were
greater than any that the more prosaic paths of trade could offer. The
fleets that issued from the Delta of the Nile were piratical squadrons,
that were the terrors of the Mediterranean coasts. The Greek, too, like the
Norseman, began his career on the sea with piracy. The Athenian historian
tells of days when it was no offence to ask a seafaring man, "Are you a
pirate, sir?" The first Admirals of the Eastern Mediterranean had
undoubtedly more likeness to Captain Kidd and "Blackbeard" than to Nelson
and Collingwood. Later came the time when organized Governments in the
Greek cities and on the Phoenician coast kept fleets on the land-locked sea
to deal with piracy and protect peaceful commerce. But the prizes that
allured the corsair were so tempting, that piracy revived again and again,
and even in the late days of the Roman Republic the Consul Pompey had to
conduct a maritime war on a large scale to clear the sea of the pirates.

Of the early naval wars of the Mediterranean--battles of more or less
piratical fleets, or of the war galleys of coast and island states--we have
no clear record, or no vestige of a record. Egyptians, Phoenicians,
Cretans, men of the rich island state of which we have only recently found
the remains in buried palaces, Greeks of the Asiatic mainland, and their
Eastern neighbours, Greeks of the islands and the Peninsula, Illyrians of
the labyrinth of creek and island that fringes the Adriatic, Sicilians and
Carthaginians, all had their adventures and battles on the sea, in the dim
beginnings of history. Homer has his catalogue of ships set forth in
stately verse, telling how the Greek chieftains led 120,000 warriors
embarked on 1100 galleys to the siege of Troy. But no hostile fleet met
them, if indeed the great armament ever sailed, as to which historians and
critics dispute. One must pass on for centuries after Homer's day to find
reliable and detailed records of early naval war. The first great battle on
the sea, of which we can tell the story, was the fight in the Straits of
Salamis, when Greek and Persian strove for the mastery of the near East.

King Darius had found that his hold on the Greek cities of Asia Minor was
insecure so long as they could look for armed help to their kindred beyond
the Archipelago, and he had sent his satraps to raid the Greek mainland.
That first invasion ended disastrously at Marathon. His son, Xerxes, took
up the quarrel and devoted years to the preparati