“There were three,” Vito said, even before I had sat down.
“Three what?”
“Wars.”
I immediately thought of the Punic Wars, of which there were three, and the Servile Wars, of which there were three, but I didn’t know where Vito was going with this.
“What wars?”
Vito sat back into the chair. His slight build and height always reminded me a gray-haired gnome as he settled back into the cushion of his chair. But then he smiled and nodded, and I knew it was time to begin.
“They’re called the Sicilian Wars, and they took up most of the Fifth and Fourth centuries B.C.”
“These were not related to the battles with the Carthaginians, or with the enslavement by Rome’s victors, were they?” I asked.
“Well, a bit. The Punic Wars pitted Carthage’s power at home and on the island of Sicily against
