which
maritime influences are communicated to the land, nevertheless history
shows repeated instances where an exceptional location, combined with
restricted area, has raised a poorly indented seaboard to maritime and
cultural preeminence. Phoenicia's brilliant history rose superior to the
limitation of indifferent harbors, owing to a position on the Arabian
isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean at the meeting
place of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Moreover, the advantages of this
particular location have in various times and in various degrees brought
into prominence all parts of the Syrian and Egyptian coasts from Antioch
to Alexandria. So the whole stretch of coast around the head of the
Adriatic, marking the conjunction of a busy sea-route with various
land-routes over the encircling mountains from Central Europe, has seen
during the ages a long succession of thriving maritime cities, in spite
of fast-silting harbors and impeded connection with the hinterland. Here
in turn have ruled with maritime sway Spina, Ravenna, Aquileia,[522]
Venice, and Trieste. On the other side of the Italian peninsula, the
location on the northernmost inlet of the western Mediterranean and at
the seaward base of the Ligurian Apennines, just where this range opens
two passes of only 1,800 feet elevation to the upper Po Valley, made an
active maritime town of Genoa from Strabo's day to the present. In its
incipiency it relied upon one mediocre harbor on an otherwise harborless
coast, a local supply of timber for its ships, and a road northward
across the mountains.[523] The maritime ascendency in the Middle Ages of
Genoa, Pisa, Venice, and Barcelona proves that no long indented coast is
necessary, but only one tolerable harbor coupled with an advantageous
location.

[Sidenote: Intermediate location between contrasted coasts.]

Owing to the ease and cheapness of water transportation, a seaboard
position between two other coasts of contrasted products due to a
difference either of zonal location or of economic development or of
both combined, insures commercial exchanges and the inevitable
activities of the middleman. The position of Carthage near the center of
the Mediterranean enabled her to fatten on the trade between the highly
developed eastern basin and the retarded western one. Midway between the
teeming industrial towns of medieval Flanders, Holland, and western
Germany, and the new unexploited districts of retarded Rus