The year 280 B.C. saw the beginning of the contest between Rome and Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who had been summoned to Italy as an ally of the Greek city of Tarentum. At the outset the Romans suffered two great defeats, at Heraclea and on the plain of Apulian Asculum, largely through their inability to meet the attacks of the phalanxes and of the war elephants. In the end, however, Pyrrhus, although aided by all the enemies of Rome in southern and central Italy, ended his campaign in failure and returned to Epirus in 275 B.C., his dream of a great western empire forever shattered. In the ten years following the departure of Pyrrhus the subjugation of all Italy was completed, followed by a reorganization of the government of the Roman colonies and subject cities. The second foreign enemy of Rome was Carthage, and the most dramatic pages in the whole history of Roman conquest are those which relate the story of the contest between these two titanic rivals for world supremacy. The immediate cause of the First Punic War arose over the possession of Messana, a city in Sicily separated from Italy by only a narrow strait; but war between Rome and Carthage was inevitable; and if Messana had not become the bone of contention, another would have been found. The First Punic War lasted from 264 to 241 B.C. and resulted in victory for Rome. By the terms of peace Carthage gave up Sicily and all the small islands between Sicily and Italy, and paid a heavy war indemnity to Rome. Shortly after the close of the war the Romans, by threats, compelled the Carthaginians to surrender also the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. In 230 B.C. the Romans were engaged in war with the Illyrian pirates; and from 226 to 221 B.C. with the Insubrian Gauls, both of which conflicts resulted in easy victories for the Roman arms. In the meantime Hamilcar, his son Hannibal, and his son-in-law Hasdrubal had been busy in Spain, reducing it under Carthaginian rule and preparing it to be used as a base of operation from which an invasion of Italy might be attempted whenever a favorable opportunity should present itself. In 227 B.C. the Romans, becoming alarmed at the spread of the Carthaginian empire in Spain, insisted on a treaty by which the river Ebro was fixed as the northern boundary beyond which the control of Carthage should never extend. In 219 B.C. Hannibal (whose father and brother-in-law had by this time both fallen in the war) attacked the city of Saguntum, which, though south of the Ebro, was an ally of Rome. No heed being taken of the Roman remonstrances, war was again declared.