neither be joined to their country by a mole or bridge, they resolved
that it should be secured by arms and war, and reunited, as it were, to
their continent. And behold! as if the Fates themselves opened a way for
them, an opportunity was not wanting, for Messana, a city of Sicily in
alliance with them, happened then to make a complaint concerning the
tyranny of the Carthaginians.

As the Romans coveted Sicily, so likewise did the people of Carthage;
and both at the same time, with equal desires and equal forces,
contemplated the attainment of the empire of the world. Under the
pretext, therefore, of assisting their allies, but in reality being
allured by the prey, that rude people, that people sprung from
shepherds, and merely accustomed to the land, made it appear, though the
strangeness of the attempt startled them (yet such confidence is there
in true courage), that to the brave it is indifferent whether a battle
be fought on horseback or in ships, by land or by sea.

It was in the consulship of Appius Claudius that they first ventured
upon that strait which has so ill a name from the strange things related
of it, and so impetuous a current. But they were so far from being
affrighted, that they regarded the violence of the rushing tide as
something in their favor, and, sailing forward immediately and without
delay, they defeated Hiero, king of Syracuse, with so much rapidity that
he owned he was conquered before he saw the enemy. In the consulship of
Duilius and Cornelius, they likewise had courage to engage at sea, and
then the expedition used in equipping the fleet was a presage of
victory; for within sixty days after the timber was felled, a navy of a
hundred and sixty ships lay at anchor; so that the vessels did not seem
to have been made by art, but the trees themselves appeared to have been
turned into ships by the aid of the gods. The aspect of the battle, too,
was wonderful; as the heavy and slow ships of the Romans closed with the
swift and nimble barks of the enemy. Little availed their naval arts,
such as breaking off the oars of a ship, and eluding the beaks of the
enemy by turning aside; for the grappling-irons and other instruments,
which, before the engagement, had been greatly derided by the enemy,
were fastened upon their ships, and they were compelled to fight as on
solid ground. Being victorious, therefore, at Liparae, by sinking and
scattering the enemy's fleet, they celebrated their first nav