f history,
Genseric the Vandal took a fleet out from Carthage against Rome,
and swept the Mediterranean. In the year 455, some six centuries
after Rome had wreaked her vengeance on Carthage, this Vandal fleet
anchored unopposed in the Tiber and landed an army that sacked
the imperial city, which had been for so long a period mistress
of the world, and had given her name to a great civilization.

During the four centuries in which the _Pax Romana_ rested upon
the world, it is easy to conceive of the enormous importance to
history and civilization of having sea and river, the known world
over, an undisputed highway for the fleets of Rome. Along these
routes, even more than along the military roads, traveled the
institutions, the arts, the language, the literature, the laws,
of one of the greatest civilizations in history. And ruthless as
was the destruction of Vandal and Goth in the city itself and in
the peninsula, they could not destroy the heritage that had been
spread from Britain to the Black Sea and from the Elbe to the upper
waters of the Nile.

REFERENCES

HISTORY OF ROME, Theodor Mommsen, tr. by W. P. Dickson, 1867.
GENERAL HISTORY, Polybius, transl. by Hampton, 1823.
HISTORY OF THE ROMANS UNDER THE EMPIRE, Chas. Merivale (vol. III.),
1866.
THE GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME, G. Ferrero, tr. by A. E.
Zemmern, 1909.
ETUDES SUR L'HISTOIRE MILITAIRE ET MARITIME DES GRECS ET DES
ROMAINS, Paul Serre, 1888.
FLEETS OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR, W. W. Tarn, in _Journal of
Hellenic Studies_, 1907.
HERESIES OF SEA POWER (pp. 40-71), Fred Jane, 1906.
INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER ON HISTORY (pp. 15 ff.), A. T. Mahan, 1889.
For a complete bibliography of Roman sea power, v. INFLUENCE OF
SEA POWER ON THE ROMAN REPUBLIC (Doctoral Dissertation),
F. W. Clark, 1915.

CHAPTER IV

THE NAVIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES: THE EASTERN EMPIRE

The thousand years following the collapse of the Roman empire, a
period generally referred to as the Middle Ages, are characterized
by a series of barbarian invasions. Angles, Saxons, Goths, Visigoths,
Huns, Vandals, Vikings, Slavs, Arabs, and Turks poured over the
broken barriers of the empire and threatened to extinguish the last
spark of western and Christian civilization. Out of this welter
of invasions and the anarchy of petty kingdoms arose finally the
powerful nations that perpetuated the inheritance from Athens,
Rome, and Jerusalem, and developed on this foundation the newer
inst