shifted to naval battles around Sicily and Africa. For the Romans, naval warfare was a relatively unexplored concept. Before the First Punic War in 264 BC there was no Roman navy to speak of, as all previous Roman wars had been fought on land in Italy. The new war in Sicily against Carthage, a great naval power, forced Rome to quickly build a fleet and train sailors. Rome took to naval warfare "like a brick to water" and the first few naval battles of the First Punic War such as the Battle of the Lipari Islands were catastrophic disasters for Rome, as might fairly be expected from a city that had no real prior experience of naval warfare. However, after training more sailors and inventing a grappling engine known as a Corvus, a Roman naval force under C. Duillius was able to roundly defeat a Carthaginian fleet at the Battle of Mylae. In just four years, a state without any real naval experience had managed to better a major regional maritime power in battle. Further naval victories followed at the Battle of Tyndaris and the Battle of Cape Ecnomus. After having won control of the seas, a Roman force landed on the African coast under Marcus Regulus, who was at first victorious, winning the Battle of Adys and forcing Carthage to sue for peace. However, the terms of peace that Rome proposed were so heavy that negotiations failed, and in response, the Carthaginians hired Xanthippus of Carthage, a mercenary from the martial Greek city-state of Sparta, to reorganise and lead their army. Xanthippus managed to cut off the Roman army from its base by re-establishing Carthaginian naval supremacy and then defeated and captured Regulus at the Battle of Tunis. Despite being defeated on African soil, the Romans with their newfound naval abilities, roundly beat the Carthaginians in naval battle again – largely through the tactical innovations of the Roman fleet – at the Battle of the Aegates Islands. Carthage was left without a fleet or sufficient coin to raise a new one. For a maritime power, the loss of their access to the Mediterranean stung financially and psychologically, and the Carthaginians again sued for peace, during which negotiations, Rome battled the Ligures tribe in the Ligurian War and the Insubres in the Gallic War. Continuing distrust led to the renewal of hostilities in the Second Punic War when Hannibal, a