obscure, too little advertised as a danger, to be separately observed. But, partly, this arose from her rapidity. Macedonia was taken separately from Greece. Sicily, which was the advanced port of Greece to the West, had early fallen as a sort of appanage to the Punic struggle. And all the rest followed by insensible degrees. In Syria, and again in Pontus, and in Macedonia, three great kingdoms which to Greece seemed related rather as enemies than as friends, and which therefore roused no spirit of resistance in Greece, through Rome had already withdrawn all the contingent proper from Greece. Had these powers concerted with Egypt and with Greece a powerful league, Rome would have been thrown back upon her Western chambers. The reason why the Piratic power arose, we suppose to have been this, and also the reason why such a power was not viewed as extra-national. The nautical profession as such flowed in a channel altogether distinct from the martial profession. It was altogether and exclusively commercial in its general process. Only, upon peculiar occasions arose a necessity for a nautical power as amongst the resources of empire. Carthage reared upon the basis of her navy, as had done Athens, Rhodes, Tyre, some part of her power: and Rome put forth so much of this power as sufficed to meet Carthage. But that done, we find no separate ambition growing up in Rome and directing itself to naval war. Accidentally, when the war arose between Caesar and Pompey, it became evident that for rapidly transferring armies and for feeding these armies, a navy would be necessary. And Cicero, but for _this crisis_, and not as a _general_ remark, said--that 'necesse est qui mare tenuit rerum potiri.'