Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/216

 known as Liburnians, from the people who were the first to build them.

Occupying a district a little north of the present Dalmatia, and devoting their attention almost exclusively to sea-faring pursuits, the Liburnians had obtained a great reputation for their knowledge of the art of navigation. Provided with excellent harbours, and holding in their grasp many of the small islands of the Adriatic, which afforded them shelter from storms and a convenient rendezvous for their swift craft, they unfortunately made but little distinction between the duties of the honest trader and the predatory habits of the buccaneer: but to them Octavianus was mainly indebted for his victory over Antony at Actium, and Rome itself for the introduction of a better and swifter type of war-vessel.

Although Ravenna and Misenum were the principal stations of their navy, the Romans had fleets at various other places. Forty ships and three thousand soldiers then guarded the waters of the Euxine; a very considerable force was stationed at Frejus (Forum-Julii); numbers of Roman vessels cruised in the English Channel to preserve the communication between Gaul and Britain; while, throughout the whole period of her supremacy, a strong force was maintained on the Danube and Rhine to protect the empire from the inroads of the Northern barbarians. But these fleets were the slow growth of centuries; and the navies of Rome were for a long time of comparatively little note, and obtained celebrity only when the first Punic war roused her citizens to ex-*