Mommsen, 'made no effort to acquire the interior from the warlike native nations; they were content with the possession of the mines and of stations for traffic and for shell and other fisheries.' Allowance being made for the numbers of the classes engaged in administration, commerce, and supervision, it is nearly certain that Carthage could not furnish the crews required by both a great war-navy and a great mercantile marine. No one is surprised on finding that the land-forces of Carthage were composed largely of alien mercenaries. We have several examples from which we can infer a parallel, if not an identical, condition of her maritime resources. How, then, was the great Carthaginian carrying-trade provided for? The experience of more than one country will enable us to answer this question. The ocean trade of those off-shoots or dependencies of the United Kingdom, viz. the United States, Australasia, and India, is largely or chiefly conducted by shipping of the old country. So that of Carthage was largely conducted by old Phoenicians. These may have obtained a 'Carthaginian Register,' or the contemporary equivalent; but they could not all have been purely Carthaginian or Liby-Phoenician. This must have been the case even more with the war-navy. British India for a considerable time possessed a real and indeed highly efficient navy; but it was officered entirely and manned almost entirely by men from the 'old country.' Moreover, it was small. The wealth of India would have sufficed to furnish a larger material element; but, as the country could not supply the personnel, it would have been absurd to speak of the sea-power of India apart from that of England. As soon as the Romans chose to make the most of their natural resources the maritime predominance of Carthage was doomed. The artificial basis of the latter's sea-power would not enable it to hold out against serious and persistent assaults. Unless this is perceived it is impossible to understand the story of the Punic wars. Judged by every visible sign of strength, Carthage, the richer, the more enterprising, ethnically the more predominant amongst her neighbours, and apparently the more nautical, seemed sure to win in the great struggle with Rome which, by the conditions of the case, was to be waged largely on the water. Yet those who had watched the struggles of the Punic city with the Sicilian Greeks, and especially that with Agathocles, must have seen reason to cherish doubts concerning her naval strength. It was an anticipation of the case of Spain in the age of Philip II. As the great Elizabethan seamen discerned the defects of the Spanish naval establishment, so men at Rome discerned those of the Carthaginian. Dates in connection with this are of great significance. A comprehensive measure, with the object of 'rescuing their marine from its condition of impotence,' was taken by the Romans in the year 267 B.C. Four quoestores classici—in modern naval English we may perhaps call them port-admirals—were nominated, and one was stationed at each of four ports. The objects of the Roman Senate, so Mommsen tells us, were very obvious. They were 'to recover their independence by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of Tarentum, to close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus, and to emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy.' Four years afterwards the first Punic war began. It was, and had to be, largely a naval contest. The Romans waged it with varying fortune, but in the end triumphed by means of their sea-power. 'The sea was the place where all great destinies were decided.'[19] The victory of Catulus over the Carthaginian fleet off the Ægatian Islands decided the war and left to the Romans the possession of Sicily and the power of possessing themselves of Sardinia and Corsica. It would be an interesting and perhaps not a barren investigation to inquire to what extent the decline of the mother states of Phoenicia, consequent on the campaigns of Alexander the Great, had helped to enfeeble the naval efficiency of the Carthaginian defences. One thing was certain. Carthage had now met with a rival endowed with natural maritime resources greater than her own. That rival also contained citizens who understood the true importance of sea-power. 'With a statesmanlike sagacity from which succeeding generations might have drawn a lesson, the leading men of the Roman Commonwealth perceived that all their coast-fortifications and coast-garrisons would prove inadequate unless the war-marine of the state were again placed on a footing that should command respect.'[20] It is a gloomy reflection that the leading men of our own great maritime country could not see this in 1860. A thorough comprehension of the events of the first Punic war enables us to solve what, until Mahan wrote, had been one of the standing enigmas of history, viz. Hannibal's invasion of Italy by land instead of by sea in the second Punic war. Mahan's masterly examination of this question has set at rest all doubts as to the reason of Hannibal's action.[21] The naval predominance in the western basin of the Mediterranean acquired by Rome had never been lost. Though modern historians, even those belonging to a maritime country, may have failed to perceive it, the Carthaginians knew well enough that the Romans were too strong for them on the sea. Though other forces co-operated to bring about the defeat of Carthage in the second Punic war, the Roman navy, as Mahan demonstrates, was the most important. As a navy, he tells us in words like those already quoted, 'acts on an element strange to most writers, as its members have been from time immemorial a strange race apart, without prophets of their own, neither themselves nor their calling understood, its immense determining influence on the history of that era, and consequently upon the history of the world, has been overlooked.'
[Footnote 18: R. S. Whiteway, _Rise_of_the_Portuguese_Power_ _in_India_ p. 12. Westminster, 1899.]
[Footnote 19: J. H. Burton, _Hist._of_Scotland_, 1873, vol. i. p. 318.]
[Footnote 20: Mommsen, i. p. 427.]
[Footnote 21: _Inf._on_Hist._, pp. 13–21.]
The attainment of all but universal dominion by Rome was now only a question of time. 'The annihilation of the Carthaginian fleet had made the Romans masters of the sea.'[22] A lodgment had already been gained in Illyricum, and countries farther east were before long to be reduced to submission. A glance at the map will show that to effect this the command of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, like that of the western, must be secured by the Romans. The old historic navies of the Greek and Phoenician states had declined. One considerable naval force there was which, though it could not have prevented, was strong enough to have delayed the Roman progress eastwards. This force belonged to Rhodes, which in the years immediately following the close of the second Punic war reached its highest point as a naval power.[23] Far from trying to obstruct the advance of the Romans the Rhodian fleet helped it. Hannibal, in his exile, saw the necessity of being strong on the sea if the East was to be saved from the grasp of his hereditary foe; but the resources of Antiochus, even with the mighty cooperation of Hannibal, were insufficient. In a later and more often-quoted struggle between East and West—that which was decided at Actium—sea-power was again seen to 'have the casting vote.' When the whole of the Mediterranean coasts became part of a single state the importance of the navy was naturally diminished; but in the struggles within the declining empire it rose again at times. The contest of the Vandal Genseric with Majorian and the African expedition of Belisarius—not to mention others—were largely influenced by the naval operations.[24]
[Footnote 22: Schmitz, _Hist.Rome, p. 256.]
[Footnote 23: C. Torr, _Rhodes_in_Ancient_Times_, p. 40.]
[Footnote 24: Gibbon, _Dec._and_Fall_, chaps. xxxvi. xli]
SEA-POWER IN THE MIDDLE AGES
A decisive event, the Mohammedan conquest of Northern Africa from Egypt westwards, is unintelligible until it is seen how great a part sea-power played in effecting it. Purely land expeditions, or expeditions but slightly supported from the sea, had ended in failure. The emperor at Constantinople still had at his disposal a fleet capable of keeping open the communications with his African province. It took the Saracens half a century (647–698 A.D.) to win 'their way along the coast of Africa as far as the Pillars of Hercules';[25] and, as Gibbon tells us, it was not till the Commander of the Faithful had prepared a great expedition, this time by sea as well as by land, that the Saracenic dominion was definitely established. It has been generally assumed that the Arabian conquerors who, within a few years of his death, spread the faith of Mohammed over vast regions, belonged to an essentially non-maritime race; and little or no stress has been laid on the extent to which they relied on naval support in prosecuting their conquests. In parts of Arabia, however, maritime enterprise was far from non-existent; and when the Mohammedan empire had extended outwards from Mecca and Medina till it embraced the coasts of various seas, the consequences to the neighbouring states were as serious as the rule above mentioned would lead us to expect that they would be. 'With