Middle Roman Republic, First Punic War (264-241 BC): Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica (264-257 BC)

Claudius was hampered by a severe lack of ships. However, he assembled a fleet of penteconters and triremes borrowed from Tarentum, Locris, Elea and Naples, and managed to ferry two legions overnight from Rhegium across the strait to Messana. He then fought a land battle against each of his opponents, with the result that Hieron retreated to Syracuse and Hanno withdrew to protect the Carthaginian cities in Sicily

In 263 BC the consuls ⁰⁸Valerius Corvinus and Otacilius Crassus (fl.263-246 BC) were sent to Sicily with thirty thousand men. Valerius drove the Carthaginians and Syracusans away from Messana for good, and some Sicilian cities sought Roman friendship. At the approach of the Roman legions Hieron sent envoys and a peace treaty was agreed.

In 262 BC the consuls ⁰⁶Postumius Megellus (c.47; fl.262-253 BC) and ⁰²Mamilius Vitulus attacked the Carthaginians’ base at Agrigentum on the south coast of the island under ⁰²Hannibal Gisco (c.37; fl.261-258 BC). They built a double wall around the city to blockade it and to protect themselves from a Carthaginian relief force led by Hanno (5) (fl.264-256 BC), while they themselves besieged Agrigentum. 

When the Romans ran out of food, Hieron proved his loyalty by breaking through the Carthaginian lines to resupply the Romans. Gisco eventually decided to use the cover of an assault (which was beaten off) by Hanno to abandon the city. The consuls occupied the city, but then shocked the Sicilian Greeks by giving the city their troops to loot and by selling the entire population into slavery.

The Senate now authorised the construction of twenty triremes and one hundred quinqueremes (a captured Carthaginian ship was the prototype), and drafted thirty thousand oarsmen to sit on rowing machines on land to train them to pull together. In ancient naval battles the goal was to ram and sink the enemy ship, but the Roman crews were inexperienced so the Romans changed the rules of combat at sea. 

Because they preferred hand-to-hand combat they added a hundred or so marines to the ship’s complement and invented a simple device that was to win them many sea battles, the corvus or ‘raven’, a raised drawbridge (weighing about a ton) with a large spike at the free end which was dropped to pin the enemy vessel alongside and thus provide a boarding bridge for the marines to cross and win the battle by hand-to-hand fighting.

Lipari, the chief island of the Aeolian group, was much used by the Carthaginian fleet to observe the north coast of Sicily and southwest coast of Italy. In 260 BC while the new fleet was mustering at Messana, the consul ¹¹Cornelius Scipio Asina (fl.260-254 BC) sailed off with seventeen ships towards Lipari having received intelligence that its garrison was willing to defect to the Roman side. When he entered the harbour his fleet was trapped and defeated by a Carthaginian fleet led by Gisco and another Carthaginian commander Boodes. Cornelius (12) surrendered and was taken prisoner.

His colleague Gaius Duilius (2) took command of the fleet and with one hundred and thirty ships defeated the Carthaginians under Gisco and Boodes at Mylae off the north coast of Sicily. Using the corvus for the first time, fourteen Carthaginian galleys were sunk and thirty-one captured. After the battle, Duilius landed in Sicily and relieved Segesta in the northwest which was under siege by Hanno’s successor, Hamilcar (4) (fl.259-255 BC), and captured Macella nearby.

After their defeat at Agrigentum the Carthaginians came to realise (as Pyrrhus had before them) that they could not defeat the Romans by pitched battles. To compensate for the enemy’s superiority in manpower the Carthaginians changed their tactics. They installed their mercenaries in several well-fortified cities on Sicily’s coast from which they could venture to harass the Roman supply lines throughout the island, while the Carthaginian navy kept them supplied, cut Roman sea routes and attacked their cities in Sicily and Southern Italy.

In 259 BC the Romans, confident in their newfound naval power, extended their operations to Sardinia and Corsica, which suggests that these islands had been used as bases for raiding the Italian coast. The consul ¹³Cornelius Scipio took Aleria in Corsica and won the island, but he failed to take the Punic fortress of Olbia in northeast Sardinia. The following year the Roman fleet, commanded by the consul ⁰³Sulpicius Paterculus, attacked and defeated the Punic fleet off Sulci, a small island off southwest Sardinia. The following year Gisco, the commander of the beaten Carthaginian fleet, was executed for incompetence.

Meanwhile, Hamilcar (4) had made progress in Sicily. Before the arrival of ⁰¹Aquillius Florus (cos.259 BC), he defeated a Roman force on the north coast near Thermae then advanced to Enna and Camarina and fortified Drepana. In 258 BC the consul ⁰²Atilius Calatinus (fl.258-216 BC) retook the cities of Hippana, Myttistratum, Camarina and Enna during which time he was drawn into an ambuscade by the Carthaginians, but was rescued by a tribune ⁰¹Calpurnius Flamma. In 257 BC the Roman fleet was withdrawn from Corsica and Sardinia, which had been effectively neutralised, and under the consul ⁰³Atilius Regulus (fl.257-242 BC), returned to Sicilian waters. An outpost on the island of Melita (=Malta), about a hundred kilometres off the Sicilian coast, had been taken over from the Phoenicians by the Carthaginians in the sixth century BC. Too important to be left intact, Regulus attacked and sacked it. On his way to Mylae he met a Punic fleet off Tyndaris. The Romans sank eight and captured ten more Carthaginian ships and secured their third naval victory.