town always a considerable quantity of merchandize. This port the privateer
squadron determined to enter. The inhabitants, aware of their design,
stretched a very strong chain across the harbour mouth; but it did not
avail; for the Roman ships broke through it, took possession of the town
and ships, burnt most of them, and returned safe with an immense booty.
This success was quickly followed by another, for as they were re-entering
Panormus, they fell in with a Carthaginian fleet loaded with provisions for
Hamilcar, who commanded in Sicily, and captured several of the transports.
These advantages began to inspire the Romans with renewed confidence and
hopes that their naval disasters were at an end, and that the gods had at
length permitted them to become masters of the sea, when the privateer
fleet, after having gained a considerable victory over a Carthaginian
squadron, near the coast of Africa, was almost totally destroyed in a
storm.

For a few years afterwards, the Romans seem to have desisted entirely from
maritime enterprizes; but in the year of the city 516, they changed their
plan, as it was indeed evident that unless they were masters at sea, they
must be content to lose the island of Sicily. In order, however, that the
Roman armies might not suffer by their losses at sea, it was decreed that
the new fleet should be manned with hired troops. There was still another
difficulty to overcome; the protracted war with Carthage, and the heavy and
repeated losses which they had suffered during it, had nearly exhausted the
Roman treasury; from it therefore could not possibly be drawn the sums
requisite for the proper and effective equipment of such a fleet as would
be adequate to meet that of the enemy. This difficulty was removed by the
patriotism of all ranks and classes of the citizens. The senators set the
example; the most wealthy of whom built, each at his own cost, a
quinquereme: those who were not so wealthy joined together, three or four
of them fitting out a single galley. By these means a fleet of 200 large