Tyrrhenians, who also had settlements in Sardinia, against the Phocæan intruders. Ancient writers further mention an immigration of Corsicans into Sardinia, where they are said to have founded twelve cities. For a considerable period we now hear nothing more about the fortunes of Corsica, from which the Etruscans continued to draw supplies of honey, wax, timber for ship-building, and slaves. Their power gradually sank, and they gave way to the Carthaginians, who seem to have put themselves in complete possession of both islands--that is, of their emporiums and havens--for the tribes of the interior had yielded to no foe. During the Punic Wars, the conquering Romans deprived the Carthaginians in their turn of both islands. Corsica is at first not named, either in the Punic treaty of the time of Tarquinius, or in the conditions of peace at the close of the first Punic War. Sardinia had been ceded to the Romans; the vicinity of Corsica could not but induce them to make themselves masters of that island also; both, lying in the centre of a sea which washed the shores of Spain, Gaul, Italy, and Africa, afforded the greatest facilities for establishing stations directed towards the coasts of all the countries which Rome at that time was preparing to subdue. We are informed, that in the year 260 before the birth of Christ, the Consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio crossed over to Corsica, and destroyed the city of Aleria, and that he conquered at once the Corsicans, Sardinians, and the Carthaginian Hanno. The mutilated inscription on the tomb of Scipio has the words--HEC CEPIT CORSICA ALERIAQUE VRBE. But the subjugation of the wild Corsicans was no easy matter. They made a resistance as heroic as that of the Samnites. We even find that the Romans suffered a number of defeats, and that the Corsicans several times rebelled. In the year 240, M. Claudius led an army against the Corsicans. Defeated, and in a situation of imminent danger, he offered them favourable conditions. They accepted them, but the Senate refused to confirm the treaty. It ordered the Consul, C. Licinius Varus, to chastise the Corsicans, delivering Claudius at the same time into their hands, that they might do with him as they chose. This was frequently the policy of the Romans, when they wished to quiet their religious scruples about an oath. The Corsicans did as the Spaniards and Samnites had done in similar instances. They would not receive the innocent general, and sent him back unharmed. On his return to Rome, he was strangled, and thrown upon the Gemonian stairs.