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Distant commerce also employed numerous merchant vessels; the Mediterranean, like the Euphrates, was furrowed by barques which brought or carried merchandise of every description. Vessels sailing on the Erythræan Sea were in communication, by means of canals, with the shores of the Mediterranean. The great trade of Phœnicia with Spain and the West had ceased, but the navigation of the Euphrates and the Tigris replaced it for the transport of products, whether foreign or fabricated in Syria itself, and sent into Asia Minor, Greece, or Egypt. The empire of the Seleucidæ offered the spectacle of the ancient civilisation and luxury of Nineveh and Babylon, transformed by the genius of Greece.

Egypt.

XVI. Egypt, which Herodotus calls a present from the Nile, did not equal in surface a quarter of the empire of the Seleucidæ, but it formed a power much more compact. Its civilisation reached back more than three thousand years. The sciences and arts already flourished there, when Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy were still in a state of barbarism. The fertility of the valley of the Nile had permitted a numerous population to develop itself there to such a point, that under Amasis II., contemporary with Servius Tullius, twenty thousand cities were reckoned in it.⁴²⁸ The skilful administration of the first of the Lagides increased considerably the resources of the country. Under Ptolemy II., the annual revenues amounted to 14,800 talents (86,150,800 francs [£3,446,032]), and a million and a half of artabi⁴²⁹ of wheat.⁴³⁰ Besides the Egyptian revenues, the taxes levied in the foreign possessions reached the amount of about 10,000 talents a year. Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, and Judea, with the province of Samaria, yielded annually to Ptolemy Euergetes 8,000 talents (46 millions and a half [£1,860,000]).⁴³¹ A single feast cost Philadelphia 2,240 talents (more than 13 millions [more than half a million sterling]).⁴³² The sums accumulated in the treasury amounted to the sum, perhaps exaggerated, of 740,000 talents (about 4 milliards 300 millions of francs [172 millions sterling]).⁴³³ In 527, Ptolemy Euergetes was able, without diminishing his resources too much, to send to the Rhodians 3,300 talents of silver, a thousand talents of copper, and ten millions of measures of wheat.⁴³⁴ The precious metals abounded in the empire of the Pharaohs, as is attested by the traces of mining operations now exhausted, and by the multitude of objects in gold contained in their tombs. Masters for some time of the Libanus, the kings of Egypt obtained from it timber for ship-building. These riches had accumulated especially at Alexandria, which became, after Carthage, towards the commencement of the seventh century of Rome, the first commercial city in the world.⁴³⁵ It was fifteen miles in circumference, had three spacious and commodious ports, which allowed the largest ships to anchor along the quay.⁴³⁶ There arrived the merchandises of India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and of the coast of Africa; some brought on the backs of camels, from Myos Hormos (to the north of Cosseïr), and then transported down the Nile; others came by canals from the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, or brought from the port of Berenice, on the Red Sea.⁴³⁷ The occupation of this sea by the Egyptians had put a stop to the piracies of the Arabs,⁴³⁸ and led to the establishment of numerous factories. India furnished spices, muslins, and dyes; Ethiopia, gold, ivory, and ebony; Arabia, perfumes.⁴³⁹ All these products were exchanged against those which came from the Pontus Euxinus and the Western Sea. The native manufacture of printed and embroidered tissues, and that of glass, assumed under the Ptolemies a new development. The objects exhumed from the tombs of this period, the paintings with which they are decorated, the allusions contained in the hieroglyphic texts and Greek papyrus, prove that the most varied descriptions of industry were exercised in the kingdom of the Pharaohs, and had attained a high degree of perfection. The excellence of the products and the delicacy of the work prove the intelligence of the workmen. Under Ptolemy II., the army was composed of 200,000 footmen, 40,000 cavalry, 300 elephants, and 200 chariots; the arsenals were capable of furnishing arms for 300,000 men.⁴⁴⁰ The Egyptian fleet, properly so called, consisted of a hundred and twelve vessels of the first class (from five to thirty ranges of oars), and two hundred and twenty-four of the second class, together with light craft; the king had, besides these, more than four thousand ships in the ports placed in subjection to him.⁴⁴¹ It was especially after Alexander that the Egyptian navy became greatly extended.

Cyrenaica.

XVII. Separating Egypt from the possessions of Carthage, Cyrenaica (the regency of Tripoli), formerly colonised by the Greeks and independent, had fallen into the hands of the first of the Ptolemies. It possessed commercial and rich towns, and fertile plains; its cultivation extended even into the mountains;⁴⁴² wine, oil, dates, saffron and different plants, such as the silphium (laserpitium),⁴⁴³ were the object of considerable traffic.⁴⁴⁴ The horses of Cyrenaica, which had all the lightness of the Arabian horses, were objects of research even in Greece,⁴⁴⁵ and the natives of Cyrene could make no more handsome present to Alexander than to send him three hundred of their coursers.⁴⁴⁶ Nevertheless, political revolutions had already struck at the ancient prosperity of the country,⁴⁴⁷ which previously formed, by its navigation, its commerce, and its arts, probably the finest of the colonies founded by the Greeks.

Cyprus.

XVIII. The numerous islands of the Mediterranean enjoyed equal prosperity. Cyprus, colonised by the Phœnicians, and subsequently by the Greeks, passing afterwards under the dominion of the Egyptians, had a population which preserved, from its native country, the love of commerce and distant voyages. Almost all its towns were situated on the sea-coast, and furnished with excellent ports. Ptolemy Soter maintained in it an army of 30,000 Egyptians.⁴⁴⁸ No country was richer in timber. Its fertility passed for being superior to that of Egypt.⁴⁴⁹ To its agricultural produce were added precious stones, mines of copper worked from an early period,⁴⁵⁰ and so rich, that this metal took its name from the island itself (Cuprum). In Cyprus were seen numerous sanctuaries, and especially the temple of Venus at Paphos, which contained a hundred altars.⁴⁵¹

Crete.

XIX. Crete, peopled by different races, had attained even in the heroic age a great celebrity; Homer sang its hundred cities; but during several centuries it had been on the decline. Without commerce, without a regular navy, without agriculture, it possessed little else than its fruits and woods, and the sterility which characterises it now had already commenced. Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe that at the time of the Roman conquest, the island was still well peopled.⁴⁵² Devoted to piracy,⁴⁵³ and reduced to sell their services, the Cretans, celebrated as archers, fought as mercenaries in the armies of Syria, Macedonia, and Egypt.⁴⁵⁴

Rhodes.

XX. If Crete was in decline, Rhodes, on the contrary, was extending its commerce, which took gradually the place of that of the maritime towns of Ionia and Caria. Already inhabited, in the time of Homer, by a numerous population, and containing three important towns, Lindos, Ialysus, and Camirus,⁴⁵⁵ the isle was, in the fifth century of Rome, the first maritime power after Carthage. The town of Rhodes, built during the war of the Peloponnesus (346), had, like the Punic city, two ports, one for merchant vessels, the other for ships of war. The right of anchorage produced a revenue of a million of drachmas a year.⁴⁵⁶ The Rhodians had founded colonies on different points of the Mediterranean shore,⁴⁵⁷ and entertained friendly relations with a great number of towns from which they received more than once succours and presents.⁴⁵⁸ They possessed upon the neighbouring Asiatic continent tributary towns, such as Caunus and Stratonicea, which paid them 120 talents (700,000 francs [£28,000]). The navigation of the Bosphorus, of which they strove to maintain the passage free, soon belonged to them almost exclusively.⁴⁵⁹ All the maritime commerce from the Nile to the Palus Mæotis thus fell into their hands. Laden with slaves, cattle, honey, wax, and salt meats,⁴⁶⁰ their ships went to fetch on the coast of the Cimmerian Bosphorus (Sea of Azof) the wheat then very celebrated,⁴⁶¹ and to carry wines and oils to the northern coast of Asia Minor. By means of its fleets, though its land army was composed wholly of foreigners,⁴⁶² Rhodes several times made war with success. She contended with Athens, especially from 397 to 399; she resisted victoriously, in 450, Demetrius Poliorcetes, and owed her safety to the respect of this prince for a magnificent painting of Ialysus, the work of Protogenes.⁴⁶³ During the campaigns of the Romans in Macedonia and Asia, she furnished them with considerable fleets.⁴⁶⁴ Her naval force was maintained until the civil war which followed the death of Cæsar, but was then annihilated.

The celebrity of Rhodes was no less great in arts and letters than in commerce. After the reign of Alexander, it became the seat of a famous school of sculpture and painting, from which issued Protogenes and the authors of the Laocoon and the Farnese Bull. The town contained three thousand statues,⁴⁶⁵ and a hundred and six colossi, among others the famous Statue of the Sun, one of the seven wonders of the world, a hundred and five feet high, the cost of which had been three thousand talents (17,400,000 francs [£696,000]).⁴⁶⁶ The school of rhetoric at Rhodes was frequented by students who repaired thither from all parts of Greece, and Cæsar, as well as Cicero, went there to perfect themselves in the art of oratory.

The other islands of the Ægean Sea had nearly all lost their political importance, and their commercial life was absorbed by the new states of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Rhodes. It was not so with the Archipelago of the Ionian Sea, the prosperity of which continued until the moment when it fell into the power of the Romans. Corcyra, which received into its port the Roman forces, owed to its fertility and favourable position an extensive commerce. The rival of Corinth since the fourth century, she became corrupted like Byzantium and Zacynthus (Zante), which Agatharchides, towards 640, represents as grown effeminate by excess of luxury.⁴⁶⁷

Sardinia.

XXI. The flourishing condition of Sardinia arose especially from the colonies which Carthage had planted in it. The population of this island rendered itself formidable to the Romans by its spirit of independence.⁴⁶⁸ From 541⁴⁶⁹ to 580, 130,000 men were slain, taken, or sold.⁴⁷⁰ The number of these last was so considerable, that the expression Sardinians to sell (Sardi venales) became proverbial.⁴⁷¹ Sardinia, which now counts not more than 544,000 inhabitants, then possessed at least a million. Its quantity of corn, and numerous herds of cattle, made of this island the second granary of Carthage.⁴⁷² The avidity of the Romans soon exhausted it. Yet, in 552, the harvests were still so abundant, that there were merchants who were obliged to abandon the wheat to the sailors for the price of the freight.⁴⁷³ The working of the mines and the trade in wool of a superior quality⁴⁷⁴ occupied thousands of hands.

Corsica.

XXII. Corsica was much less populous. Diodorus Siculus gives it hardly more than 30,000 inhabitants,⁴⁷⁵ and Strabo represents them as savages, and living in the mountains.⁴⁷⁶ According to Pliny, however, it had thirty towns.⁴⁷⁷ Resin, wax, honey,⁴⁷⁸ exported from factories founded by the Etruscans and Phocæans on the coasts, were almost the only products of the island.

Sicily.

XXIII. Sicily, called by the ancients the favourite abode of Ceres, owed its name to the Sicani or Siculi, a race which had once peopled a part of Italy; Phœnician colonies, and afterwards Greek colonies, had established themselves in it. In 371, the Greeks occupied the eastern part, about two-thirds of the island; the Carthaginians, the western part. Sicily, on account of its prodigious fertility, was, as may be supposed, coveted by both peoples; it was soon the same in regard to the Romans, and, after the conquest, it became the granary of Italy.⁴⁷⁹ The orations of Cicero against Verres show the prodigious quantities of wheat which it sent, and to what a great sum the tenths or taxes amounted, which procured immense profits to the farmers of the revenues.⁴⁸⁰

The towns which, under Roman rule, declined, were possessed of considerable importance at the time of which we are speaking. The first among them, Syracuse, the capital of Hiero’s kingdom, contained 600,000 souls; it was composed of six quarters, comprised in a circumference of 180 stadia (36 kilometres); it furnished, when it was conquered, a booty equal to that of Carthage.⁴⁸¹ Other cities rivalled Syracuse in extent and power. Agrigentum, in the time of the first Punic war, contained 50,000 soldiers;⁴⁸² it was one of the principal garrisons in Sicily.⁴⁸³ Panormus (Palermo), Drepana (Trapani), and Lilybæum (Marsala), possessed arsenals, docks for ship-building, and vast ports. The roadstead of Messina was capable of holding 600 vessels.⁴⁸⁴ Sicily is still the richest country in ancient monuments; our admiration is excited by the ruins of twenty-one temples and of eleven theatres, among others that of Taormina, which contained 40,000 spectators.⁴⁸⁵

This concise description of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, two or three hundred years before our era, shows sufficiently the state of prosperity of the different peoples who inhabited them. The remembrance of such greatness inspires a very natural wish, namely, that henceforth the jealousy of the great powers may no longer prevent the East from shaking off the dust of twenty centuries, and from being born again to life and civilisation!

CHAPTER V.
PUNIC WARS AND WARS OF MACEDONIA AND ASIA

(From 488 to 621.)

Comparison between Rome and Carthage.

I. ROME, having extended her dominion to the southern extremity of Italy, found herself in face of a power which, by the force of circumstances, was to become her rival.

Carthage, situated on the part of the African coast nearest to Sicily, was only separated from it by the channel of Malta, which divides the great basin of the Mediterranean in two. She had, during more than two centuries, concluded, from time to time, treaties with Rome, and, with a want of foresight of the future, congratulated the Senate every time it had gained great advantages over the Etruscans or the Samnites.

The superiority of Carthage at the beginning of the Punic wars was evident; yet the constitution of the two cities might have led any one to foresee which in the end must be the master. A powerful aristocracy reigned in both; but at Rome the nobles, identified continually with the people, set an example of patriotism and of all civic virtues, while at Carthage the leading families, enriched by commerce, made effeminate by an unbridled luxury, formed a selfish and greedy caste, distinct from the rest of the citizens. At Rome, the sole motive of action was glory, the principal occupation war, and the first duty military service. At Carthage, everything was sacrificed to interest and commerce; and the defence of the fatherland was, as an insupportable burden, abandoned to mercenaries. Hence, after a defeat, at Carthage the army was recruited with difficulty; at Rome it immediately recruited itself, because the populace was subject to the recruitment. If the poverty of the treasury caused the pay of the troops to be delayed, the Carthaginian soldiers mutinied, and placed the State in danger; the Romans supported privations and suffering without a murmur, out of mere love for their country.

The Carthaginian religion made of the Divinity a jealous and malignant power, which required to be appeased by horrible sacrifices or honoured by shameful practices: hence manners depraved and cruel; at Rome, good sense or the interest of the government moderated the brutality of paganism, and maintained in religion the sentiments of morality.⁴⁸⁶

And, again, what a difference in their policies! Rome had subdued, by force of arms, it is true, the people who surrounded her, but she had, so to say, obtained pardon for her victories in offering to the vanquished a greater country and a share in the rights of the metropolis. Moreover, as the inhabitants of the peninsula were in general of one and the same race, she had found it easy to assimilate them to herself. Carthage, on the contrary, had remained a foreigner in the midst of the natives of Africa, from whom she was separated by origin, language, and manners. She had made her rule hateful to her subjects and to her tributaries by the mercantile spirit of her agents, and their habits of rapacity; hence frequent insurrections, repressed with unexampled cruelty. Her distrust of her subjects had engaged her to leave all the towns on her territory open, in order that none of them might become a centre of support to a revolt. Thus two hundred towns surrendered without resistance to Agathocles immediately he appeared in Africa. Rome, on the contrary, surrounded her colonies with ramparts, and the walls of Placentia, Spoletum, Casilinum, and Nola, contributed to arrest the invasion of Hannibal.

The town of Romulus was at that time in all the vigour of youth, while Carthage had reached that degree of corruption at which States are incapable of supporting either the abuses which enervate them, or the remedy by which they might be regenerated.

To Rome then belonged the future. On one hand, a people of soldiers, restrained by discipline, religion, and purity of manners, animated with the love of their country, surrounded by devoted allies; on the other, a people of merchants with dissolute manners, unruly mercenaries, and discontented subjects.

First Punic War (490-513).

II. These two powers, of equal ambition, but so opposite in spirit, could not long remain in presence without disputing the command of the rich basin of the Mediterranean. Sicily especially was destined to excite their covetousness. The possession of that island was then shared between Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, the Carthaginians, and the Mamertines. These last, descended from the old adventurers, mercenaries of Agathocles, who came from Italy in 490 and settled at Messina, proceeded to make war upon the Syracusans. They first sought the assistance of the Carthaginians, and surrendered to them the acropolis of Messina as the price of their protection; but soon, disgusted with their too exacting allies, they sent to demand succour of Rome under the name of a common nationality, for most of them called themselves Italiots, and consequently allies of the Republic; some even were or pretended to be Romans.⁴⁸⁷

The Senate hesitated; but public opinion carried the day, and, in spite of the little interest inspired by the Mamertines, war was decided. A body of troops, sent without delay to Messina, expelled the Carthaginians. Soon after, a consular army crossed the Strait, defeated first the Syracusans and then the Carthaginians, and effected a military settlement in the island. Thus commenced the first Punic War.

Different circumstances favoured the Romans. The Carthaginians had made themselves objects of hatred to the Sicilian Greeks. The towns still independent, comparing the discipline of the legions with the excesses of all kinds which had marked the progress of the mercenaries of Agathocles, Pyrrhus, and the Carthaginian generals, received the consuls as liberators. Hiero, master of Syracuse, the principal town in Sicily, had no sooner experienced the power of the Roman armies than he foresaw the result of the struggle, and declared for the strongest. His alliance, maintained faithfully during fifty years, was of great utility to the Republic.⁴⁸⁸ With his support, the Romans, at the end of the third year of the war, had obtained possession of Agrigentum and the greater part of the towns of the interior; but the fleets of the Carthaginians remained masters of the sea and of the fortresses on the coast.

The Romans were deficient in ships of war.⁴⁸⁹ They could, no doubt, procure transport vessels, or, by their allies (socii navales), a few triremes,⁴⁹⁰ but they had none of those ships with five ranks of oars, better calculated, by their weight and velocity, to sink the ships of the enemy. An incomparable energy supplied in a short time the insufficiency of the fleet: a hundred and twenty galleys were constructed after the model of a Carthaginian quinquireme which had been cast on the coast of Italy; and soldiers were exercised on land in the handling of the oar.⁴⁹¹ At the end of two months, the crews were embarked, and the Carthaginians were defeated at Mylæ (494), and three years after at Tyndaris (497). These two sea-fights deprived Carthage of the prestige of her maritime superiority.

Still the struggle continued on land without decisive results, when the two rivals embraced the same resolution of making a final effort for the mastery of the sea. Carthage fitted out three hundred and fifty decked vessels; Rome, three hundred and thirty of equal force. In 498 the two fleets met between Heraclea Minora and the Cape of Ecnomus, and, in a memorable combat, in which 300,000 men⁴⁹² contended, the victory remained with the Romans. The road to Africa was open, and M. Atilius Regulus, inspired, no doubt, by the example of Agathocles, formed the design of carrying the war thither. His first successes were so great, that Carthage, in her terror, and to avoid the siege with which she was threatened, was ready to renounce her possessions in Sicily. Regulus, relying too much on the feebleness of the resistance he had hitherto encountered, thought he could impose upon Carthage the hardest conditions; but despair restored to the Africans all their energy, and Xanthippus, a Greek adventurer, but good general, placed himself at the head of the troops, defeated the consul, and almost totally destroyed his army.

The Romans never desponded in their reverses; they carried the war again into Sicily, and recovered Panormus, the head-quarters of the Carthaginian army. For several years the fleets of the two countries ravaged, one the coast of Africa, the other the Italian shores; in the interior of Sicily the Romans had the advantage; on the coast, the Carthaginians. Twice the fleets of the Republic were destroyed by tempests or by the enemy, and these disasters led the Senate on two occasions to suspend all naval warfare. The struggle remained concentrated during six years in a corner of Sicily: the Romans occupied Panormus; the Carthaginians, Lilybæum and Drepana. It might have been prolonged indefinitely, if the Senate, in spite of the poverty of the treasury, had not succeeded, by means of voluntary gifts, in equipping another fleet of two hundred quinquiremes. Lutatius, who commanded it, dispersed the enemy’s ships near the Ægates, and, master of the sea, threatened to starve the Carthaginians. They sued for peace at the very moment when a great warrior, Hamilcar, had just restored a prestige to their arms. The fact is, that the enormity of her expenses and sacrifices for the last twenty-four years had discouraged Carthage, while at Rome, patriotism, insensible to material losses, maintained the national energy without change. The Carthaginians, obliged to give up all their establishments in Sicily, paid an indemnity of 2,200 talents.⁴⁹³ From that time the whole island, with the exception of the kingdom of Hiero, became tributary, and, for the first time, Rome had a subject province.

If, in spite of this definitive success, there were momentary checks, we must attribute them in great part to the continual changes in the plans of campaign, which varied annually with the generals. Several consuls, nevertheless, were wanting neither in skill nor perseverance, and the Senate, always grateful, gave them worthy recompense for their services. Some obtained the honours of the triumph; among others, Duilius, who gained the first naval battle, and Lutatius, whose victory decided peace. At Carthage, on the contrary, the best generals fell victims to envy and ingratitude. Xanthippus, who vanquished Regulus, was summarily removed through the jealousy of the nobles, whom he had saved;⁴⁹⁴ and Hamilcar, calumniated by a rival faction, did not receive from his government the support necessary for the execution of his great designs.

During this contest of twenty-three years, the war often experienced the want of a skilful and stable direction; but the legions lost nothing of their ancient valour, and they were even seen one day proceeding to blows with the auxiliaries, who had disputed with them the possession of the most dangerous post. We may cite also the intrepidity of the tribune Calpurnius Flamma, who saved the legions shut up by Hamilcar in a defile. He covered the retreat with three hundred men, and, found alive under a heap of dead bodies, received from the consul a crown of leaves – a modest reward, but sufficient then to inspire heroism. All noble sentiments were raised to such a point as even to do justice to an enemy. The consul, L. Cornelius, gave magnificent funeral rites to Hanno, a Carthaginian general, who had died valiantly in fighting against him.⁴⁹⁵

During the first Punic war, the Carthaginians had often threatened the coasts of Italy, but never attempted a serious landing. They could find no allies among the peoples recently subdued; neither the Samnites, nor the Lucanians who had declared for Pyrrhus, nor the Greek towns in the south of the Peninsula, showed any inclination to revolt. The Cisalpine Gauls, lately so restless, and whom we shall soon see taking arms again, remained motionless. The disturbances which broke out at the close of the Punic war among the Salentini and Falisci were without importance, and appear to have had no connection with the great struggle between Rome and Carthage.⁴⁹⁶

This resistance to all attempts at insurrection proves that the government of the Republic was equitable, and that it had given satisfaction to the vanquished. No complaint was heard, even after great disasters; and yet the calamities of war bore cruelly upon the cultivators – incessantly obliged to quit their fields to fill up the voids made in the legions. At home, the Senate had in its favour a great prestige, and abroad it enjoyed a reputation of good faith which ensured sincere alliances.

The first Punic war exercised a remarkable influence on manners. Until then the Romans had not entertained continuous relations with the Greeks. The conquest of Sicily rendered these relations numerous and active, and whatever Hellenic civilisation contained, whether useful or pernicious, made itself felt.

The religious ideas of the two peoples were different, although Roman paganism had great affinity with the paganism of Greece. This had its philosophers, its sophists, and its freethinkers. At Rome, nothing of the sort; there, creeds were profound, simple, and sincere; and, moreover, from a very remote period, the government had made religion subordinate to politics, and had laboured to give it a direction advantageous to the State.

The Greeks of Sicily introduced into Rome two sects of philosophy, the germs of which became developed at a later period, and which had perhaps more relation with the instincts of the initiated than with those of the initiators. Stoicism fortified the practice of the civic virtues, but without modifying their ancient roughness; Epicurism, much more extensively spread, soon flung the nation into the search after material enjoyments. Both sects, by inspiring contempt for death, gave a terrible power to the people who adopted them.

The war had exhausted the finances of Carthage. The mercenaries, whom she could not pay, revolted in Africa and Sardinia at the same time. They were only vanquished by the genius of Hamilcar. In Sardinia, the excesses of the mutineers had caused an insurrection among the natives, who drove them out of the country. The Romans did not let this opportunity for intervention escape them; and, as before in the case of the Mamertines, the Senate, according to all appearance, assumed as a pretext that there were Italiots among the mercenaries in Sardinia. The island was taken, and the conquerors imposed a new contribution on Carthage for having captured some merchant vessels navigating in those latitudes – a scandalous abuse of power, which Polybius loudly condemns.⁴⁹⁷ Reduced to impotency by the loss of their navy and the revolt of their army, the Carthaginians submitted to the conditions of the strongest. They had quitted Sicily without leaving any regrets; but it was not the same with Sardinia; there their government and dominion were popular, probably from the community of religion and the Phœnician origin of some of the towns.⁴⁹⁸ For a long time afterwards, periodical rebellions testified to the affection of the Sardinians for their old masters. Towards the same epoch, the Romans took possession of Corsica, and, from 516 to 518, repulsed the Ligures and the Gaulish tribes, with whom they had been at peace for forty-five years.

War of Illyria (525).

III. While the Republic protected its northern frontiers against the Gauls and Ligures, and combated the influence of Carthage in Sardinia and Corsica, she undertook, against a small barbarous people, another expedition, less difficult, it is true, but which was destined to have immense consequences. The war of Illyria, in fact, was on the point of opening to the Romans the roads to Greece and Asia, subjected to the successors of Alexander, and where Greek civilisation was dominant. Now become a great maritime power, Rome had henceforward among her attributes the police of the seas. The inhabitants of the eastern coasts of the Adriatic, addicted to piracy, were destructive to commerce. Several times they had carried their depredations as far as Messenia, and defeated Greek squadrons sent to repress their ravages.⁴⁹⁹ These pirates belonged to the Illyrian nation. The Greeks considered them as barbarians, which meant foreigners to the Hellenic race; it is probable, nevertheless, that they had a certain affinity with it. Inconvenient allies of the kings of Macedonia, they often took arms either for or against them; intrepid and fierce hordes, they were ready to sell their services and blood to any one who would pay them, resembling, in this respect, the Albanians of the present day, believed by some to be their descendants driven into the mountains by the invasions of the Slaves.⁵⁰⁰