260 BC
year
Year 260 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Asina and Duilius (or, less frequently, year 494 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 260 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Events
By place
Sicily
The Roman advance continues westward from Agrigentum with their forces relieving the besieged cities of Segesta and Macella. These cities have sided with the Roman cause, and have come under Carthaginian attack for doing so.
Hannibal Gisco returns to fight in Sicily as the admiral in charge of the Carthaginian fleet in the Strait of Messina. With the Romans about to launch their first ever navy, Carthage is determined that this innovation be thwarted. Gisco defeats part of the Roman fleet and captures the Roman consul Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Asina in an encounter near Lipari; the consul's nickname Asina (which means donkey) is earned in this encounter. However, this Carthaginian victory is of limited practical value as the bulk of the Roman fleet continues to manoeuvre in the surrounding waters.
Confident in Carthage's superiority at sea, Hannibal Gisco deploys his ships for the Battle of Mylae in the traditional long line arrangement.
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This entry incorporates text from “260 BC” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.