t ruthlessness in this story. They were not supplied
with sufficient wealth to pay them what they had originally promised,
and dismissed them with the understanding that they would pay them
their wages before very long. To the men who escorted the allies,
however, they issued orders to put them ashore on a desert island and
quietly sail away. As to Xanthippus, one story is that they drowned
him, attacking him in boats after his boat had departed: the other is
that they gave him an old ship which was in no wise seaworthy but had
been newly covered over with pitch outside, that it might sink quite
of itself; and that he, aware of the fact, got aboard a different
ship and so was saved. Their reason for doing this was to avoid
seeming to have been preserved by his ability; for they thought that
once he had perished the renown of his deeds would also perish.

VIII, 14.--The people of Rome were grieved at the turn of events and
more especially because they were looking for the Carthaginians to
sail against Rome itself. For this reason they carefully guarded Italy
and hastily sent to the Romans in Sicily and Libya the consuls Marcus
AEmilius and Fulvius Paetinus.[21] They after sailing to Sicily and
garrisoning the positions there started for Libya, but were overtaken
by a storm and carried to Cossura. They ravaged the island and put it
in charge of a garrison, then sailed onward again. Meanwhile a fierce
naval battle with the Carthaginians had taken place. The latter were
struggling to eject the Romans entirely from their native land, and
the Romans to save the remnants of their soldiers who had been left in
hostile territory. In the midst of a close battle the Romans in Aspis
suddenly attacked the Carthaginians in ships from the rear, and by
getting them between two forces overcame them. Later the Romans also
won an infantry engagement and took many prisoners, whose lives they
saved because of Regulus and those captured with him. They made
several raids and then sailed to Sicily. After encountering a storm,
however, and losing many of their number, they sailed for home with
the ships that remained.

[Footnote 21: Zonaras spells _Plaetinus_.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 254 (_a.u._ 500)] The Carthaginians took Cossura and
crossed over to Sicily; and had they not learned that Collatinus[22]
and Gnaeus Cornelius were approaching with a large fleet, they would
have subjugated the whole of it. The Romans had quickly fitted out a
first-cl