Rome finances a final blockade fleet

Rome concluded that land sieges alone could not take the remaining Carthaginian strongholds at Drepana and Lilybaeum. With the treasury exhausted, the Senate asked wealthy citizens to finance one ship apiece through loans expected to be repaid from postwar reparations. Recruitment drew on poorer Romans and enslaved people supplied by wealthy citizens. The fleet then had roughly two years to feed, train, and integrate its crews, making their exact legal status aboard ship more complicated than a simple slave-labour model suggests. The result was a purpose-built force prepared to extend the blockade across the sea approaches.