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Updated: August 11, 2024
Twenty quinqueremes, with a thousand armed men, having been sent by the Carthaginians to lay waste the coast of Italy, nine reached the Liparae, eight the island of Vulcan, and three the tide drove into the strait.
But when the endeavour had to be made in earnest, his courage failed to encounter the dreaded quinqueremes at sea; he broke the promise which he had given to his ally Hannibal to attempt a landing, and with the view of still doing something he resolved to make an attack on his own share of the spoil, the Roman possessions in Epirus . Nothing would have come of this even at the best; but the Romans, who well knew that offensive was preferable to defensive protection, were by no means content to remain as Philip may have hoped spectators of the attack from the opposite shore.
The new fleet, which was constructed in two months, consisted of 100 quinqueremes and 30 triremes. Seventeen of these while on a trial cruise were blockaded in the harbor of Messina by twenty Carthaginian ships, and the Roman commander was obliged to surrender after his crews had landed and escaped. The next encounter was a different story.
At the same time, two fleets set sail from Asia; one of twenty-four quinqueremes, under king Attalus; the other belonging to the Rhodians, consisting of twenty decked ships, and commanded by Agesimbrotus. These fleets, joining near the island of Andros, sailed for Euboea, which was separated from them only by a narrow strait.
Thirteen quinqueremes of the enemy on their voyage to Lemnos, under Isidorus, were assailed and sunk off the Achaean harbour in the waters between the Trojan coast and the island of Tenedos.
They built and equipped one, which consisted of two hundred and twenty ships of the largest class, that is, quinqueremes, besides a number of smaller and lighter vessels for services requiring speed. There were vessels in use in those times larger than the quinqueremes. Mention is occasionally made of those which had six and even seven banks of oars.
As to offensive measures, a squadron of 20 quinqueremes with 1000 soldiers on board was to sail from Carthage for the west coast of Italy and to pillage it, and a second of 25 sail was, if possible, to re-establish itself at Lilybaeum; Hannibal believed that he might count upon the government making this moderate amount of exertion.
His troops were also Roman legionaries, experienced in war, but his fleet was considerably less in numbers and the individual ships much smaller than the quinqueremes and octiremes of Antony. The ships of Octavius were mostly biremes and triremes.
"That was the king," they said, "to whose dignity the two most powerful nations in the world the Roman and the Carthaginian, had paid so much deference, that their own general, Scipio, leaving his province of Spain and his army, sailed into Africa with only two quinqueremes to solicit his friendship; while Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian general, not only visited him in his dominions, but gave him his daughter in marriage.
A few days before the taking of Syracuse, Titus Otacilius passed over from Lilybaeum to Utica with eighty quinqueremes, and entering the harbour before it was light, took some transports laden with corn; then landing, he laid waste a considerable portion of the country around Utica, and brought back to his ships booty of every description.
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