In Order To Repair His Loss, Antiochus Sent For Additional Vessels From Sicily And Phoenicia; But These Were Taken On Their Passage By The Rhodians, Who Were At This Time In Alliance With The Romans.

The Rhodians, however, in their turn were attacked and defeated by the fleet of Antiochus, near Samos, whither they had gone to join a Roman squadron.

In the meantime the Romans had collected a fleet of eighty ships, and with these they fought one hundred ships of their opponent off the coast of Ionia; the victory of the former was decisive, all the ships of Antiochus being captured or destroyed. This disaster, in connection with a signal defeat he sustained by land, compelled him to submit; and the Romans, always attentive to their maritime interests, which however they had not hitherto pushed nearly to the extent which they might have done, refused to grant him peace, except on the conditions, that he should cede all that part of Asia which lies between the sea and Mount Taurus; that he should give up all his vessels except ten; and that these should not, on any account, sail beyond the promontories of Cilicia. The Romans, extremely strict, and even severe, in enforcing the conditions of peace, not only destroyed fifty covered galleys, but, the successor of Antiochus having built additional vessels to the ten he was by treaty allowed to keep, they compelled him to burn them.

The temporary success of the Carthaginians against the Romans induced Philip, king of Macedon, to engage in that war which proved his ruin. The advice of Hannibal, when an exile at the court of Antiochus, likewise led to the disastrous war of that monarch with the same people; and by the advice of Hannibal also, Prusias, king of Bythinia, was engaged in hostilities with them. This king seems to have paid considerable attention to naval and commercial affairs, for both of which, indeed, his territories were admirably suited. In conjunction with the Rhodians, he made war against the inhabitants of Byzantium, and obliged them to remit the tax which they had been accustomed to levy on all vessels that sailed to or from the Euxine Sea, The maritime war between this sovereign and the Romans, who were at this time in alliance with Eumenes, king of Pergamus, offers nothing deserving our notice, except a stratagem executed by Hannibal. In order to compensate for the inferiority of Prusias' fleet, Hannibal ordered a great many serpents to be collected; these were put into pots, which, during the engagement, were thrown into the enemy's ships. The alarm and consternation occasioned by this novel and unexpected mode of warfare, threw his opponents into disorder, and compelled them to save themselves by flight.

The conquest of all the islands on the coast of Greece, from Epirus to Cape Malea, by the Romans, was the result of a naval war, in which they engaged with the Etolians, a people who, at this time, were so powerful at sea, and so much addicted to piracy, as to have drawn upon themselves the jealousy and the vengeance of the Romans.

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