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Hasdrubal son of Hanno landed at Lilybaeum with a strong force, which was enabled, particularly by its enormous number of elephants amounting to 140 to keep the field against the Romans: the last battle had shown that it was possible to make up for the want of good infantry to some extent by elephants and cavalry.
Carthage a second time offered peace; but the victory of Metellus and the exhaustion of the enemy gave to the more energetic party the upper hand in the senate. Siege of Lilybaeum Peace was declined, and it was resolved to prosecute in earnest the siege of the two Sicilian cities and for this purpose to send to sea once more a fleet of 200 sail.
Moreover, the position taken up by Scipio, and the circumstance of the Cenomani threatening the borders of the Insubres, hindered the main body of the Gallic insurgents from directly joining the enemy, and gave to the second Roman army, which meanwhile had arrived at Ariminum from Lilybaeum, the opportunity of reaching Placentia through the midst of the insurgent country without material hindrance, and of uniting itself with the army of the Po.
Peace having been established by sea and land, he embarked his troops and crossed over to Lilybaeum in Sicily; whence, having sent a great part of his soldiers by ships, he himself proceeded through Italy, which was rejoicing, not less on account of the peace than the victory; while not only the inhabitants of the cities poured out to show him honour, but crowds of rustics thronged the roads.
And when Belisarius heard this, he wrote to the commanders who were there as follows: "You are depriving us of Lilybaeum, the fortress of the Vandals who are the slaves of the emperor, and are not acting justly nor in a way to benefit yourselves, and you wish to bring upon your ruler, though he does not so will it and is far distant from the scene of these actions, the hostility of the great emperor, whose good-will he has, having won it with great labour.
When the Cnidians and Rhodians made an attempt about 175 to establish themselves at Lilybaeum, the centre of the Phoenician settlements in Sicily, they were expelled by the natives the Elymi of Segeste in concert with the Phoenicians.
Marcus Brutus and the others were immediately executed; but Pompeius had enjoined that the consul Carbo should be brought before himself at Lilybaeum in order that, unmindful of the protection accorded to him in a season of peril by that very man, he might personally hand him over to the executioner . Africa
Thus in 534, when she received an ambassador in Ravenna from Justinian who demanded of her the surrender of Lilybaeum, a barren rock in Sicily which Theodoric had assigned to Thrasamund on his marriage with his sister Amalafrida, in public she protested vigorously against the attempt of the emperor to pick a quarrel with "an orphaned king" too young to defend himself; but in private she assured the imperial ambassador of her readiness "to transfer to the emperor the whole of Italy."
His practice as an advocate suffered no interruption, except that his Quaestorship involved his spending a year in Sicily. The Praetor who was appointed to the government of that province had under him two quaestors, who were a kind of comptrollers of the exchequer; and Cicero was appointed to the western district, having his headquarters at Lilybaeum.
The consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus, to whom fell the honour of conducting this fleet to the Sicilian seas, met there with almost no opposition: the two or three Carthaginian vessels, with which Hamilcar had made his corsair expeditions, disappeared before the superior force, and almost without resistance the Romans occupied the harbours of Lilybaeum and Drepana, the siege of which was now undertaken with energy by water and by land.
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