In These Tables Very
Few Of The Countries Are Set Down According To Their Real Position, Their
Respective Limits, Or Their Actual Size.
The law of the emperor Theodosius, by which he prohibited his subjects,
under pain of death, from teaching the
Art of ship-building to the
barbarians, was ineffectual in the attainment of the object which he had in
view; nor did any real service to the empire result from a fleet of 1100
large ships that he fitted out, to act in conjunction with the forces of
the western empire for the protection of Rome against Genseric, king of the
Vandals. This fleet arrived in Sicily, but performed nothing; and Genseric,
notwithstanding the law of Theodosius, obtained the means and the skill of
fitting out a formidable fleet. The Vandal empire in Africa was peculiarly
adapted to maritime enterprise, as it stretched along the coast of the
Mediterranean above ninety days' journey from Tangier to Tripoli: the woods
of mount Atlas supplied an inexhaustible quantity of ship timber; the
African nations whom he had subdued, especially the Carthaginians, were
skilled in ship-building and in maritime affairs; and they eagerly obeyed
the call of their new sovereign, when he held out to them the plunder of
Rome. Thus, as Gibbon observes, after an interval of six centuries, the
fleets that issued from the port of Carthage again claimed the empire of
the Mediterranean. A feeble and ineffectual resistance was opposed to the
Vandal sovereign, who succeeded in his grand enterprise, plundered Rome,
and landed safely in Carthage with his rich spoils.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 419 of 1007
Words from 115036 to 115299
of 273188
