar in Sicily, rather harshly and including executions by drowning, and 20,000 returned mercenaries were herded near the city after surrender, while they waited for payment. That proved to be a bad idea.
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