Their loss by sea was enormous, amounting to nearly the whole of their
ships of war and transports, the former consisting of 2000 and the latter
of 3000.
Such is a short sketch of the island of Sicily, so far as its commercial
facilities and its history are concerned previously to its conquest by the
Romans. It was peculiarly valuable to them on account of its extreme
fertility in corn; and by this circumstance it seems to have been
distinguished in very early times; for there can be no doubt that by its
being represented by the poets as the favourite residence of the goddess
Ceres, the fertility of the island in corn, as well as its knowledge of
agriculture, were intended to be represented. When Gelon offered to unite
with the Greeks in their war with Xerxes, one of his proposals was that he
would furnish the whole Greek army with corn, during all the time of
hostilities, if they would appoint him commander of their forces. In the
latter period of the Roman republic, it became their principal dependence
for a regular supply of corn.
Sardinia seems to have been as little explored by and known to the
ancients, as it is to the moderns. The treaty between the Carthaginians and
Romans, the year after the expulsion of the Tarquins, proves that the
former nation possessed it at that time. Calaris, the present Cagliari, was
the principal town in it.
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