may have been, the naval strength of those Italian states was
great absolutely as well as relatively. Sismondi, speaking of
Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, towards the end of the eleventh century,
says 'these three cities had more vessels on the Mediterranean
than the whole of Christendom besides.'[29] Dealing with a period
two centuries later, he declares it 'difficult to comprehend
how two simple cities could put to sea such prodigious fleets
as those of Pisa and Genoa.' The difficulty disappears when we
have Mahan's explanation. The maritime republics of Italy--like
Athens and Rhodes in ancient, Catalonia in mediæval, and England
and the Netherlands in more modern times--were 'peculiarly well
fitted, by situation and resources, for the control of the sea by
both war and commerce.' As far as the western Mediterranean was
concerned, Genoa and Pisa had given early proofs of their maritime
energy, and fixed themselves, in succession to the Saracens, in
the Balearic Isles, Sardinia, and Corsica. Sea-power was the
Themistoclean instrument with which they made a small state into
a great one.

[Footnote 29: _Ital._Republics_, English ed., p. 29.]

A fertile source of dispute between states is the acquisition
of territory beyond sea. As others have done before and since,
the maritime republics of Italy quarrelled over this. Sea-power
seemed, like Saturn, to devour its own children. In 1284, in a
great sea-fight off Meloria, the Pisans were defeated by the
Genoese with heavy loss, which, as Sismondi states, 'ruined the
maritime power' of the former. From that time Genoa, transferring
her activity to the Levant, became the rival of Venice, The fleets
of the two cities in 1298 met near Cyprus in an encounter, said