truggles with the
adjacent towns and chieftains. There is reason to believe that in the
very infancy of the republic, in the contest that ensued upon the
expulsion of the kings, the city was taken by Porsenna. The direction in
which her influence first spread was toward the south of the peninsula.
Tarentum, one of the southern states, brought over to its assistance
Pyrrhus the Epirot. He did little in the way of assisting his allies--he
only saw Rome from the Acropolis of Praeneste; but from him the Romans
learned the art of fortifying camps, and caught the idea of invading
Sicily. Here the rising republic came in contact with the Carthaginians,
and in the conflict that ensued discovered the military value of Spain
and Gaul, from which the Carthaginians drew an immense supply of
mercenaries and munitions of war. The advance to greatness which Rome
now made was prodigious. She saw that everything turned on the
possession of the sea, and with admirable energy built a navy. In this
her expectations were more than realized. The assertion is quite true
that she spent more time in acquiring a little earth in Italy than was
necessary for subduing the world after she had once obtained possession
of the Mediterranean. From the experience of Agathocles she learned that
the true method of controlling Carthage was by invading Africa. The
principles involved in the contest, and the position of Rome at its
close, are shown by the terms of the treaty of the first Punic War--that
Carthage should evacuate every island in the Mediterranean, and pay a
war-fine of six hundred thousand pounds. In her devotion to the
acquisition of wealth Carthage had become very rich; she had reached a
high state of cultivation of art; yet her prosperity, or rather the mode
by which she had attained it, had greatly weakened her, as also had the
political anomaly under which she was living, for it is an anomaly that
an Asiatic people should place itself under democratic forms. Her
condition in this respect was evidently the consequence of her original
subordinate position as a Tyrian trading station, her rich men having
long been habituated to look to the mother city for distinction. As in
other commercial states, her citizens became soldiers with reluctance,
and hence she had often to rely on mercenary troops. From her the Romans
received lessons of the utmost importance. She confirmed them in the
estimate they had formed of the value of naval power; taught t