ABSTRACT
(5)… As regards the site of his city – a matter which calls for the most careful foresight on the part of one who hopes to plant a commonwealth that will endure – he [Romulus] made an incredibly wise choice. For he did not build it down by the sea, though it would have been very easy for him, with the men and sources at his command … (6) But with remarkable foresight our founder perceived that a site on the sea-coast is not the most desirable for cities founded in the hope of long life and extended dominion, primarily because maritime cities are exposed to dangers which are both manifold and impossible to foresee. For the mainland gives warning of the coming of the foeman, whether this be unexpected or expected by means of many signs … But a seafaring, ship-bom enemy can arrive before anyone is able to suspect that he is coming … (7) Maritime cities also suffer a certain corruption and degeneration of morals; for they receive a mixture of strange languages and customs, and import foreign ways as well as foreign merchandise, so that none of their ancestral institutions can possibly remain unchanged. Even their inhabitants do not cling to their dwelling places, but are constantly tempted far from home by soaring hopes and dreams …. In fact, no other influence did more to bring about the final overthrow of Carthage and Corinth … (8) due to the fact that the lust for trafficking and sailing seas had caused them to abandon agriculture and the pursuit of arms. Many things, too, that cause ruin to states as being incitements to luxury are supplied by the sea, entering either by capture or import; and even the mere delightfulness of such a site brings in its train many an allurement to pleasure through either extravagance or indolence. And what I said of Corinth may perhaps be said with truth of the whole of Greece … (9) For surrounded as they [Greece and its islands] are by the billows, not only themselves but also the customs and institutions of their cities can be said to be afloat …. Clearly the cause of the evils and the revolutions to which Greece has been subject is to be traced to those disadvantages which I have just mentioned briefly as peculiar to maritime cities. But, nevertheless, with all these disadvantages they possess one great advantage – all the products of the world can be brought by water to the city in which you live, and your people in turn can convey or send whatever their own fields produce to any country they like.
