The Romans tried it first, in 250 BC, to transport 100 elephants captured in battle from Palermo, on the island of Sicily, to Rome. According to the Greek historian Strabo, they used empty barrels and wooden planks to build a temporary bridge across the Strait of Messina, a 3.2-kilometer-wide waterway buffeted by strong currents and winds. The elephants made it to Rome, but history doesn’t record if they did so by bridge.
More than two millennia later, the idea of a bridge across the strait might be closer than ever to realization. After decades of political and technical debate, the Italian government may
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