haracter. Scipio, however, bore the Roman eagles to
Cartagena, and by its capture destroyed forever the empire of the
Carthaginians in Spain. Finally, he carried the war into Africa with a
force inferior to that of Regulus; but still he succeeded in gaining the
battle of Zama, imposing a shameful peace on Carthage and burning five
hundred of her ships. Subsequently Scipio's brother crossed the
Hellespont with twenty-five thousand men, and at Magnesia gained the
celebrated victory which surrendered to the mercy of the Romans the
kingdom of Antiochus and all Asia. This expedition was aided by a
victory gained at Myonnesus in Ionia, by the combined fleets of Rome and
Rhodes, over the navy of Antiochus.

From this time Rome had no rival, and she continued to add to her power
by using every means to insure to her the empire of the sea. Paulus
Emilius in the year 168 B.C. landed at Samothrace at the head of
twenty-five thousand men, conquered Perseus, and brought Macedonia to
submission.

Twenty years later, the third Punic war decided the fate of Carthage.
The important port of Utica having been given up to the Romans, an
immense fleet was employed in transporting to this point eighty thousand
foot-soldiers and four thousand horses; Carthage was besieged, and the
son of Paulus Emilius and adopted son of the great Scipio had the glory
of completing the victory which Emilius and Scipio had begun, by
destroying the bitter rival of his country.

After this triumph, the power of Rome in Africa, as well as in Europe,
was supreme; but her empire in Asia was for a moment shaken by
Mithridates. This powerful king, after seizing in succession the small
adjacent states, was in command of not less than two hundred and fifty
thousand men, and of a fleet of four hundred vessels, of which three
hundred were decked. He defeated the three Roman generals who commanded
in Cappadocia, invaded Asia Minor and massacred there at least eighty
thousand Roman subjects, and even sent a large army into Greece.

Sylla landed in Greece with a reinforcement of twenty-five thousand
Romans, and retook Athens; but Mithridates sent in succession two large
armies by the Bosporus and the Dardanelles: the first, one hundred
thousand strong, was destroyed at Chaeronea, and the second, of eighty
thousand men, met a similar fate at Orchomenus. At the same time,
Lucullus, having collected all the maritime resources of the cities of
Asia Minor, the islands, and p