dispersion of their citizens, whom the passion of commerce and
navigation had induced to abandon the cultivation of their lands and
their attention to military pursuits.

The proximity of the sea likewise administers to maritime cities a
multitude of pernicious incentives to luxury, which are either acquired
by victory or imported by commerce; and the very agreeableness of their
position nourishes many expensive and deceitful gratifications of the
passions. And what I have spoken of Corinth may be applied, for aught I
know, without incorrectness to the whole of Greece. For the
Peloponnesus itself is almost wholly on the sea-coast; nor, besides the
Phliasians, are there any whose lands do not touch the sea; and beyond
the Peloponnesus, the AEnianes, the Dorians, and the Dolopes are the
only inland people. Why should I speak of the Grecian islands, which,
girded by the waves, seem all afloat, as it were, together with the
institutions and manners of their cities? And these things, I have
before noticed, do not respect ancient Greece only; for which of all
those colonies which have been led from Greece into Asia, Thracia,
Italy, Sicily, and Africa, with the single exception of Magnesia, is
there that is not washed by the sea? Thus it seems as if a sort of
Grecian coast had been annexed to territories of the barbarians. For
among the barbarians themselves none were heretofore a maritime people,
if we except the Carthaginians and Etruscans; one for the sake of
commerce, the other of pillage. And this is one evident reason of the
calamities and revolutions of Greece, because she became infected with
the vices which belong to maritime cities, which I just now briefly
enumerated. But yet, notwithstanding these vices, they have one great
advantage, and one which is of universal application, namely, that
there is a great facility for new inhabitants flocking to them. And,
again, that the inhabitants are enabled to export and send abroad the
produce of their native lands to any nation they please, which offers
them a market for their goods.

V. By what divine wisdom, then, could Romulus embrace all the benefits
that could belong to maritime cities, and at the same time avoid the
dangers to which they are exposed, except, as he did, by building his
city on the bank of an inexhaustible river, whose equal current
discharges itself into the sea by a vast mouth, so that the city could
receive all it wanted from the sea, and discharge