ers perished on both sides. But at length
the Romans gained a decisive victory over the Carthaginian army which
had been sent to raise the siege, and obtained possession of the town
(B.C. 262).

The first three years of the war had already made the Romans masters of
the greater part of Sicily. But the coasts of Italy were exposed to the
ravages of the Carthaginian fleet, and the Romans saw that they could
not hope to bring the war to a successful termination so long as
Carthage was mistress of the sea. They had only a small number of
triremes, galleys with three banks of oars, and were quite unable to
cope with the quinqueremes, or large vessels with five banks of oars, of
which the Carthaginian navy consisted. The Senate, with characteristic
energy, determined to build a fleet of these larger vessels. A
Carthaginian quinquereme, which had been wrecked upon the coast of
Italy, served as a model; and in the short space of sixty days from the
time the trees were felled, 130 ships were launched. While the ships
were building, the rowers were trained on scaffolds placed upon the land
like benches of ships at sea. We can not but feel astonished at the
daring of the Romans, who, with ships thus hastily and clumsily built,
and with crews imperfectly trained, sailed to attack the navy of the
first maritime state in the world. This was in the fifth year of the war
(B.C. 260). One of the Consuls, Cn. Cornelius, first put to sea with
only 17 ships, but was surprised near Lipara, and taken prisoner with
the whole of his squadron. His colleague, C. Duilius, now took the
command of the rest of the fleet. He saw that the only means of
conquering the Carthaginians by sea was to deprive them of all the
advantages of manoeuvring, and to take their ships by boarding. For
this purpose, every ship was provided with a boarding-bridge 36 feet in
length, which was pulled up by a rope and fastened to a mast in the fore
part of the ship. As soon as an enemy's ship came near enough, the rope
was loosened, the bridge fell down, and became fastened by means of an
iron spike in its under side. The boarders then poured down the bridge
into the enemy's ship. Thus prepared, Duilius boldly sailed out to meet
the fleet of the enemy. He found them off the Sicilian coast, near Mylae.
The Carthaginians hastened to the fight as if to a triumph, but their
ships were rapidly seized by the boarding-bridges, and when it came to a
close fight their crews were no