[288] The first Roman ships were probably little better than the boats used on the Tiber, called from their thick coarse planks _Naves Caudicariæ_—whence Appius Claudius, A.U.C. 489, B.C. 264, who first induced his people to fit out a fleet, obtained the name of Caudex (Senec. de Brev. Vit. 13. Varro de Vit. Rom. 11). According to Polybius a stranded Carthaginian ship was their first good model (i. 20, 21), though this is hard to reconcile with Livy, ix. 30, 38. Possibly their first ship of war was copied from one of Antium (Livy, viii. 14). The treaties with Carthage long before the Punic wars prove that the Romans had a fleet even then—though, probably, of a very inferior kind. [289] Instances occur in which fleets were fitted out with great rapidity—green wood being necessarily used. Thus Scipio fitted out a large fleet within forty-five days after the timber had been felled (Liv. xxxiii. 45), and Julius Cæsar in thirty days, at Arles, against the people of Marseilles (Cæs. B. Civ. i. 34). [290] 1. At the commencement of the first Punic war a fleet was hastily built and, under the command of C. Duilius, destroyed that of the Carthaginians, B.C. 260. 2. A second fleet was prepared, and a great victory was won over the Carthaginians near Agrigentum, B.C. 256. 3. A third fleet was fitted out in B.C. 250, and nearly destroyed off Drepana, in the next year. 4. About the same time a fourth fleet, conveying stores to the army besieging Lilybæum, was entirely destroyed, together with the store ships, by a hurricane off Camarina. 5. A fifth fleet was built, B.C. 241, to relieve Lilybæum, which had now been besieged for eight years. This fleet, under C. Lutatius Catulus, defeated the Carthaginians, and put an end to the first Punic war in B.C. 241. During the second and third Punic wars no fleets were employed, except as transports. [291] Carthage fell in B.C. 146, Corinth in B.C. 141. [292] Details of Pompey’s triumph for this cause are given in Pliny (vii. 98.) [293] Polybius, iii. 22. [294] Livy, ii. 27. [295] “As long as the corn-fleets arrived duly from Sicily and Africa, the populace cared little whether the victory was gained by Octavian or his generals.”—Liddell’s “Hist. of Rome,” p. 628. [296] Livy, xxi. 63. [297] Cicer. De Offic. i. c. 151. [298] Gibbon, c. 2. [299] Pliny, H. N. xii. 84. [300] Gibbon, c. 2. [301] Gibbon, vol. i. c. 6. [302] Pliny, vi. 101; xii. 84. [303] Gibbon, c. 6. [304] Dion. lv. and lvi. [305] _Portoria_ existed from early times; were abolished by Metellus Nepos, A.U.C. 694, and were restored by Augustus. The senate under Nero declared that such taxes were absolutely necessary.—Tacit. Ann. xiii. 50. Cicero, in Pison. c. 36. [306] Tacitus, b. ii. c. 87. [307] Gibbon, c. vi., has relied on a passage in Dion., lxxvii., which the best commentators doubt. The edict seems to have been made by M. Antoninus, and was perhaps fathered on Caracalla from his general unpopularity.