form a war marine for their
protection. The objects of the Roman senate--to recover their
independence by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of
Tarentum, to close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus,
and to emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy--were very
obvious. Their already explained relations with Carthage during the
last Italian war discover traces of such views. King Pyrrhus indeed
compelled the two great cities once more--it was for the last time
--to conclude an offensive alliance; but the lukewarmness and
faithlessness of that alliance, the attempts of the Carthaginians
to establish themselves in Rhegium and Tarentum, and the immediate
occupation of Brundisium by the Romans after the termination of the
war, show clearly how much their respective interests already came
into collision.

Rome and the Greek Naval Powers

Rome very naturally sought to find support against Carthage from the
Hellenic maritime states. Her old and close relations of amity with
Massilia continued uninterrupted. The votive offering sent by Rome
to Delphi, after the conquest of Veii, was preserved there in the
treasury of the Massiliots. After the capture of Rome by the Celts
there was a collection in Massilia for the sufferers by the fire,
in which the city chest took the lead; in return the Roman senate
granted commercial advantages to the Massiliot merchants, and, at the
celebration of the games in the Forum assigned a position of honour
(-Graecostasis-) to the Massiliots by the side of the platform for the
senators. To the same category belong the treaties of commerce and
amity concluded by the Romans about 448 with Rhodes and not long after
with Apollonia, a considerable mercantile town on the Epirot coast,
and especially the closer relation, so fraught with danger for
Carthage, which immediately after the end of the Pyrrhic war
sprang up between Rome and Syracuse.(23)

While the Roman power by sea was thus very far from keeping pace with
the immense development of their power by land, and the war marine
belonging to the Romans in particular was by no means such as from the
geographical and commercial position of the city it ought to have
been, yet it began gradually to emerge out of the complete nullity to
which it had been reduced about the year 400; and, considering the
great resources of Italy, the Phoenicians might well follow its
efforts with anxious eyes.

The crisis in reference to