The Carthaginians commanded the sea with a powerful fleet, while the Romans had no ships of war worthy of the name. But the Consul App. Claudius, having contrived to elude the Carthaginian squadron, landed near the town of Messana, and defeated in succession the forces of Syracuse and Carthage. In the following year (263) the Romans followed up their success against Hiero. The two Consuls advanced to the walls of Syracuse, ravaging the territory of the city and capturing many of its dependent towns. The king became alarmed at the success of the Romans; and thinking that they would prove more powerful than the Carthaginians, he concluded a peace with Rome. From this time till his death, a period of nearly fifty years, Hiero remained the firm and steadfast ally of the Romans. The Romans, now freed from the hostility of Syracuse, laid siege to Agrigentum, the second of the Greek cities in Sicily, which had espoused the cause of the Carthaginians at the commencement of the war. The siege lasted seven months, and numbers perished on both sides. But at length the Romans gained a decisive victory over the Carthaginian army which had been sent to raise the siege, and obtained possession of the town (B.C. 262). The first three years of the war had already made the Romans masters of the greater part of Sicily. But the coasts of Italy were exposed to the ravages of the Carthaginian fleet, and the Romans saw that they could not hope to bring the war to a successful termination so long as Carthage was mistress of the sea. They had only a small number of triremes, galleys with three banks of oars, and were quite unable to cope with the quinqueremes, or large vessels with five banks of oars, of which the Carthaginian navy consisted. The Senate, with characteristic energy, determined to build a fleet of these larger vessels. A Carthaginian quinquereme, which had been wrecked upon the coast of Italy, served as a model; and in the short space of sixty days from the time the trees were felled, 130 ships were launched. While the ships were building, the rowers were trained on scaffolds placed upon the land like benches of ships at sea. We can not but feel astonished at the daring of the Romans, who, with ships thus hastily and clumsily built, and with crews imperfectly trained, sailed to attack the navy of the first maritime state in the world. This was in the fifth year of the war (B.C. 260). One of the Consuls, Cn. Cornelius, first put to sea with only 17 ships, but was surprised near Lipara, and taken prisoner with the whole of his squadron. His colleague, C. Duilius, now took the command of the rest of the fleet. He saw that the only means of conquering the Carthaginians by sea was to deprive them of all the advantages of manoeuvring, and to take their ships by boarding. For this purpose, every ship was provided with a boarding-bridge 36 feet in length, which was pulled up by a rope and fastened to a mast in the fore part of the ship.