On the Spanish coast also she had full sway till the younger Scipio saw fit to lay up the fleet.

In the Adriatic, a squadron and naval station were established at Brindisi to check Macedonia, which performed their task so well that not a soldier of the phalanxes ever set foot in Italy.

"The want of a war fleet," says Mommsen, "paralyzed Philip in all his movements." Here the effect of Sea Power is not even a matter of inference.
In Sicily, the struggle centred about Syracuse.

The fleets of Carthage and Rome met there, but the superiority evidently lay with the latter; for though the Carthaginians at times succeeded in throwing supplies into the city, they avoided meeting the Roman fleet in battle.

With Lilybaeum, Palermo, and Messina in its hands, the latter was well based in the north coast of the island.