Carausius was
murdered by Alectus: against the latter the emperor Constantine sailed with
a powerful fleet, and having effected a landing in Britain, Alectus was
defeated and slain. This fleet requires to be particularly noticed from two
considerations. In the first place, it sailed with a side wind, and when
the weather was rather rough,--circumstances so unusual, if not
unprecedented, that they were deemed worthy of an express and peculiar
panegyric: and, secondly, this fleet was not equipped and ready for sea
till after four years' preparation, whereas, in the first Punic war,
"within sixty days after the first stroke of the axe had been given in the
forest, a fleet of 160 galleys proudly rode at anchor in the sea."
Soon after this event, we are furnished with materials, from which we may
judge of the comparative opulence, commerce, and shipping of the several
countries which bordered on the Mediterranean. Constantine and Licinius
were contending for the Roman empire; and as the contest mainly depended on
superiority at sea, each exerted himself to the utmost to fit out a
formidable and numerous fleet. Licinius was emperor of the east: his fleet
consisted of 380 gallies, of three ranks of oars; eighty were furnished by
Egypt, eighty by Phoenicia, sixty by Ionia and Doria, thirty by Cyprus,
twenty by Caria, thirty by Bithynia, and fifty by Africa.
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