HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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the rank of an emperor; for the fleet, respectable as it might appear on thescore of numbers, was incapable of conveying a larger force than eight thou-sand men. Nevertheless, so destitute was the Goth of any means by which hecould oppose them, that the fleet of the Byzantines attacked the strong nndancient city of Tarentum, did no inconsiderable mischief to the country itself,very materially interrupted its commerce, and returned at last with impunityto its own ports, in all the pride and arrogance of a victory obtained over theGoths; but it was evident, that all the mischief which had taken place hadmost injuriously fallen on the Italians, whom the Goths had reduced to the abjectcondition of vassals, and whom the Byzantines still affected to honour withthe familiar appellation of brethren.

Theodoric, nothing dismayed at these partial and inconsiderable advantages,immediately constructed and drew together a fleet, consisting, according to themost authentic accounts, of one thousand light vessels ; but it is shrewdly re-marked, that these armed vessels, or boats as they might be more properlystiled, must have been in individual force, and in general dimensions, inferior tothose w'hich so many centuries earlier had, under the command of Agamem-non, assisted at the siege of Troy. How this speedily formed navy might haveansw'ered the expectation of the Goth, had there been an actual necessity for anencounter, is a point which it is now' become impossible to determine ; for thetimiditv of the Roman, excited by the firmness as w'ell as by the activity of hisopponent, shrunk in dismay from all future conflict, and the emperor thoughthimself happy in receiving peace on such terms as the magnanimity of hisantagonist thought it not derogatory to his own dignity to offer him.

The declining sun of the Roman empire had now nearly descended to thepolitical horizon. A very considerable number of provinces had been eitherabandoned to their fate, and left to the protection of their own liberties,by the imbecillity of their former conquerors, or they had been forcibly wrestedfrom their long state of vassalage by nations, which the once polished mastersof the world affected to consider as barbarians and robbers. Upwards of onehundred years had elapsed since Britain itself, the subjugation of which hadcost Ctesar and his successors the lives of such a multitude of their besttroops, had been left entirely to its fate, and the precarious mercy of theScots and Piets. The very name of the western empire had been abolishedfor half a century, and the pow’er of the eastern seemed rapidly approachingto the same ignominious termination. The reign of the celebrated Justi-nian,