152

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

^island for Rome, is said to have employed three entire years in preparing a fleetsufficient for the magnitude of such an undertaking; or in making those pre-vious arrangements and inferior conquests, which, enabling him to deprive•those against whom his power was ultimately destined of any extraneous assist-ance, must materially contribute to the success of the main object. Fortunefavoured the attempt, by taking off a considerable part of the danger whichattended it; for as usurpers hardly ever experience fidelity from those whohave become their subjects with the slightest degree of compulsion, so wasCarausius murdered by the very man whom he had selected from the peopleto be his favourite, and the minister of his government. Alectus, whichwas the name of the assassin, possessed neither the abilities, nor the influenceof his predecessor. His resolution served him not to any greater furtheranceof his designs, than to enable him to plunge a dagger in the breast of hissovereign and patron in an unguarded moment. He possessed not such mili-tary skill as could point out to him the means of averting the danger, whichthe approach of Constantius threatened him with, or of protecting that diademwhich he had so wickedly seized. Carausius, however, during the time he hadpossessed the sovereignty of Britain, had raised a very powerful fleet, andAlectus, with a degree of prudence which far exceeded every other of theshort-lived acts of his government, had stationed off the Isle of Wight, for thepurpose of meeting Constantius in his passage. A thick fog rendered themeasure abortive, so that the Roman army, or at least a powerful divisionof it, under the command of Asclepiodatus, one of the lieutenants to Constan-tius, effected its landing in safety. Alectus had posted himself near London,or rather the spot where it is now situated, for the purpose of opposing Con-stantius himself, who was daily expected to arrive on the coast with the mainbody of his fleet. The diversion just mentioned immediately caused themarch of the usurper to the westward, where, in a pitched battle with thefirst invader, he was totally defeated, losing his short-lived, ill-acquired honour,together with his life. Constantius, effecting his landing on the Kentishcoast without the smallest opposition, was hailed by the people who methim as a species of deliverer, so that the whole territory became oncemore a colony tributary to Rome, without the smallest objection made to theyoke.

No mention is made of any naval force being possessed by Rome, or by thosevvho assumed the dignity and title of its emperor after this time, till the civil

war