But we do know that many
Phoenicians did trade with the French and British Celts, who probably
learnt in this way how to build ships of their own.
CHAPTER III
EAST AGAINST WEST
(480-146 B.C.)
For two thousand years Eastern fleets and armies tried to conquer
Europe. Sometimes hundreds of years would pass without an attack. But
the result was always the same--the triumph of West over East; and the
cause of each triumph was always the same--the sea-power of the West.
Without those Western navies the Europe and America we know today could
never have existed. There could have been no Greek civilization, no
Roman government, no British Empire, and no United States. First, the
Persians fought the Greeks at Salamis in 480 B.C. Then Carthage fought
Rome more than two hundred years later. Finally, the conquering Turks
were beaten by the Spaniards at Lepanto more than two thousand years
after Salamis, but not far from the same spot, Salamis being ten miles
from Athens and Lepanto a hundred.
Long before Salamis the Greeks had been founding colonies along the
Mediterranean, among them some on the Asiatic side of the Aegean Sea,
where the French and British fleets had so much to do during the
Gallipoli campaign of 1915 against the Turks and Germans.
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