The ill success of Hanno at Messana so displeased the Carthaginian government that they ordered the unfortunate general to be crucified. The Romans pursued their first success with vigour. In the year 264 B.C. both the consuls crossed over into Sicily with an army of nearly fifty thousand men. A number of the Sicilian towns declared in favour of the new power, which might (they hoped) secure their independence against both Syracuse and Carthage; for at present no one dreamed of a permanent occupation of the island by the Romans. Hiero, a prudent man, was struck by the energy of the new invaders. “They had conquered him,” he said, “before he had had time to see them.” He shrewdly calculated that the Carthaginians would prove inferior in the struggle, and forthwith concluded a treaty of alliance with Rome, by which he was left in undisturbed possession of a small but fertile region lying round Syracuse; some more remote towns, as Tauromenium, being also subject to his sceptre.
A Roman Consul
From this time forth to the time of his death, a period of forty-seven years, he remained a useful ally of the Roman people. In 262 B.C. both consuls laid siege to the city of Agrigentum, which, though fallen from her ancient splendour, was still the second of the Hellenic communities in Sicily. Another Hanno was sent from Carthage to raise the siege, and for some time fortune favoured him. He drew a second circle of entrenchments round the Roman lines, so as to intercept all supplies; and thus the besiegers, being themselves besieged, were reduced to the greatest straits. But the consul at length forced Hanno to give him battle, and gained a complete victory. Upon this the commandant of the garrison, finding further defence useless, slipped out of Agrigentum by night, and deserted the hapless city after a siege of seven months. The Romans repaid themselves for the miseries they had undergone by indulging in all those excesses which soldiers are wont to commit when they take a town by storm after a long and obstinate defence. It is said that twenty-five thousand men were slain.
[262-260 B.C.]
This great success raised the spirits of the Romans. And now the senate conceived the hope and formed the plan of expelling the Carthaginians entirely from Sicily: but after a short experience, that sagacious council became aware that a fleet was indispensable for success. Nothing shows the courage and resolution of the Romans more than their manner of acting in this matter. It is no light matter for landsmen to become seamen; but for unpractised landsmen to think of encountering the most skilful seamen then known might have been deemed a piece of romantic absurdity, if the men of Rome had not undertaken and accomplished it.
What they wanted first was a set of ships, which, in size at least and weight, should be a match for those of the enemy. It is a mistake to suppose that the Romans had no fleet before this time. The treaties with Carthage sufficiently prove the contrary; and on several occasions we hear of ships being employed by them. But these ships were of the trireme kind, formerly employed by the Greeks. The Carthaginians, like the Greeks after Alexander, used quinqueremes; and it would have been as absurd for the small Roman ships to have encountered those heavier vessels, as for a frigate to cope with a three-decker. The Romans therefore determined to build quinqueremes. A Carthaginian ship cast ashore on the coast of Bruttium served as a model; the forest of Sila, in that district, supplied timber. In sixty days from the time the trees were felled they had completed, probably by the help of Greek artisans, a fleet of one hundred quinqueremes, and twenty triremes; and while it was building, they trained men to row in a manner which to us seems laughable, by placing them on scaffolds ranged on land in the same way as the benches in the ships (262 B.C.).
[260-256 B.C.]
The consul Cn. Cornelius put to sea first with seventeen ships, leaving the rest of the fleet to follow; but he was surprised near Lipara and captured, with the whole of his little squadron, by the Carthaginian admiral. His plebeian colleague, C. Duilius, was in command of the army in Sicily; but as soon as he heard of this disaster, he hastened to take charge of the main body of the fleet, and sailed slowly along the north coast of Sicily (260 B.C.).
Meantime, the Roman shipwrights had contrived certain engines, by means of which their seamen might grapple with the enemy’s ships, so as to bring them to close quarters and deprive them of the superiority derived from their better construction and the greater skill of their crews. These engines were called crows (corvi). They consisted of a gangway thirty-six feet long and four broad, pierced with an oblong hole towards one end, so as to play freely round a strong pole twenty-four feet high, which was fixed near the ship’s prow. At the other end was attached a strong rope, which passed over a sheaf at the head of the pole. By this rope the gangway was kept hauled up till within reach of the enemy’s ship; it was then suddenly let go, and as it fell with all its weight, a strong spike on its under side (shaped like a crow’s beak) was driven into the enemy’s deck. Then the Roman men-at-arms poured along the gangway, and a stand-up fight followed, in which the best soldiers must prevail.