Maritime Relations
Piracy

It remains that we glance at the maritime relations of this period;
although there is hardly anything else to be said, than that there
no longer existed anywhere a naval power. Carthage was annihilated;
the war-fleet of Syria was destroyed in accordance with the treaty;
the war-marine of Egypt, once so powerful, was under its present
indolent rulers in deep decay. The minor states, and particularly
the mercantile cities, had doubtless some armed transports; but
these were not even adequate for the task--so difficult in the
Mediterranean--of repressing piracy. This task necessarily devolved
on Rome as the leading power in the Mediterranean. While a century
previously the Romans had come forward in this matter with especial
and salutary decision, and had in particular introduced their supremacy
in the east by a maritime police energetically handled for the general
good,(40) the complete nullity of this police at the very beginning
of this period as distinctly betokens the fearfully rapid decline of
the aristocratic government. Rome no longer possessed a fleet of
her own; she was content to make requisitions for ships, when it
seemed necessary, from the maritime towns of Italy, Asia Minor,
and elsewhere. The consequence naturally was, that buccaneering
became organized and consolidated. Something, perhaps, though
not enough, was done towards its suppression, so far as the direct
power of the Romans extended, in the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas.
The expeditions directed against the Dalmatian and Ligurian coasts
at this epoch aimed especially at the suppression of piracy in the
two Italian seas; for the same reason the Balearic islands were
occupied in 631.(41) But in the Mauretanian and Greek waters the
inhabitants along the coast and the mariners were left to settle