Decline
The Mamertine presence did not go unchallenged forever. In around 270 BC, the Mamertine exploits came to the attention of Syracuse, by word of the refugees from the settlements. Hiero II, a former tyrant who was by then the acclaimed King of Syracuse, began to gather an army of citizens with which to rid the land of the destroyers of the peace and rescue his Greek kinsmen.
Hiero met with the Mamertines when they were nearing Syracuse. Marching out his troops, he first sent his unruly mercenaries forward and allowed them to be butchered by the Mamertines. The faithless part of his army disposed of, Hiero marched his citizen soldiers back to the city where he drilled them to a better fighting condition. Leading his confident army north, he found the Mamertines again at the Longanus River on the plain of Mylae where he easily defeated them, since the Mamertines were not accustomed to large pitched battles and had become reckless after beating Hiero's mercenaries. In the battle, Hiero captured the Mamertine leaders and the remnants fled back to the safety of Messana. Hiero had restricted the Mamertine activity and placed them in a dire situation.
When Hiero returned to besiege their base (Messana) in 265 BC the Mamertines called for help from a nearby fleet from Carthage, which occupied the harbor of Messana. Seeing this, the Syracuse forces retired, not wishing to confront Carthaginian forces. Uncomfortable under the Cathaginian "protection," the Mamertines now appealed to Rome to be allowed into the protection of the Roman people. At first, the Romans did not wish to come to the aid of soldiers who had unjustly stolen a city from its rightful possessors. However, unwilling to see Carthaginian power spread further over Sicily and get too close to Italy, Rome responded by entering into an alliance with the Mamertines. In response, Syracuse allied itself with Carthage, imploring their protection. With Rome and Carthage brought into conflict, the Syracuse/Mamertine conflict escalated into the First Punic War.
Ironically, once the scale of the conflict had escalated beyond them, the Mamertines were lost to the historical record and their fate is lost, swallowed up in the larger events of the Punic wars.
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