That Rome's victory at the Aegates insulae in 241 B.C. put a definite end to the sea power of Carthage has long since been recognized, for subsequently the Italian fleets sailed unmolested wherever they pleased in the Western Mediterranean. It has not, I think, been realized with equal clearness that thereafter Rome was the only first-rate naval state in the entire world of ancient politics, for the more complex relation of the eastern powers has obscured the fact that after 241 B.C. Egypt, hitherto the Carthage of the Orient, followed the example of her African neighbour and rival in the West, neglected her fleet, and left it to her garrisons and money to maintain the empire and protect the commercial interests which the navy and diplomacy of the first two Ptolemies had won. The fall of Egypt, moreover, as I shall try to show, was the result of a coalition of Rhodes and Macedon, which left the control of the eastern Mediterranean in the possession of a group of second-rate naval states. This condition Philip V. sought to end in the year 201 B.C., but Rome at once interfered and prevented him from carrying out his plans; nor did she allow Antiochus III. and Hannibal time to reopen the question of maritime supremacy. The sea-fights won at Side and Myonnesus in 190 B.C. with the aid of Rhodes and Pergamum over the extemporized and disunited fleets of Asia settled it once and for all that no new first-class naval power was to arise in the East. The events of 241 B.C. were thus decisive for the unification of the ancient world into a single state. I shall try in this paper to establish with some precision what they and what their antecedents were.
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Mar 1, 1987
L L Welborn 
Open Access