DUILIUS (or DUELLIUS), GAIUS, Roman general during the first Carthaginian War. In 260 B.C., when consul in command of the land forces in Sicily, he was appointed to supersede his colleague Cn. Cornelius Scipio Asina, as commander of the fleet. Recognizing that for the unskilled Romans the only chance of victory lay in fighting under conditions as similar as possible to those of a land engagement, he invented grappling irons (corvi) and boarding bridges, and gained a brilliant victory over the Carthaginian fleet off Mylae on the north coast of Sicily. A memorial column (columna rostrata), adorned with the beaks of the captured ships, was set up in honour of his victory.
See Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, i. No. 195 ; Polybius i. 22 ; Diod. Sic. xvii. 44 ; Frontinus, Strat. ii. 3 ; Florus ii. 2 ; Cicero, De senectute 13; Silius Italicus vi. 667 ; and PUNIC WARS.