Duilius meets Hannibal Gisco off northern Mylae…

Crocodilopolis (or Krokodilopolis, or Ptolemais Euergetis, or Arsinoe, or Krialon, or Taaud) is an ancient city in the Heptanomis, Egypt, the capital of Arsinoites nome, on the western bank of the Nile, between the river and Lake Moeris, southwest of Memphis, in latitude 29° N.

Its native Ancient Egyptian name is Shedyet.

The region in which Crocodilopolis stands—the modern Fayyum—is the most fertile in Egypt.

Besides the usual cereals and vegetables of the Nile valley, it abounds in dates, figs, roses, and its vineyards and gardens rival those in the vicinity of Alexandria.

Here, too, the olive is cultivated.

The city in the Pharaonic era was the most significant center for the cult of Sobek, the crocodile-god.

The Greeks, in consequence, named it Crocodilopolis, "Crocodile City", from the particular reverence paid by its inhabitants to crocodiles.

The city worships a sacred crocodile, named Petsuchos, that is embellished with gold and gems.

The crocodile lives in a special temple, with sand, a pond and food.

When the Petsuchos dies, it is replaced by another.

After the city passes into the hands of the Ptolemies, the city is renamed Ptolemais Euergetis.

The former Queen of Thrace, now Queen Arsinoe II of Egypt, has become highly influential in the Egyptian government; after her death in 260, Ptolemy names a province—Arsinoitis—for his sister-consort, and renames the city Arsinoe.

Ptolemy continues to refer to her on official documents, as well as supporting her coinage and cult.

He also establishes her worship as a goddess, a clever move, because by doing this he establishes also his own worship as a god.

Demetrius, Gonatus' fifteen-year-old son, has meanwhile gained distinction by defeating and dethroning Alexander of Epirus, thus saving Macedon.

The defeat at Agrigentum apparently does not bar Gisco from continuing leadership.

In the following year, 260 BCE, Gisco returns as the admiral in charge of the Carthaginian fleet in the Straits of Messina.

The Romans are about to launch their first-ever navy, and Carthage had determined that this innovation should be thwarted.

Gisco defeats and captures the Roman consul Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Asina in the Battle of the Lipari Islands, which earns Scipio the nickname Asina ("Donkey").

However, this victory is robbed of practical meaning with the bulk of the Roman fleet continuing to maneuver in the surrounding waters.

Later in 260 BCE, Gisco is to engage this fleet and to be the first Punic general to encounter the Roman corvus boarding device with its deadly effect.

The Roman military is a land-based army while Carthage is primarily a naval power.

In order to compensate for the lack of experience, and to make use of standard land military tactics on sea, the Romans equip their new ships with this special boarding device.

This boarding-bridge allows the Roman navy to circumvent some of Carthage's naval skills by using their marines to board Carthaginian ships and fight in hand to hand combat.

Instead of maneuvering to ram, which is the standard naval tactic at this time, corvus-equipped ships can maneuver alongside the enemy vessel, deploy the bridge which attach to the enemy ship through spikes on the end of the bridge, and send legionaries across as boarding parties.

Gaius Duilius, a novus homo, meaning not belonging to a traditional family of Roman aristocrats, has managed, nevertheless, to be elected consul for the year of 260 BCE, at the outbreak of the Punic war.

As junior partner of the patrician Scipio Duilius had been given the command of the rear fleet, not expected to see much action.

However, the naivety of Scipio, which led to his capture in the Lipari encounter, has left Duilius as senior commander.

…Duilius sails to Sicily to retrieve control of the troops.

Here he saves the city of Segesta, which has been under siege from the Carthaginian infantry commander Hamilcar.

Modern historians have wondered at Duilius’ decision not to immediately follow up with another naval attack, but Hannibal’s remaining eighty ships are probably still too strong for Rome to conquer.

The Roman advance meanwhile continues westward from Agrigentum in 260 BCE to relieve the besieged city of Macella, which had sided with Rome and was attacked by the Carthaginians for doing so.

The Roman ground forces, their northern sea flank secured by their naval victory at Battle of Mylae, advance toward Thermae, where they are defeated by the Carthaginians under Hamilcar (a popular Carthaginian name, not to be confused with Hannibal Barca's father, with the same name) in 260 BCE.

Ptolemy II extends Alexandria, which is rapidly becoming the literary and scientific center of the Hellenistic world, and wins renown as a great patron of the arts and sciences.

Zenon, the confidential business manager of Philadelphus' chief minister, is in 259 sent to Palestine and Syria, where his master has commercial interests.

His letters speak particularly of a trade in slaves, especially of young girls for prostitution, in whom there appears to have been a brisk trade, with export to Egypt.

Zenon's records also testify to a considerable trade in cereals, oil and wine.

Egypt's victories in the First Syrian War have solidified the kingdom's position as the undisputed naval power of the eastern Mediterranean; Ptolemy’s fleet (one hundred and twelve ships) bears the most powerful naval siege units of all time, guaranteeing the king access to the coastal cities of his empire.

The Ptolemaic sphere of power extends over the Cyclades to Samothrace, and the harbors and coast towns of Cilicia Trachea, Pamphylia, Lycia and Caria.

Antiochus II Theos, king of the Seleukid realms, launches the Second Syrian War against Ptolemy to avenge his father's losses in Phoenicia and Anatolia.

A Jewish diaspora grows, as cities like Alexandria, the Ptolemid capital, begin to acquire a substantial Jewish population.

Hellenistic Jews at Alexandria produce the Septuagint, the first version of the Hebrew Bible in Greek, the lingua franca throughout the region. (The name Septuagint, from the Latin septuaginta, “seventy”, is a later derivation from the legend that there were seventy-two translators, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, who worked in separate cells, translating the whole, and ultimately all their versions were identical. There are in fact large differences in style and usage between the Septuagint's translation of the Torah and its translations of the later books in the Old Testament. A tradition that translators were sent to Alexandria by Eleazar, the chief priest at Jerusalem, at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, a patron of literature, first appeared in the Letter of Aristeas, an unreliable source.)

Analysis of the language has established that the Torah, or Pentateuch, was translated near the middle of the third century BCE and that the rest of the Old Testament was translated in the second century BCE.

Gonatus, almost immediately after the war, joins forces with the Seleucid king Antiochus II Theos, who had succeeded his father, Antiochus I, in 260 BCE, against their common enemy Ptolemy II Philadelphus, ruler of Hellenistic Egypt.