was down to the interruption of the war by the peace of Nicias.  The great expedition just mentioned over-taxed her strength.  Its failure brought about the ruin of the state.  It was held by contemporaries, and has been held in our own day, that the Athenian defeat at Syracuse was due to the omission of the government at home to keep the force in Sicily properly supplied and reinforced.  This explanation of failure is given in all ages, and should always be suspected.  The friends of unsuccessful generals and admirals always offer it, being sure of the support of the political opponents of the administration.  After the despatch of the supporting expedition under Demosthenes and Eurymedon, no further great reinforcement, as Nicias admitted, was possible.  The weakness of Athens was in the character of the men who swayed the popular assemblies and held high commands.  A people which remembered the administration of a Pericles, and yet allowed a Cleon or an Alcibiades to direct its naval and military policy, courted defeat.  Nicias, notwithstanding the possession of high qualities, lacked the supreme virtue of a commander—­firm resolution.  He dared not face the obloquy consequent on withdrawal from an enterprise on which the popular hopes had been fixed; and therefore he allowed a reverse to be converted into an overwhelming disaster.  ’The complete ruin of Athens had appeared, both to her enemies and to herself, impending and irreparable.  But so astonishing, so rapid, and so energetic had been her rally, that [a year after Syracuse] she was found again carrying on a terrible struggle.’[16] Nevertheless her sea-power had indeed been ruined at Syracuse.  Now she could wage war only ‘with impaired resources and on a purely defensive system.’  Even before Arginusae it was seen that ’superiority of nautical skill had passed to the Peloponnesians and their allies.’[17]

[Footnote 15:  Thirwall, Hist.Greece_, iii. p. 96.]

[Footnote 16:  Grote, Hist.Greece_, v. p. 354.]

[Footnote 17:  Ibid. p. 503.]

The great, occasionally interrupted, and prolonged contest between Rome and Carthage was a sustained effort on the part of one to gain and of the other to keep the control of the Western Mediterranean.  So completely had that control been exercised by Carthage, that she had anticipated the Spanish commercial policy in America.  The Romans were precluded by treaties from trading with the Carthaginian territories in Hispania, Africa, and Sardinia.  Rome, as Mommsen tells us, ’was from the first a maritime city and, in the period of its vigour, never was so foolish or so untrue to its ancient traditions as wholly to neglect its war marine and to desire to be a mere continental power.’  It may be that it was lust of wealth rather than lust of dominion that first prompted a trial of strength with Carthage.  The vision of universal empire could hardly as yet have formed itself in the imagination of a single Roman.