Mediterranean.

Roman Fortification of the Coast

These were disasters no less than the defeat on the Allia, and the
Roman senate seems to have felt them as such and to have made use of
the favourable turn, which the Italian relations assumed soon after
the conclusion of the humiliating treaties with Carthage and Tarentum,
with all energy to improve its depressed maritime position. The most
important of the coast towns were furnished with Roman colonies: Pyrgi
the seaport of Caere, the colonization of which probably falls within
this period; along the west coast, Antium in 415,(11) Tarracina in
425,(12) the island of Pontia in 441,(13) so that, as Ardea and
Circeii had previously received colonists, all the Latin seaports of
consequence in the territory of the Rutuli and Volsci had now become
Latin or burgess colonies; further, in the territory of the Aurunci,
Minturnae and Sinuessa in 459;(14) in that of the Lucanians, Paestum
and Cosa in 481;(15) and, on the coast of the Adriatic, Sena Gallica
and Castrum Novum about 471,(16) and Ariminum in 486;(17) to which
falls to be added the occupation of Brundisium, which took place
immediately after the close of the Pyrrhic war. In the greater part
of these places--the burgess or maritime colonies(18)--the young men
were exempted from serving in the legions and destined solely for the
watching of the coasts. The well judged preference given at the same
time to the Greeks of Lower Italy over their Sabellian neighbours,
particularly to the considerable communities of Neapolis, Rhegium,
Locri, Thurii, and Heraclea, and their similar exemption under the
like conditions from furnishing contingents to the land army,
completed the network drawn by Rome around the coasts of Italy.

But with a statesmanlike sagacity, from which the succeeding
generations might have drawn a lesson, the leading men of the Roman
commonwealth perceived that all these coast fortifications and coast
garrisons could not but prove inadequate, unless the war marine of
the state were again placed on a footing that should command respect.
Some sort of nucleus for this purpose was already furnished on the
subjugation of Antium (416) by the serviceable war-galleys which were
carried off to the Roman docks; but the enactment at the same time,
that the Antiates should abstain from all maritime traffic,(19) is a
very clear and distinct indication how weak the Romans then felt
themselves at sea, and how completel