Oliveri says that many factors – including the strength and direction of the wind – contributed to the Roman victory, and world history may have been very different if the Carthaginians had instead triumphed. "Rome could have been limited to the Italian peninsula, while Carthage would have established more new colonies surrounding the Mediterranean – arriving, to the east, at the edge of the Persian Empire." If they had not been weakened, they might have even extended their sphere of influence northwards, she suggests – perhaps as far as Britain.