sentences:  Again, in 256 BC, it was at Heraclea that the Carthaginian fleet of 350 ships was posted to prevent the passage of the Roman fleet to Africa and where it sustained a great defeat by the Roman consuls Regulus and Manlius.It appears at this time to have been one of the principal naval stations of the Carthaginians in Sicily and in 249 BC their admiral, Carthalo, took his post there to watch for the Roman fleet which was approaching to the relief of Lilybaeum.At the close of the war Heraclea passed, with the rest of Sicily, under the Roman dominion; but in the Second Punic War it again fell into the hands of the Carthaginians, and was one of the last places that still held out against Marcellus, even after the fall of Syracuse.