of those treaties was made 250 years before the first Punic war; and the second, about fifty years before it.  Besides, it is not probable that the Romans should have been entirely ignorant of, and inattentive to maritime commerce for so long a period; since several nations of Italy, with which they were at first connected, and which they afterwards conquered, were very conversant in this commerce, and derived great consideration, power, and wealth from it.

The Romans had conquered Etruria, and made themselves masters of the Tuscan powers both by sea and land, before the commencement of the first Punic war; and though at this period, the Tuscans were not so celebrated for their commerce as they had been, yet the shipping and commerce they did possess, must have fallen into the power of the Romans; and we can scarcely suppose that these, together with the facilities which the Tuscans enjoyed for commerce, by means of their ports, and their skill and commercial habits and connections, would be entirely neglected by their conquerors.  Besides, there are several old Roman coins, by some supposed to have been as old as the time of the kings, and certainly prior to the first Punic war, on the reverses of which different parts of ships are visible.  Now, as the Roman historians are diffuse in the accounts they give of the wars of the Romans, but take no notice of their commercial transactions, we may safely conclude, from their not mentioning any maritime wars, or expeditions of a date so early as these coins, that the ships at that period preserved by the Romans, and deemed of such consequence as to be struck on their coins, were employed for the purposes of commerce.

The Tuscans and the Grecian colonies in the south of Italy, certainly had made great progress in commerce at an early period; and as,—­if their example did not stimulate the Romans to enterprises of the same kind,—­the Romans, at least when they conquered them, became possessed of the commerce which they then enjoyed, it will be proper to take a brief view of it.

If we may credit the ancient historians, the Etrurians or Tyrrhenians, even before the reign of Minos, had been for a long time masters of the greatest part of the Mediterranean Sea, and had given their name to the Tyrrhenian Sea, upon which they were situate.  Piracy, as well as commerce, was followed by them; and they became at last so expert, successful, and dangerous, for their piracies, that they were attacked, and their maritime power greatly abridged, by the Carthaginians and the Sicilians.  Their most famous port was Luna, which was situated on the Macra, a river which, flowing from the Apennines, divided Liguria from Etruria, and fell into the Tyrrhenian Sea.  There seems good reason to believe that Luna was a place of great trade before the Trojan war; it was extremely capacious, and in every respect worthy of the commercial enterprise and wealth of the Tuscans.  Populonium, a city which was situate on a high promontory