Marcellinus was supposed to have a command of some ten thousand to twenty thousand troops.

Marcellinus had never sailed for Africa, perhaps due to Ricimer's veto; either he would not spare so many troops to become bogged in a campaign in Africa, hoping the East would do the job for him, or he resented the military capabilities of Marcellinus who was obviously the favorite of Anthemius.

Regardless of the reason, Marcellinus’s inabiity to participate in the campaign, coupled with Basiliscus’s blundering in the Battle of Cape Bon, assured that the operation would result in failure.

The West has lost its only chance to regain Africa from the Vandals and possibly stave off its demise.

Marcellinus is reached in Sicily by Basiliscus; the general is, however, assassinated, perhaps at the instigation of Ricimer, by one of his own captains; and the king of the Vandals expresses his surprise and satisfaction that the Romans themselves would remove from the world his most formidable antagonists.

The Vandals reconquer Sicily, administering a decisive defeat to the Western forces.