The Battle of the Lipari Islands or Lipara (Lipara harbour, 260 BC) was the first encounter between the fleets of Carthage and the Roman Republic, fought during the First Punic War. The result of the ambush, more than a battle itself, was a Carthaginian victory.

After the land successes in Sicily showed by the conquest of Agrigentum, the Romans felt confidant to build and equip a fleet that allowed them control of the Mediterranean Sea. The Republic ordered, built and drilled the crew of a fleet of about 150 quinqueremes and triremes in a record two months. The patrician Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio (the year's senior consul) is given the command of the first 17 ships produced and heads off to Messana to prepare the fleet's arrival and the crossing to Sicily.

While Scipio was on the strait, he received a piece of information that assured that the garrison of Lipara was willing to defect to the Roman side. What happened next is usually described as a treacherous act of the Carthaginians, but the sources do not give much detail and are usually pro-Roman. Fact is that the consul did not resist the temptation of conquering an important city without a fight and sailed to Lipara. As the Romans entered the harbour with their brand new ships, a part of the Carthaginian fleet, commanded by Hannibal Gisco (the general defeated in Agrigentum) and Boodes, was waiting to ambush. Boodes lead about 20 ships to block the Romans inside the harbour. Scipio and his men hardly put any resistance. The inexperienced crews panicked and fled and the consul himself was captured. His ingenuity earned him the pejorative cognomen Asina, which means donkey in Latin.

The Lipara incident did not put an end to the First Punic War, or Scipio Asina's career. Shortly afterwards, the junior consul Gaius Duilius in front of the rest of the fleet, avenged the humiliation by wining the battle of Mylae.

References

• The Fall of Carthage, by Adrian Goldsworthy, Cassel