96 HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

in the midst of those tumults and conflicts which almost uninterruptedly dis-tracted Greece.

Although the Athenians and Spartans, more particularly the former, held thehighest rank as maritime powers among all the Grecian states, yet several others,less formidable, members of the well known Achaean league, indeed movedin an inferior, but far from an ignoble sphere. The fate of Corinth, however,decided that of all the cotemporary continental states, parties to the same confe-deracy, as that of Athens did of those islands and republics which had so longcontributed to support her insolence, and her tyranny, more in the character ofher vassals, than of her allies. The Phoenicians, on the opposite shore, who hadmade so conspicuous a figure, among the first people addicted to maritime pur-suits, had totally sunk under the power of Alexander, who despised all glory butwhat he could obtain through his own prowess, and that of his soldiers.

Such was the origin, such the progressive history, and such the final period,of that maritime power, which the different states, whose territories werewashed by the iEgean, the Ionian, the Carpathian, and in short all the other§eas, into which the eastern part of the Mediterranean was nominally divided,had acquired in the early ages of the world. Their secluded situation, thenarrow limits of the different territories over which the power of each individualrepublic, or community, extended, and the rising consequence of Carthage, aswell as Rome, prevented any of them from acquiring more than a localconsequence, the effects of which were not felt beyond the very narrow sphereto which the causes just assigned, confined it. The Assyrian and the Persianempires, the kingdoms of Egypt, and of Macedon, were addicted to no otherpursuits than those of a military nature, and could scarcely be said to aim atany conquests, but such as were atchievable by their soldiers only. On alloccasions, when fleets became necessary to them in the execution of their pro-jects. thev were obliged to be content with asking, or demanding such succourfrom the Phoenicians, the Cretans, the inhabitants of Samos, Chios, or otherislands in that quarter, either in the quality of their allies, or their slaves, asthey chose to afford, or the power of their masters thought proper to exact.

The summary account of the mariue history of Greece, and the neighbouringstates, absorbed as they all became, first, into each other, and secondly, into thevery superior vortex which the Roman republic, when in the zenith of its great-ness, formed round itself, naturally includes all that is necessary to be said, in an

historical