aid down in that case, and
in cases much more modern, are true and have been true always and
everywhere. Until this is perceived there is much history which
cannot be understood, and yet it is essential to our welfare as a
maritime people that we should understand it thoroughly. Our
failure to understand it has more than once brought us, if not
to the verge of destruction, at any rate within a short distance
of serious disaster.

SEA-POWER IN ANCIENT TIMES

The high antiquity of decisive naval campaigns is amongst the most
interesting features of international conflicts. Notwithstanding
the much greater frequency of land wars, the course of history
has been profoundly changed more often by contests on the water.
That this has not received the notice it deserved is true, and
Mahan tells us why. 'Historians generally,' he says, 'have been
unfamiliar with the conditions of the sea, having as to it neither
special interest nor special knowledge; and the profound determining
influence of maritime strength on great issues has consequently been
overlooked.' Moralising on that which might have been is admittedly
a sterile process; but it is sometimes necessary to point, if
only by way of illustration, to a possible alternative. As in
modern times the fate of India and the fate of North America were
determined by sea-power, so also at a very remote epoch sea-power
decided whether or not Hellenic colonisation was to take root in,
and Hellenic culture to dominate, Central and Northern Italy as
it dominated Southern Italy, where traces of it are extant to this
day. A moment's consideration will enable us to see how different
the history of the world would have been had a Hellenised city
grown and prospered on the Seven Hills. Before the Tarquins were
driven out of Rome a Phocoean fleet was encountered (537 B.C.) off
Corsica by a combined force of Etruscans and Phoenicians, and
was so handled that the Phocoeans abandoned the island and settled
on the coast of Lucania.[14] The enterprise of their navigators
had built up for the Phoenician cities and their great off-shoot
Carthage, a sea-power which enabled them to gain the practical
sovereignty of the sea to the west of Sardinia and Sicily. The
control of these waters was the object of prolonged and memorable
struggles, for on it--as the result showed--depended the empire of
the world. From very remote times the consolidation and expansion,
from within outwards, of great contin