Commodore Parker, of the U. S. Navy, in commenting upon this important naval action, says, “Had Hanno and the commander of the Carthaginian reserve done their duty faithfully and intelligently upon this occasion, the Roman van and centre must have been doubled up and defeated, almost instantly; after which it would have been an easy matter to get possession of the others, with the transports. Thus the Carthaginians would have gained a decisive victory, the effect of which would have been, perhaps, to deter the Romans from again making their appearance in force upon the sea; and then, with such leaders as Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal to shape her policy and conduct her armaments, Carthage, instead of Rome, might have been the mistress of the world. Such are the great issues sometimes impending over contending armies and fleets.”
As soon as the Consuls had repaired damages they set sail from Heraclea for Africa, where they disembarked an army under Regulus; and most of the naval force, with the prisoners, then returned home. Regulus, however, soon suffered a defeat, and the Roman fleet had to be despatched to Africa again, in hot haste, to take off the scant remnant of his army. Before taking on board the defeated Legions the fleet had another great naval battle; and captured a Carthaginian fleet of one hundred and fourteen vessels. With the soldiers on board, and their prizes in tow, Marcus Emilius and Servius Fulvius, the Consuls then in command, determined to return to Rome by the south shore of Sicily. This was against the earnest remonstrances of the pilots, or sailing masters, “who wisely argued that, at the dangerous season when, the constellation of Orion being not quite past, and the Dog Star just ready to appear, it were far safer to go North about.”
The Consuls, who had no idea of being advised by mere sailors, were unfortunately not to be shaken in their determination; and so, when Sicily was sighted, a course was shaped from Lylybeum to the promontory of Pachymus. The fleet had accomplished about two-thirds of this distance, and was just opposite a coast where there were no ports, and where the shore was high and rocky, when, with the going down of the sun, the north wind, which had been blowing steadily for several days, suddenly died away, and as the Romans were engaged in furling their flapping sails they observed that they were heavy and wet with the falling dew, the sure precursor of the terrible “Scirocco.” Then the pilots urged the Consuls to pull directly to the southward, that they might have sea room sufficient to prevent them from being driven on shore when the storm should burst upon them. But this, with the dread of the sea natural to men unaccustomed to contend with it, they refused to do; not comprehending that, although their quinqueremes were illy adapted to buffet the waves, anything was better than a lee shore, with no harbor of refuge.
The north wind sprang up again after a little, cheering the hearts of the inexperienced, blew in fitful gusts for an hour or more, then died nearly away, again sprang up, and finally faded out as before. The seamen knew what this portended. “Next came a flash of lightning in the southern sky; then a line of foam upon the southern sea; the roaring of Heaven’s artillery in the air above, and of the breakers on the beach below—and the tempest was upon them!” From this time all order was lost, and the counsels and admonitions of the pilots unheeded. The Roman fleet was completely at the mercy of the hurricane, and the veterans who had borne themselves bravely in many a hard fought battle with their fellow man, now, completely demoralized in the presence of this new danger, behaved more like maniacs than reasonable beings. Some advised one thing, some another; but nothing sensible was done—and when the gale broke, out of four hundred and sixty-four quinqueremes (an immense fleet) three hundred and eighty had been dashed upon the rocks and lost.
The whole coast was covered with fragments of wreck and dead bodies; and that which Rome had been so many years in acquiring, at the cost of so much blood, labor, and treasure, she lost in a few hours, through the want of experienced seamen in command.
During the succeeding Punic wars Rome and Carthage had many another well contested naval engagement.
Adherbal captured ninety-four Roman vessels off Drepanum, but the dogged courage of the Roman was usually successful.
We have few details of these engagements. What the Romans gained in battle was often lost by them in shipwreck; so that, at the end of the first Punic war, which lasted twenty-four years, they had lost seven hundred quinqueremes, and the vanquished Carthaginians only five hundred.
At the time spoken of, when the Romans were fighting the Carthaginians, the former were a free, virtuous and patriotic people. No reverses cast them down; no loss of life discouraged them.
After a lapse of two hundred years, Marcus Brutus and Cassius being dead, and public virtue scoffed at and fast expiring, an arbitrary government was in process of erection upon the ruins of the Republic.