The gloomiest forebodings might have found justification in subsequent
events. The other consul just now met with a great disaster. He was
proceeding along the southern coast of Sicily with a squadron of eight
hundred merchantmen and over one hundred war galleys, the former loaded
with grain for the Roman army on the island. A severe storm arising, the
squadron was beaten to pieces upon the rocks. Not a single ship escaped.
The coast for miles was strewn with broken planks, and with bodies, and
heaped with vast windrows of grain cast up by the waves.

CLOSE OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.--The war had now lasted for fifteen years.
Four Roman fleets had been destroyed, three of which had been sunk or
broken to pieces by storms. Of the fourteen hundred vessels which had been
lost, seven hundred were war galleys,--all large and costly quinqueremes,
that is, vessels with five banks of oars. Only one hundred of these had
fallen into the hands of the enemy; the remainder were a sacrifice to the
malign and hostile power of the waves. Such successive blows from an
invisible hand were enough to blanch the faces even of the sturdy Romans.
Neptune manifestly denied to the "Children of Mars" the realm of the sea.

It was impossible for the six years following the last disaster to infuse
any spirit into the struggle. In 247 B.C., Hamilcar Barcas, the father of
the great Hannibal, assumed the command of the Carthaginian forces, and
for several years conducted the war with great ability on the island of
Sicily, even making Rome tremble for the safety of her Italian
possessions.

Once more the Romans determined to commit their cause to the element that
had been so unfriendly to them. A fleet of two hundred vessels was built
and equipped, but entirely by private subscription; for the Senate feared
that public sentiment would not sustain them in levying a tax for fitting