Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/215

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decline and fall, "was confined to the land; nor was that warlike people ever actuated by the enterprising spirit which had prompted the navigators of Tyre, of Carthage, and even of Marseilles, to enlarge the bounds of the world, and to explore the most remote coasts of the ocean. To the Romans the ocean remained an object of terror rather than of curiosity."

Unlike the Phœnicians and Carthaginians, the Romans had no inclination to expeditions of mere discovery, and never cared to become acquainted with any country whose remote situation appeared to defy their arms. Vain of their own power and of the extent of their dominions, they did not hesitate, in almost every instance, to bestow the name of barbarians on the civilized inhabitants of India as well as on those of other parts of the world, whose manners or customs were indistinctly known to them. Despising commercial pursuits, they looked to Greece and other nations to regulate their over-sea trade and to supply their wants; and when their fleets obtained the dominion of the sea, their object was less to protect their rapidly extending maritime commerce than to consolidate and preserve their power and dominion upon the land. In the reign of Augustus the plan of fixed naval stations was, for the first time, adopted; two being appointed, one at Ravenna to command the eastern, the other at Misenum to command the western division of the Mediterranean. By this time the Romans had learned from experience that galleys of more than three banks of oars were unsuited for real service, and consequently their more important fleets, from the reign of Augustus, consisted almost exclusively of the light and swift vessels