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The great fleet which was to avenge him was successful at Clypea, but was destroyed on its return by a storm; and its successor met the same fate at Cape Palinuro. In the year 249 B.C. the Romans were defeated at Drepanum, and lost twenty-eight thousand men and more than one hundred vessels. Another fleet, on its way to besiege Lilybæum, in the same year, was lost off Cape Pactyrus.
This latter proposal the Sibyl forbade as impious, saying that the decrees of the gods could not be thus altered. But she consoled Palinurus by predicting that the people of Velia should be punished by plagues from heaven until they erected a tomb to his memory, and that the place should forever bear his name. The modern name of the place is Capo di Palinuro Cape of Palinurus.
Moreover there is no light on Licosa Point, and many a good ship has gone to pieces there in dark winter nights when the surf is rolling in. If the wind holds you may run on to Palinuro in a long day before the evening calm comes on, and the water turns oily and full of pink and green and violet streaks, and the sun settles down in the north-west.
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