The creation of a standing fleet was not the least of Cæsar’s achievements. The Mediterranean was now properly policed and commerce was free to circulate. The Italian navy was divided into two flotillas, one for the Western Mediterranean and one for the Adriatic. Great artificial docks were constructed for them, one for the Mediterranean fleet at Misenum by opening up a connection between the Avernian and Lucrine lakes and the sea and thus creating a small land-locked harbour which was used for exercising the rowers in rough weather. The construction of this Portus Julius, which was carried out by Agrippa with a lofty disregard both of the gastronomic fame of the Lucrine oysters and of the mythological celebrity of the lake of Avernus as the gateway to the underworld, excited a wonder which has been reflected both by Horace and Vergil. Similarly a base for the Adriatic fleet was constructed by great engineering works at Ravenna. A third harbour was created on the coast of Gaul at Fréjus (Forum Julii). The Tiber was dredged and restored to navigation. Flotillas of small vessels were maintained on the Rhine. The navy, however, did not even in these days attain to anything like the status of the army. It was “my fleet”--the private property of the emperor, equipped and maintained out of his own pocket, and manned chiefly by his slaves. Even the “prefects of the fleet” were generally freedmen and foreigners. A Roman admiral, as Mommsen remarks, ranked below a procurator or a tax-collecter. Thus the Romans never to the end of their days realised the meaning or importance of sea-power. Their navy was only for police work and on several occasions, as for example in the Dalmatian War, they failed to perceive that naval operations might have been of the greatest assistance to their army. It is true that there were no hostile navies in the world, but the empire was so distributed that marine communication might have been of very great value. The control of finance was a necessary corollary to the control of the troops. The Republic had been shipwrecked on finance almost as much as on the military system, and there is some truth in Mommsen’s epigram: “the Romans had bartered their liberty for the corn-ships of Egypt.” Perhaps the most sinister light in which we can regard the statesmanship of Augustus is that suggested by Tacitus. He was buying the support of all classes in the state systematically. But to that the Republic had already accustomed them.