consul had no triumph; nevertheless, the energy which the Romans
displayed in Sicily could not fail to make a great impression on the
Sicilian Greeks. In the following year both consuls and an army twice
as large entered the island unopposed. One of them, Marcus Valerius
Maximus, afterwards called from this campaign the "hero of Messana"
(-Messalla-), achieved a brilliant victory over the allied
Carthaginians and Syracusans. After this battle the Phoenician army
no longer ventured to keep the field against the Romans; Alaesa,
Centuripa, and the smaller Greek towns generally fell to the victors,
and Hiero himself abandoned the Carthaginian side and made peace and
alliance with the Romans (491). He pursued a judicious policy in
joining the Romans as soon as it appeared that their interference in
Sicily was in earnest, and while there was still time to purchase
peace without cessions and sacrifices. The intermediate states in
Sicily, Syracuse and Messana, which were unable to follow out a policy
of their own and had only the choice between Roman and Carthaginian
hegemony, could not but at any rate prefer the former; because the
Romans had very probably not as yet formed the design of conquering
the island for themselves, but sought merely to prevent its being
acquired by Carthage, and at all events Rome might be expected to
substitute a more tolerable treatment and a due protection of
commercial freedom for the tyrannizing and monopolizing system that
Carthage pursued. Henceforth Hiero continued to be the most
important, the steadiest, and the most esteemed ally of the Romans
in the island.

Capture of Agrigentum

The Romans had thus gained their immediate object. By their double
alliance with Messana and Syracuse, and the firm hold which they had