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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

having recourse to arms in aid of their mechanical assault, that the shores ofthe Hellespont were on every side covered with dreadful proofs of the discom-fiture of their foes, and of their own success *.

The irruption of the V andals, the successors to the Goths, and equal claim-ants with them as to the extent of the share they separately held in thedestruction of the Roman empire, forced its way like the slow but terrificeruption of a volcano, and passed from the Elbe, the crater whence it lastissued, even to the Pillars of Hercules, now more commonly known as theStreights of Gibraltar, without possessing or needing any naval strength what-ever. Here the ocean appeared to prescribe bounds to its farther progress ;but difficulties no more important are easily surmounted by the mind that iscapable of conceiving and executing vast projects. The vessels found by theinvaders in the harbours of Spain which they over-ran, enabled them to pursuetheir course into Africa, many of the northern parts of which extensive con-tinent they made themselves masters of, with as little difficulty as had attendedtheir former conquests.

Among the different places and fortresses which were so unfortunate as toFall into the possession of these barbarians, was the renovated city of Carthage,which, though it had not reached its pristine state of splendour, and magnifi-cence, had emerged considerably from obscurity. Its edifices were regularand magnificent: it was the emporium of traffic for six fruitful provinces thatsurrounded it, and displayed, though in a dependant state, all the wealth, splen-dour, and luxury of a free and rapidly rising country. It possessed schools forrhetoricians and philosophers, as well as places of exercise and amusement forthe pleasure and advantage of the youth, to which might be added those for theentertainment of the wealthy. All these proofs of encreasing greatness hadbeen acquired by the restoration of her port, and the consequent influx ofcommerce, so that Carthage became honoured with the title of the African

^ Mr. Gibbon, with that intelligence and shrewdness which pervade the whole of his history, addsthe following note on this transaction:—“ Zosimus, says he, (1. v. p. 119,) mentions these gallies bythe name of liburnians, and observes, that they were as swift (without explaining the difference betweenthem) as the vessels with fifty oars, but that they were far inferior in speed to the triremes, which hadbeen long disused. Yet he reasonably concludes, from the testimony of Polybius, that gallies of a stilllarger size had been constructed in the Punic wars. Since the establishment of the Roman empireover the Mediterranean, the useless art of building large ships of war had probably been neglected, andat length forgotten.

Rome.