doomed.  The artificial basis of the latter’s sea-power would not enable it to hold out against serious and persistent assaults.  Unless this is perceived it is impossible to understand the story of the Punic wars.  Judged by every visible sign of strength, Carthage, the richer, the more enterprising, ethnically the more predominant amongst her neighbours, and apparently the more nautical, seemed sure to win in the great struggle with Rome which, by the conditions of the case, was to be waged largely on the water.  Yet those who had watched the struggles of the Punic city with the Sicilian Greeks, and especially that with Agathocles, must have seen reason to cherish doubts concerning her naval strength.  It was an anticipation of the case of Spain in the age of Philip II.  As the great Elizabethan seamen discerned the defects of the Spanish naval establishment, so men at Rome discerned those of the Carthaginian.  Dates in connection with this are of great significance.  A comprehensive measure, with the object of ‘rescuing their marine from its condition of impotence,’ was taken by the Romans in the year 267 B.C.  Four quoestores classici—­in modern naval English we may perhaps call them port-admirals—­were nominated, and one was stationed at each of four ports.  The objects of the Roman Senate, so Mommsen tells us, were very obvious.  They were ’to recover their independence by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of Tarentum, to close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus, and to emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy.’  Four years afterwards the first Punic war began.  It was, and had to be, largely a naval contest.  The Romans waged it with varying fortune, but in the end triumphed by means of their sea-power.  ’The sea was the place where all great destinies were decided.’[19] The victory of Catulus over the Carthaginian fleet off the AEgatian Islands decided the war and left to the Romans the possession of Sicily and the power of possessing themselves of Sardinia and Corsica.  It would be an interesting and perhaps not a barren investigation to inquire to what extent the decline of the mother states of Phoenicia, consequent on the campaigns of Alexander the Great, had helped to enfeeble the naval efficiency of the Carthaginian defences.  One thing was certain.  Carthage had now met with a rival endowed with natural maritime resources greater than her own.  That rival also contained citizens who understood the true importance of sea-power.  ’With a statesmanlike sagacity from which succeeding generations might have drawn a lesson, the leading men of the Roman Commonwealth perceived that all their coast-fortifications and coast-garrisons would prove inadequate unless the war-marine of the state were again placed on a footing that should command respect.’[20] It is a gloomy reflection that the leading men of our own great maritime country could not see this in 1860.  A thorough comprehension of the events