y their maritime policy was still
summed up in the occupation of places on the coast. Thereafter, when
the Greek cities of southern Italy, Neapolis leading the way in 428,
were admitted to the clientship of Rome, the war-vessels, which each
of these cities bound itself to furnish as a war contribution under
the alliance to the Romans, formed at least a renewed nucleus for a
Roman fleet. In 443, moreover, two fleet-masters (-duoviri navales-)
were nominated in consequence of a resolution of the burgesses
specially passed to that effect, and this Roman naval force
co-operated in the Samnite war at the siege of Nuceria.(20) Perhaps
even the remarkable mission of a Roman fleet of twenty-five sail to
found a colony in Corsica, which Theophrastus mentions in his "History
of Plants" written about 446, belongs to this period. But how little
was immediately accomplished with all this preparation, is shown by
the renewed treaty with Carthage in 448. While the stipulations of
the treaty of 406 relating to Italy and Sicily(21) remained unchanged,
the Romans were now prohibited not only from the navigation of the
eastern waters, but also from that of the Atlantic Ocean which was
previously permitted, as well as debarred from holding commercial
intercourse with the subjects of Carthage in Sardinia and Africa, and
also, in all probability, from effecting a settlement in Corsica;(22)
so that only Carthaginian Sicily and Carthage itself remained open
to their traffic. We recognize here the jealousy of the dominant
maritime power, gradually increasing with the extension of the Roman
dominion along the coasts. Carthage compelled the Romans to acquiesce
in her prohibitive system, to submit to be excluded from the seats of
production in the west and east (connected with which exclusion is the
story of a public reward bestowed on the Phoenician mariner who at the
sacrifice of his own ship decoyed a Roman vessel, steering after him
into the Atlantic Ocean, to perish on a sand-bank), and to restrict
their navigation under the treaty to the narrow space of the western
Mediterranean--and all this for the mere purpose of averting pillage
from their coasts and of securing their ancient and important trading
connection with Sicily. The Romans were obliged to yield to these
terms; but they did not desist from their efforts to rescue their
marine from its condition of impotence.

Quaestors of the Fleet--
Variance between Rome and Carthage