=219. Imperial Naval Vessels.=--At Ostia, too, can be seen a few triremes of the Imperial Navy. Enemies to the Roman dominion have practically disappeared from the seas, but there is still a certain danger of pirates or local insurrection; therefore, although the clumsy four- and five-bankers of the Punic War periods disappeared soon after the battle of Actium, small patrol squadrons of swift triremes, pulling about 170 oars, or of smaller craft are maintained by the government. These ships are extremely like the Athenian triremes of the golden age of Greece and call for no special description here.[135] The Romans are not naturally a seafaring people. Nearly all the larger merchant ships are manned if not owned by Greeks or Levantines; and it has been with real satisfaction that the Emperors have felt that they could allow their navy to dwindle down to insignificance. With the army, as will be seen, things are very different.[136] =220. The Harbor Town of Ostia.=--Ostia has all the accompaniments of a busy port: a great mass of squalid lodging-houses for sailors, innumerable taverns overrun with dirty loiterers of both sexes, a great many uncouth faces along the quays, ear-ringed Syrians, and even quaintly jabbering negroes. There are, however, some good houses for the rich merchants and directors of the shipping, and a forum flanked with handsome temples and government buildings befitting the harbor town of the Mistress of the World. In the outskirts of Ostia one can quickly get out into delightful country stretching all along the seashore. The villas of city magnates look forth upon the blue Tyrrhenian Sea, or are bowered in lush groves surrounded by rich gardens and fruitful orchards. The melons raised around Ostia are in demand by every epicure in the capital. Who can believe a prophecy that this active bustling port, with its enormous shipping, and all these villas, groves, and gardens will some day vanish like a dream, and that Ostia will lie in a desolate fever-stricken country,--with hardly a house in sight along the deserted shores, and with the harbor town of the Eternal City reduced itself to a few miserable cabins? =221. The Roman Guilds (_Collegia_).=--Ere turning one’s glance from the economic life of Rome it is needful to regard the organization of industry. Nearly all free workmen are members of “guilds” (_collegia_) which nominally exist for the purpose of worshiping some patron deity; thus the bakeries are the special votaries of Vesta the hearth goddess, the fullers of Minerva the protectress of wool-working, the smiths of Vulcan, and so with others.