Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/175

Rh dynasts ruled in Tingis (Tangier) in Mauretania. But the Hellenes no longer gained ground; after the foundation of Agrigentum they did not succeed in acquiring any important additions of territory on the Adriatic or on the western sea, and they remained excluded from the Spanish waters, as well as from the Atlantic Ocean. Every year the Liparæans had their conflicts with the Tuscan "sea-robbers," and the Carthaginians with the Massiliots and the Cyrenæans, and above all with the Sicilian Greeks; but no results of permanent moment were on either side achieved, and the issue of struggles which lasted for centuries was, on the whole, the simple maintenance of the status quo.

Thus Italy was, indirectly at any rate, indebted to the Phœnicians for the exemption of at least her central and northern provinces from colonization, and for the counter-development of a national maritime power there, especially in Etruria. But there are not wanting indications that the Phœnicians already found it expedient to manifest that jealousy, which is usually associated with naval domination, if not in reference to their Latin, at any rate in reference to their Etruscan confederates whose naval power was greater. The statement as to the Carthaginians having prohibited the sending forth of an Etruscan colony to the Canary islands, whether true or false, reveals the existence of a rivalry of interests in the case.