In its first centuries, the Roman Republic was largely preoccupied with gaining dominance of the Italian Peninsula, and thus concerned itself with the development of its legendary legions. Rome had little experience with seaborne combat. But in the third century BC, Carthage, an older city-state of Phoenician origin, challenged Rome’s expansionist efforts. Located on the north-central coast of Africa, Carthage had already established colonies at many points along the North African coast, as well as in Iberia and a number of the islands in the western Mediterranean. The particular point of conflict was Sicily, where Rome’s advances were threatening established Carthaginian enclaves. In response to some initial clashes, Carthage dispatched a fleet to contest Roman efforts to cross the Strait of Messina, and so began the First Punic War.
To contest the issue, Rome had to begin by creating a navy. Warships of the day were galleys with long, narrow hulls powered principally by oars, although all were equipped with sails. Their names—biremes, triremes, quinqueremes, etc.—were long believed to have been derived from the number of decks that seated oarsmen. Twentieth-century scholarship, however, believes that the maximum practical deck structure is three, and thus the Roman- and Carthaginian-favored quinquereme was named for the number of files of oarsman on each side, not for five decks.
Naval combat of the era was essentially land combat transferred to the sea. Contesting fleets sailed to the battle site and attacked under oars, with ramming the preferred method of combat. The ships often were equipped with bronze rams affixed to their stems and could provide fatal blows if accurately delivered. Failing that, the captain would seek to drive his ship alongside an opposing vessel, hopefully destroying many of the enemy ship’s oars on that side, and then order the marines on board—a Roman quinquereme carried 120 and a crew of 300—to swarm aboard the grappled foe and engage in hand-to-hand combat.
The initial Roman galleys were inferior in design and construction, slow moving, and ungainly when under way. This compounded the problems of successfully grappling a foe—the enemy had swords and axes readily available with which to cut the lines. For a solution the Romans took a lesson from their legions: bridge building. They co-opted from the Sicilians a device called a harpago, or, more commonly, corvus—Latin for crow or raven. It was essentially a bridge connected at one end with hinges to the base of a short, bow-stepped stub mast. The other end was raised and lowered by ropes rove through a sheave at the forward masthead. Beneath the free end was a long, curved, talon-like spike. When the free end was dropped onto an enemy ship, the spike locked the combatants together.
In his Histories, Polybius describes the bridge as “a ladder, on which cross-planks had been nailed, so the result was a gangway, four feet wide and six fathoms [36 feet] long. . . . [It] had a railing along each of its long sides, as high as a man’s knee.” In battle, “the men who led the way protected the front by holding up their shields, and those who followed covered the flanks by resting the rims of their shields on the railing.” Modern researchers estimate the device’s weight at one ton.
The first known use of the corvus was in 260 BC, in battle off the north coast of Sicily at Mylae in the wake of the loss of 17 Roman ships during an earlier skirmish off the nearby Lipari Islands. At Mylae, a Roman fleet of about 100 quinqueremes and triremes led by Gaius Duilius faced 130 Carthaginian ships. The new device was an astounding success, with the first 30 Carthaginian vessels encountered captured, and another 20 taken in the ensuing melee before the North Africans broke free and retreated. The Romans lost just 11 ships. It was Rome’s first naval victory and the only naval battle that Gaius Duilius ever commanded. The losing commander, Hannibal Gisco, was recalled but two years later sent to command forces defending Sardinia. Shortly after suffering defeat at the Battle of Sulci, he was executed, according to some accounts by his own crew.
Four years later, Rome decided to attack Carthage directly and assembled a fleet of around 330 ships for the purpose under the command of Consuls Marcus Atilius Regulus and Lucius Manlius Vulso Longus. Well aware of Roman preparations, the Carthaginians amassed a fleet of about 350 ships under Hanno the Great and Hamilcar Barca. The forces joined battle off Sicily’s Cape Ecnomus. The Romans were organized into three divisions, with two in an advancing V-formation, the third in line abreast, and the transports carrying the invasion force between him and the V. The Carthaginians were in line abreast. Hamilcar, in the center, faked a retreat that drew the Roman V away from the transports, then he raced past it on either side, intent on destroying the transports. In this situation, two Roman squadrons combined against Hanno while the remaining, under Longus, defended the transports being driven toward the Sicilian coast. Although the Carthaginians sought to avoid being caught by the corvi, they were largely unsuccessful; 30 ships were sunk and 65 captured, against a Roman loss of 24 sunk. In the aftermath, the Romans fought a largely punitive campaign ashore.
Despite these Roman successes, the Carthaginians often remained numerically superior and generally more adept at open-sea tactics. In 249 BC, off present-day Trapani on the western Sicilian coast, the Carthaginians surprised a Roman fleet that had become dispersed in fog, and inflicted a humiliating defeat on it, sinking or capturing 93 foes with no loss to themselves.
The Roman navy thus was largely destroyed, but growing war exhaustion dissuaded the Carthaginians from pressing their advantage. By 242 BC, a new Roman fleet of about 200 quinqueremes, largely funded by wealthy citizens, had been completed, equipped, and crewed. These were ships of much improved design with regard to seaworthiness, but the corvus, which had proved cumbersome, was abandoned. The necessity of training was not lost on the Romans, who conducted fleet maneuvers before leaving home waters. In response, the Carthaginians built 250 ships, but apparently had difficulties in finding enough men to fully man them.
Their new fleet permitted the Romans to contest the presence of Carthaginians in Sicily, where they laid siege to the enemy in the coastal enclaves, while the fleet took blockading stations offshore. The Carthaginian fleet sallied forth from the African coast and was met at the Battle of Egadi Islands by the more-agile and better-manned Roman ships, which sank 50 vessels and captured 70. A wind change allowed the Carthaginian survivors to escape. This disaster led to the signing of a treaty, ending the First Punic War.
Nearly a century later, the Greek city-states were incorporated into the Roman Republic, bringing with them a host of technological advances. One of these was a form of ancient artillery the Greeks called the ballo. The Romans soon developed this oversized crossbow into a variety of spear- and rock-throwing weapons capable of launching projectiles weighing up to 150 pounds. Called ballistae, some mounted on board warships were fitted to shoot a special grapnel, the harpax, with which to snare an enemy ship at considerable distance to be hauled alongside for boarding and capture. To prevent an enemy crew from cutting loose the grapnel, or claw, it was attached to an eight-foot wooden spar bound with iron, to which was secured one or more lines. Windlasses on board the attacking ship would be used to haul in the lines, along with the enemy vessel.
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Octavian’s admiral, first employed ballistae and harpaxes on board his ships at the Battle of Naulochus in 36 BC. Although his fleet was roughly the same size as that of Sextus Pompey, the latter lost 183 of 300 warships, 28 by ramming and 155 by fire or capture. The loss effectively ended Pompean resistance to the Second Triumvirate.
There would be one more significant naval battle—Actium, in 31 BC, with Octavian and Agrippa defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra—before the founding of the Roman Empire. In this action, too, Agrippa’s ballista/harpax-armed ships played a key role in securing the victory. Thereafter, the Pax Romana largely settled over Mare Nostrum.
