262 THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. 



every most striking incident recorded by these great his- 

 torians. Marathon, Salamis, Thermopylae, Sphacteria, Syra- 

 cuse, all afford present and living pictures of the site of 

 events thus consecrated to our memory. Within the same 

 remarkable epoch is comprised that signal event of the 

 Macedonian conquests, begun on the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean, carried by an impetuous march of victory to those 

 of the Indian Ocean, and long surviving the great warrior 

 who achieved them. 



This earlier portion of history belongs chiefly to the 

 eastern end of the Mediterranean and its subordinate seas. 

 Descending with the course of time, and shifting the scene 

 westwards, we find the Republics of Rome and Carthage 

 struggling long and fiercely for supremacy on its shores ; and 

 in their earlier wars, by a series of naval conflicts unparal- 

 leled in maritime history. Despite the genius of one great 

 Carthaginian chief, Rome triumphed in the end through the 

 vigour of her civil institutions and consummate military 

 system ; and triumphed not over Carthage alone, but even- 

 tually over every other Mediterranean power. No fact in all 

 history approaches in wonder to this great miracle of the 

 Roman Empire the progress from an obscure town on 

 the Tiber to the complete supremacy of the ancient world. 

 During two or three centuries of this Empire, even amidst 

 internal revolutions and disorders, there was no part of the 

 vast circuit of the Mediterranean which did not own the 

 Roman sway. And yet later, when the nominal seat of 

 government was translated to the Bosphorus, and hordes of 

 barbarians Groths, Huns, and Vandals pressed upon the 

 empire on every frontier of this wide circumference, the 

 Mediterranean and its rich coasts still formed the centre and 

 object of these great movements of races. And so they 

 continued during the dark and gloomy centuries which 

 separate the ancient from the modern world. 



