HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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Rome. Her maritime pursuits, however, appear to have been strictly andtotally confined to commerce, and never to have soared into the construction,and ambitious desire of possessing a navy equipped solely, or even principally,for the purposes of war. Her state of dependance might be considered as oneof happiness, and while Rome, the mistress, to whom she owed obedience,maintained her necessary consequence, she appeared to rest as secure without,as she would have been with, the possession of a fleet. It certainly would havebeen arrogance in the vassal state to have stepped beyond those bounds which,she appears to have prescribed to herself; but when wrested from a dominiontinder which she had continued during the space of five hundred and eighty-five years by the invaders just mentioned, she not long afterwards relapsed con-siderably into her former state of obscurity. Still, however, her lingeringexistence was protracted till towards the end of the seventh century, whenthe Saracens, under the command of Mohammed’s successors, put the finishingstroke to the destruction of this unfortunate and apparently devoted city. Soeffectual were the means, and so successful were those who became the instru-ments of applying it, that few or rather no traces whatever were left to pointout the spot where this lamentable proof of the dreadful revolutions which havehumbled, at different times, the most powerful, states, had once raised its impe-rious head.

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