and by the mid-3rd century BC it had come to dominate southern Iberia, much of the coastal regions of North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, and the western half of Sicily in a military and commercial empire. Carthage was the leading maritime power in the Western Mediterranean with its navy dominating both militarily and commercially, while Rome had recently unified mainland Italy south of the Arno. The First Punic War broke out between Carthage and Rome in 264 BC and by 260 BC the war had grown into a struggle in which the Romans wanted to at least control the whole of Sicily. 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. The Romans were essentially a land-based power and had gained control of much of Sicily using their army. The war there had reached a stalemate, as the Carthaginians focused on defending their well-fortified towns and cities; these were mostly on the coast and so could be supplied and reinforced by sea without the Romans being able to use their superior army to interfere. The focus of the war shifted to the sea, where the Romans had little experience; in 260 BC Romans set out to construct a fleet using a shipwrecked Carthaginian quinquereme as a blueprint for their own ships. Invasion of Africa Naval victories at Mylae in 260BC and Sulci in 258BC, and their frustration at the continuing stalemate in Sicily, led the Romans to focus on a sea-based strategy and to develop a plan to invade the Carthaginian heartland in North Africa and threaten its capital, Carthage. Both sides were determined to establish naval supremacy and invested large amounts of money and manpower in increasing and maintaining the size of their navies. Battle of Ecnomus The Roman fleet of 330 warships plus an unknown number of transport ships sailed from Ostia, the port of Rome, in early 256 BC, commanded by the consuls for the year, Marcus Atilius Regulus and Lucius Manlius Vulso Longus. They embarked approximately 26,000 picked legionaries from the Roman forces on Sicily. The Carthaginians were aware of the Romans' intentions and mustered all available warships, 350, under Hanno and Hamilcar, off the south coast of Sicily to intercept them. The combined total of about