Manius Valerius Maximus Corvinus Messalla was Roman

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

 consul

Consul

Consul was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. The title was also used in other city states and also revived in modern states, notably in the First French Republic...

 in 263 BC

263 BC

Year 263 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Mesella and Crassus...

. He was the son of the distinguished Roman tribune

Tribune

Tribune was a title shared by elected officials in the Roman Republic. Tribunes had the power to convene the Plebeian Council and to act as its president, which also gave them the right to propose legislation before it. They were sacrosanct, in the sense that any assault on their person was...

 Marcus Valerius Corvus

Marcus Valerius Corvus

Marcus Valerius Corvus was a Roman general of the 4th century BC, characterized as a farmer who lived to be one hundred.-Biography:...

. In 263BC, with his colleague Manius Otacilius (or Octaciius) Crassus, he gained a brilliant victory over the Carthaginians

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

 and Syracusans

Syracuse, Italy

Syracuse is a historic city in Sicily, the capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is notable for its rich Greek history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture, and as the birthplace of the preeminent mathematician and engineer Archimedes. This 2,700-year-old city played a key role in...

: more than sixty of the Sicilian

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

 towns acknowledged the supremacy of Rome, and the consuls concluded a peace treaty with Hiero

Hiero II of Syracuse

Hieron II , king of Syracuse from 270 to 215 BC, was the illegitimate son of a Syracusan noble, Hierocles, who claimed descent from Gelon. He was a former general of Pyrrhus of Epirus and an important figure of the First Punic War....

, which lasted the remainder of his long life. This acknowledgment proved equally advantageous to both Syracuse and Rome. He alone was awarded the triumph

Roman triumph

The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...

 De Paeneis et Rege Siculorum Hierone.

His relief of Messana obtained him the cognomen

Cognomen

The cognomen nōmen "name") was the third name of a citizen of Ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. The cognomen started as a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary. Hereditary cognomina were used to augment the second name in order to identify a particular branch within...

 Messalla, which remained in the family for nearly 800 years. To commemorate his Sicilian victory, he arranged for it to be pictorially represented on the wall of the Curia Hostilia, the first example of an historical fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

 at Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. He is also said to have brought the first sundial

Sundial

A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. The style is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, often a thin rod or a...

 from Catana to Rome, where it was set up on a column in the forum

Roman Forum

The Roman Forum is a rectangular forum surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum...

.

Messalla was censor in 252 BC

252 BC

Year 252 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Cotta and Geminus...

, when he degraded 400 equites to aerarians for neglect of duty in Sicily.