After the consuls had departed home Hamilcar sailed to Italy and ravaged the land and won over some cities in Sicily.  On receipt of this information the Romans [Sidenote:  B.C. 260 (a.u. 494)] gathered a fleet and put one of the consuls, Gaius Duillius, in command of it, while they sent his colleague, Gaius[16] Cornelius, to Sicily.  He, neglecting the war on land which had fallen to his lot, sailed with the ships that belonged to him to Lipara, on the understanding that it was to be betrayed to him.  Through treachery it had fallen into the hands of the Carthaginians.  When, therefore, he put into Lipara, Bodes the lieutenant of Hannibal closed in upon him.  As Gaius[17] made preparations to defend himself, Bodes fearing the Romans’ desperation invited them to discuss terms.  Having persuaded them to do so he took the consul and military tribunes, who supposed they were to meet the admiral, on board his own trireme.  These men he sent to Carthage:  the rest he captured without their so much as lifting a weapon.

[Footnote 16:  This name should in both cases be Gnaeus.]

[Footnote 17:  [See previous footnote.]]

VIII, 11.—­Then Hannibal continued the ravaging of Italy, while Hamilcar made a campaign against Segesta, where the Romans had most of their infantry force.  Gaius Caecilius, a military tribune, wanted to assist them, but Hamilcar waylaid him and slaughtered many of his followers.  The people of Rome learning this at once sent out the praetor urbanus and incited Duillius to haste.  On coming to Sicily he learned the fact that the ships of the Carthaginians were inferior to his own in stoutness and size, but excelled in the quickness of their rowing and variety of movement.  Therefore he fitted out his triremes with mechanical devices,—­anchors and grappling irons with long spikes and other such things,—­in order that by laying hold of the hostile ships with these they might pin them fast to their own vessels; then by crossing over into them they might have a hand to hand conflict with the Carthaginians and engage them just as in an infantry battle.  When the Carthaginians began the fight with the Roman ships, they sailed round and round them using the oars rapidly and would make sudden dashes.  So for the time the conflict was an evenly matched one:  later the Romans got the upper hand and sank numbers of crews, retaining possession also of large numbers.  Hannibal conducted the fight on a boat of seven banks, but when his own ship became entangled with a trireme, he feared capture, hastily left the seven banked affair, and transferring to another ship effected his escape.