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252 into the sea, irreverently remarking, " At any rate, they shall drink."

Imagination was free to depict what further evils the offended gods might inflict upon the Roman state.

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 up another costly