It's the Ancient's on History Hit.

I'm Tristan Hughes your host, and in today's podcast, well, if someone was to tell you

to pick a battle, fought in September for ATBC, you would be forgiven for instantly choosing

one of the most famous maritime clashes in the whole of history, the Battle of Salamis.

But that wasn't the only key clash occurring at that time in that year, hundreds of miles

to the west. On Sicily, there was another equally important battle going on between the

tyrant of Syracuse, Galon and the Carthaginians. To put that loosely, there were also mercenaries,

there were Greeks fighting on either side and more. But this battle, the Battle of Hymeria,

is sometimes overlooked, and it deserves its moment. Now joining me to talk all about the battle

going from the background to the battle itself to its aftermath, I was delighted to get on the show

Dr Joshua Hall. Josh, he works at the Ancient World magazine. He has done a lot of work about

the Greeks in the Western Mediterranean in antiquity, whether they're on Sicily or in Southern Italy,

or further west in Mondays, France and Spain. So that further ado, here's Josh.

Josh, great to have you on the show. Nice to see you again, Tristan, thanks for inviting me back.

No problem, and for a topic like this, I couldn't think of anyone else because the Battle of Hymeria

had roughly the same time as these amazing, well, by amazing, I mean, these extraordinary clashes

at Fmopoli, at Salamis during the Persian War. On Sicily, there is also this vitally important

clash occurring. Yes, and of course the Sicilians love to advertise that it's happened at the same

time and was playing a role in the same conflict between Greek and barbarian that the battles

of Salamis and Fmopoli were in the east. And this battle, who are our main sources for it?

So for Hymeria, we have two sources that I would describe as narratives, despite one of them being

very brief and essentially a summary. So we have Herodotus writing in the late fifth century,

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