[2][3] His works include a now-lost manual on military tactics,[4] but he is known today for The Histories, written sometime after 146 BC, or about a century after the Battle of the Aegates.

[6][7] Carthaginian written records were destroyed along with their capital, Carthage, in 146 BC and so Polybius's account of the First Punic War is based on several, now-lost, Greek and Latin sources.

[15] Other, later, histories of the war exist, but in fragmentary or summary form,[3][16] and they usually cover military operations on land in more detail than those at sea.

[21] Carthage was a well-established maritime power in the western Mediterranean; mainland Italy south of the River Arno had recently been unified under Roman control.

[24] Vessels were built as cataphract, or "protected", ships, with a closed hull and a full deck able to carry marines and catapults.

[37][38] Getting the oarsmen to row as a unit, let alone to execute more complex battle manoeuvres, required long and arduous training.

All warships were equipped with a ram, a triple set of 60-centimetre-wide (2 ft) bronze blades weighing up to 270 kilograms (600 lb) positioned at the waterline.

Rams were made individually by the lost-wax method so as to fit immovably to a galley's prow, and secured with bronze spikes.

[54] The Carthaginians were engaging in their traditional policy of waiting for their opponents to wear themselves out, in the expectation of then regaining some or all of their possessions and negotiating a mutually satisfactory peace treaty.

Rome had gained control of most of Sicily[55] and the Carthaginians retained only two cities on the island: Lilybaeum and Drepana; these were well-fortified and situated on the west coast, where they could be supplied and reinforced without the Romans being able to use their superior army to interfere.

[52][53][59] Early in the blockade of Lilybaeum and Drepana, 50 Carthaginian quinqueremes gathered off the Aegates Islands, which lie 15–40 kilometres (9.3–24.9 mi) to the west of Sicily.

These were light and manoeuvrable quinqueremes with highly trained crews and pilots who knew the shoals and currents of the difficult waters.

Chief among the blockade runners was a galley captained by Hannibal the Rhodian, who taunted the Romans with the superiority of his vessel and crew.

[51] Rome was also close to bankruptcy and the number of adult male citizens, who provided the manpower for the navy and the legions, had declined by 17 per cent since the start of the war.

[66] In late 243 BC, realizing they would not capture Drepana and Lilybaeum unless they could extend their blockade to the sea, the Roman Senate decided to build a new fleet.

[67] With the state's coffers exhausted, the Senate approached Rome's wealthiest citizens for loans to finance the construction of one ship each, repayable from the reparations to be imposed on Carthage once the war was won, and to donate slaves as oarsmen.

[70][71][72] The new Roman fleet was completed in 242 BC and the consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus, assisted by the praetor Quintus Valerius Falto, led it to Sicily.

Arriving with the 200 quinqueremes and 700 transports laden with supplies and legionary reinforcements, Catulus seized the harbour of Drepana and the anchorages off Lilybaeum uncontested, as there were no Carthaginian ships to counter the Roman fleet.

Catulus and Falto kept a strong squadron off each city whenever the weather permitted, to avoid any possibility of Carthaginian supplies getting past them, and to drill the crews in manoeuvres and exercises.

[72][73] Impressed by the energy of Catulus and Falto, the Senate extended their terms of office beyond the normal one year, and they thus became proconsul and propraetor respectively.

[74][75] The garrisons of Lilybaeum and Drepana – and Hamilcar's army at Eryx – held fast, but without supplies from Carthage they could not hold out indefinitely.

Carthage began to ready a fleet, fit out transports, gather supplies and train crews and marines to meet the Roman challenge.

This is possibly the general who had lost the Battles of Agrigentum and Ecnomus; although the historian John Lazenby considers it likely that he had been executed for his earlier failures.

[78][83] In the ensuing battle the Romans enjoyed far greater mobility, since their vessels were carrying only the bare necessities, while the Carthaginians were burdened with the equipment necessary for sustained travel and provisions for the Sicilian garrisons.

The Carthaginian crews had also been hurriedly levied and so were inexperienced, and their ships were short of marines, as it had been intended that these would be supplemented from Hamilcar's soldiers.

The rest of the Carthaginian fleet was saved only by an abrupt change in the direction of the wind, allowing them to flee; as the Romans had left their masts, sails and rigging ashore, they were unable to pursue.

[89] To celebrate the victory, Catulus built a temple to Juturna in the Campus Martius, in the area of Rome currently known as the Largo di Torre Argentina.

The Romans had built over 1,000 galleys during the war; and this experience of building, manning, training, supplying and maintaining such numbers of ships laid the foundation for Rome's maritime dominance for 600 years.

[103] Six of the helmets were of the Montefortino type typically used by the legions, three with one or both bronze cheek pieces still attached; the seventh, badly corroded, was of a different design and may be Carthaginian.

[106] Based on the dimensions of the recovered rams, the archaeologists who have studied them believe that they all came from triremes, contrary to Polybius's account of all of the warships involved being quinqueremes.