When Rome had won her first game in world conquest and all Italy was Rome, Carthage was mistress of the Mediterranean, and without her permission no man might even wash his hands in her “Phœnician Lake.” Triremes and quinqueremes with proudly curving prows scudded over the blue waters or huddled together in port as bevies of black swans. And Rome had no fleet. But Rome could learn from her enemies; and when a wrecked Carthaginian galley was dashed against the Latian coast, Rome quickly learned the art of making galleys; and within two months the waving forest near the coast was metamorphosed into a fleet of one hundred and twenty Roman triremes. And when the pain of growth was upon Rome making further conquest fatally necessary, she embarked unsteadily upon her late waving forest trees and went reeling forth to meet the swan bevies of the Mediterranean. The hostile fleets engaged and Rome’s was annihilated. Then these sullen young-world children wildly wept, as did Romulus and Remus, perhaps, in the cave of the she-wolf. But when they were suckled and made strong with the milk of defeat, these wild young Romans built themselves another fleet. And Duillius devised a grappling contrivance whereby to catch and hold the enemy’s ship until a drawbridge could be thrown across o’er which the short-sword Roman soldiers might pass and so fight on the deck hand to hand as on land. Again the hostile fleets engaged on the blue Mediterranean. But as the haughty quinqueremes with their decks filled with archers bore down upon the awkward Roman triremes, the grappling “hands” arose, the quinqueremes were grappled. Consternation prevailed among the Carthaginians as the drawbridges from ship to ship were thrown across, and the dreaded Roman soldiers short-sword in hand were seen slaughtering the archers and the rowers. Rome’s first naval victory was won. If the blue Mediterranean could make known all that has taken place upon its waves and shores--what a Homer of the waters it would be! But nature is indifferent to the human tragedy. That other scene off the coast of Carthage, after the second Punic war, when Rome demanded as a condition of peace that the Carthaginian fleet should be destroyed--yet burns upon the historic page, but the waters that once reddened with the flames just ripple unrememberingly. Five hundred galleys--towering quinqueremes, sturdy triremes--were led out from the harbor before the mourning gaze of the dethroned Queen of the Seas, and set on fire; she watched them blaze down to the laughing waters.