erranean;
and to each of the squadrons he attached a body of several thousand
marines. Besides these two ports, which may be considered as the
principal seats of the Roman navy, a very considerable force was
stationed at Frejus, on the coast of Provence, and the Euxine was
guarded by forty ships, and three thousand soldiers. To all these we add
the fleet which preserved the communication between Gaul and Britain,
and a great number of vessels constantly maintained on the Rhine and
Danube, to harass the country, or to intercept the passage of the
barbarians. [68] If we review this general state of the Imperial forces;
of the cavalry as well as infantry; of the legions, the auxiliaries, the
guards, and the navy; the most liberal computation will not allow us
to fix the entire establishment by sea and by land at more than four
hundred and fifty thousand men: a military power, which, however
formidable it may seem, was equalled by a monarch of the last century,
whose kingdom was confined within a single province of the Roman empire.
[69]

[Footnote 66: The Romans tried to disguise, by the pretence of religious
awe their ignorance and terror. See Tacit. Germania, c. 34.]

[Footnote 67: Plutarch, in Marc. Anton. [c. 67.] And yet, if we may
credit Orosius, these monstrous castles were no more than ten feet above
the water, vi. 19.]

[Footnote 68: See Lipsius, de Magnitud. Rom. l. i. c. 5. The sixteen
last chapters of Vegetius relate to naval affairs.]

[Footnote 69: Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. c. 29. It must, however, be
remembered, that France still feels that extraordinary effort.]

We have attempted to explain the spirit which moderated, and the
strength which supported, the power of Hadrian and the Antonines.
We shall now endeavor, with clearness and precision, to describe the
provinces once united under their sway, but, at present, divided into so
many independent and hostile states. Spain, the western extremity of
the empire, of Europe, and of the ancient world, has, in every age,
invariably preserved the same natural limits; the Pyrenaean Mountains,
the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic Ocean. That great peninsula, at
present so unequally divided between two sovereigns, was distributed by
Augustus into three provinces, Lusitania, Baetica, and Tarraconensis.
The kingdom of Portugal now fills the place of the warlike country of
the Lusitanians; and the loss sustained by the former on the side of the
East, is compen