wealth of India would have sufficed to furnish a larger material
element; but, as the country could not supply the _personnel_,
it would have been absurd to speak of the sea-power of India
apart from that of England. As soon as the Romans chose to make
the most of their natural resources the maritime predominance
of Carthage was doomed. The artificial basis of the latter's
sea-power would not enable it to hold out against serious and
persistent assaults. Unless this is perceived it is impossible to
understand the story of the Punic wars. Judged by every visible
sign of strength, Carthage, the richer, the more enterprising,
ethnically the more predominant amongst her neighbours, and
apparently the more nautical, seemed sure to win in the great
struggle with Rome which, by the conditions of the case, was to be
waged largely on the water. Yet those who had watched the struggles
of the Punic city with the Sicilian Greeks, and especially that
with Agathocles, must have seen reason to cherish doubts concerning
her naval strength. It was an anticipation of the case of Spain in
the age of Philip II. As the great Elizabethan seamen discerned
the defects of the Spanish naval establishment, so men at Rome
discerned those of the Carthaginian. Dates in connection with
this are of great significance. A comprehensive measure, with the
object of 'rescuing their marine from its condition of impotence,'
was taken by the Romans in the year 267 B.C. Four _quoestores_
_classici_--in modern naval English we may perhaps call them
port-admirals--were nominated, and one was stationed at each
of four ports. The objects of the Roman Senate, so Mommsen tells
us, were very obvious. They were 'to recover their independence
by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of Tarentum, to
close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus, and to
emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy.' Four years