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 Rome Comes into History 171 attack he had made upon their camp at Beneventum between Naples and Rome. And suddenly came news that recalled him to Epirus. The Gauls were raiding south. But this time they were not raiding down into Italy ; the Roman frontier, fortified and guarded, had become too for- midable for them. They were raiding down through IlljTia (which is now Serbia and Albania) to Macedonia and Epirus. Repulsed by the Romans, endangered at sea by the Carthaginians, and threatened at home by the Gauls, Pyrrhus abandoned his dream of conquest and went home (275 B.C.), and the power of Rome was extended to the Straits of Messina. On the Sicilian side of the Straits was the Greek city of Messina, and this presently fell into the hands of a gang of pirates. The Carthaginians, who were already practically overlords of Sicily and allies of Syracuse, suppressed these pirates (270 B.C.) and put in a Carthaginian garrison there. The pirates appealed to Rome and Rome listened to their complaint. And so across the Straits of Mes- sina the great trading power of Carthage and this new conquering people, the Romans, found themselves in antagonism, face to face.