battle.  Each side would sometimes be victorious and sometimes incur defeat.  One day the consul got into a confined position and would have been caught, had he not, before being surrounded, sent to Hiero an invitation to agree to some terms.  When the representative came with whom he was to conclude the terms, he kept falling back unobtrusively, while he conversed with him, until he had retired to safety.  But the city could not easily be taken, and a siege, on account of scarcity of food supplies and disease in the army, was impracticable.  Claudius accordingly withdrew; and the Syracusans following held discussions with his scattered followers and would have made a truce, if Hiero also had been willing to agree to terms.  The consul left behind a garrison in Messana and sailed back to Rhegium.

[Sidenote:  B.C. 263 (a.u. 491)] As Etruscan unrest had come to a standstill and affairs in Italy were perfectly peaceful, whereas the Carthaginian state was becoming ever greater, the Romans ordered both the consuls to make an expedition into Sicily.  Valerius Maximus and Otacilius Crassus consequently crossed over and in their progress through the island together and separately they won over many towns by capitulation.  When they had made the majority of places their own, they set out for Syracuse.  Hiero in terror sent a herald to them with offers:  he expressed a readiness to restore the cities of which they had been deprived, promised money, and liberated the prisoners.  On these terms he obtained peace, for the consuls thought they could subjugate the Carthaginians more easily with his help.  After reaching an agreement with him, then, they turned their attention to the remaining cities garrisoned by Carthaginians.  They were repulsed from all of them except Segesta, which they took without resistance.  Its inhabitants because of their relationship with the Romans (they declare they are descended from AEneas) slew the Carthaginians and joined the Roman alliance.

VIII, 10.—­On account of the winter the consuls embarked again for Rhegium.  The Carthaginians conveyed most of their army to Sardinia in the intention of attacking Rome from that quarter.  They would thus either rout them out of Sicily altogether or would render them weaker after they had crossed.  Yet they achieved neither the one object nor the other.  The Romans both kept guard over their own land and sent a respectable force to Sicily with Postumius Albinus and Quintus AEmilius.[15] [Sidenote:  B.C. 262 (a.u. 492)] On arriving in Sicily the consuls set out for Agrigentum and there besieged Hannibal the son of Gisco.  The people of Carthage, when apprised of it, sent Hanno, with a powerful support, to aid him in the warfare.  This leader arrived at Heraclea, not far from Agrigentum, and was soon engaged in war.  A number of battles, but not great ones, took place.  At first Hanno challenged the consuls to fight, then later on the Romans challenged him.  For as long as the Romans had an abundance