hem how to
build ships properly and handle them; how to make military roads. The
tribes of Northern Italy were hardly included in the circle of Roman
dominion when a fleet was built in the Adriatic, and, under the pretence
of putting down piracy, the sea power of the Illyrians was
extinguished. From time immemorial the Mediterranean had been infested
with pirates; man-stealing had been a profitable occupation, great gains
being realized by ransoms of captives, or by selling them at Delos or
other slave-markets. At this time it was clear that the final mastery of
the Mediterranean turned on the possession of Spain, the great
silver-producing country. The rivalry for Spain occasioned the second
Punic War. It is needless to repeat the well-known story of Hannibal,
how he brought Rome to the brink of ruin. The relations she maintained
with surrounding communities had been such that she could not trust to
them. Her enemy found allies in many of the Greek towns in the south of
Italy. It is enough for us to look at the result of that conflict in the
treaty that closed it. Carthage had to give up all her ships of war
except ten triremes, to bind herself to enter into no war without the
consent of the Roman people, and to pay a war-fine of two millions of
pounds. Rome now entered, on the great scale, on the policy of
disorganizing states for the purpose of weakening them. Under pretext of
an invitation from the Athenians to protect them from the King of
Macedon, the ambitious republic secured a footing in Greece, the
principle developed in the invasion of Africa of making war maintain war
being again resorted to. There may have been truth in the Roman
accusation that the intrigues of Hannibal with Antiochus, king of Syria,
occasioned the conflict between Rome and that monarch. Its issue was a
prodigious event in the material aggrandizement of Rome--it was the
cession of all his possessions in Europe and those of Asia north of
Mount Taurus, with a war-fine of three millions of pounds. Already were
seen the effects of the wealth that was pouring into Italy in the
embezzlement of the public money by the Scipios. The resistance of
Perses, king of Macedon, could not restore independence to Greece; it
ended in the annexation of that country, Epirus and Illyricum. The
results of this war were to the last degree pernicious to the victors
and the vanquished; the moral greatness of the former is truly affirmed
to have disappeared, and the