City
Messana
Messina
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Messana, today Messina in Sicily, began life as Zancle, from the Sikel word for a sickle, after the curved shape of its natural harbour. The tyrant Anaxilaos of Rhegion renamed it, supposedly in memory of his family's roots in Messenia in Greece. In 264 BC the Mamertines, former mercenaries who had seized the city, turned to Rome for help and so set off the First Punic War. On the map the road stops here: the onward line to an unnamed symbol, with any distances, seems to have been lost, and the name of Tauromenium stands misplaced, linked to no route at all.