Romans saw that they would never be safe as
long as Carthage had the stronger navy; so they began to build one of
their own. They copied a Carthaginian war galley that had been
wrecked; and meanwhile taught their men to row on benches set up
ashore. This made the Carthaginians laugh and led them to expect an
easy victory. But the Romans were thorough in everything they did, and
they had the best trained soldiers in the world. They knew the
Carthaginians could handle war galleys better than they could
themselves; so they tried to give their soldiers the best possible
chance when once the galleys closed. They made a sort of drawbridge
that could be let down with a bang on the enemy boats and there held
fast by sharp iron spikes biting into the enemy decks. Then their
soldiers charged across and cleared everything before them.

[Illustration: ROMAN TRIREME--A vessel with three benches of oars]

The Carthaginians never recovered from this first fatal defeat at Mylae
in 260 B.C., though Carthage itself was not destroyed for more than a
century afterwards, and though Hannibal, one of the greatest soldiers
who ever lived, often beat the Romans in the meantime. All sorts of
reasons, many of them true enough in their way, are given for
Hannibal's final defeat. But sea-power, the first and greatest of all,
is commonly left out. His march round the shores of the western
Mediterranean and his invasion of Italy from across the Alps will
remain one of the wonders of war till the end of history. But the mere
fact that he had to go all the way round by land, instead of straight
across by water, was the real prime cause of his defeat. His forces
simply wore themselves out. Why? Look at the map and you will see
that he and his supplies had to go much farther by land than the Romans
and their supplies had to go by water because the Roman victory over
the Carthaginian fleet had made the shortest seaways safe for Romans
and very unsafe for Carthaginians. Then remember that carrying men and
supplies by sea is many times easier than carrying them by land; and
you get the perfect answer.

CHAPTER IV

CELTIC BRITAIN UNDER ROME

(55 B.C.-410 A.D.)

When Caesar was conquering the Celts of Western France he found that
one of their strongest tribes, the Veneti, had been joined by two
hundred and twenty vessels manned by their fellow-Celts from southern
Britain. The united fleets of the Celts were bigger than any Roman
f