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. This extension of their dominions was
followed by a successful war with the Istrians, which made them masters of
all the western parts of the Mediterranean Sea; and by an equally
successful war with Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, who was compelled to
deliver up his fleet to them, as well as all the sea-ports of consequence
on the coast of Sparta.
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