there was which, though it could not have prevented, was strong
enough to have delayed the Roman progress eastwards. This force
belonged to Rhodes, which in the years immediately following
the close of the second Punic war reached its highest point as
a naval power.[23] Far from trying to obstruct the advance of
the Romans the Rhodian fleet helped it. Hannibal, in his exile,
saw the necessity of being strong on the sea if the East was to
be saved from the grasp of his hereditary foe; but the resources
of Antiochus, even with the mighty cooperation of Hannibal, were
insufficient. In a later and more often-quoted struggle between
East and West--that which was decided at Actium--sea-power was
again seen to 'have the casting vote.' When the whole of the
Mediterranean coasts became part of a single state the importance
of the navy was naturally diminished; but in the struggles within
the declining empire it rose again at times. The contest of the
Vandal Genseric with Majorian and the African expedition of
Belisarius--not to mention others--were largely influenced by
the naval operations.[24]

[Footnote 22: Schmitz, _Hist._Rome_, p. 256.]

[Footnote 23: C. Torr, _Rhodes_in_Ancient_Times_, p. 40.]

[Footnote 24: Gibbon, _Dec._and_Fall_, chaps. xxxvi. xli]


SEA-POWER IN THE MIDDLE AGES

A decisive event, the Mohammedan conquest of Northern Africa
from Egypt westwards, is unintelligible until it is seen how