Ancient Rome had a variety of ships that played crucial roles in its military, trade, and transportation activities. Rome was preceded in the use of the sea by other ancient, seafaring civilizations of the Mediterranean. The galley was a long, narrow, highly maneuverable ship powered by oarsmen, sometimes stacked in multiple levels such as biremes or triremes, and many of which also had sails. Initial efforts of the Romans to construct a war fleet were based on copies of Carthaginian warships. In the Punic wars in the mid-third century BCE, the Romans were at first outclassed by Carthage at sea, but by 256 BCE had drawn even and fought the wars to a stalemate. In 55 BCE Julius Caesar used warships and transport ships to invade Britain. Numerous types of transport ships were used to carry foodstuffs or other trade goods around the Mediterranean, many of which did double duty and were pressed into service as warships or troop transports in time of war.
Introduction
Terminology
Roman ships are named in different ways, often in compound expressions with the word . These are found in many ancient Roman texts, and named in different ways, such as by the appearance of the ship: for example, (covered ship); or by its function, for example: (commerce ship), or (plunder ship). Others, like (grain), (stones), and (live fish), are about the cargo. The Althiburos mosaic in Tunisia lists many types of ships.
The expression (lit. "long ships") is the plural of the noun phrase ("long ship"), following the rules for pluralization of feminine, third declension nouns in Latin, and inflectional agreement of the adjective longus to match.
Scope
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilization from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BCE to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), Roman Republic (509–27 BCE), and Roman Empire (27 BCE–476 CE) until the fall of the western empire.
History
Punic wars
The First Punic War between Rome and Carthage began in 264 BC with the Romans landing on Sicily. The Romans had the stronger army, while Carthage had overwhelming maritime superiority. By 260 BC the war had reached a stalemate, as the Carthaginians focused on defending their well-fortified Sicilian towns and cities; these were mostly on the coast and so could be supplied and reinforced without the Romans being able to use their superior army to interdict. The focus of the war shifted to the sea, where the Romans had little experience; on the few occasions they had previously felt the need for a naval presence they had usually relied on small squadrons provided by their Latin or Greek allies. Warships of the time were specialised vessels known as galleys and which relied on oars for manoeuvrability. The Romans set out to construct a war fleet and used a shipwrecked Carthaginian quinquereme as a blueprint for their own. As novice shipwrights, the Romans built copies that were heavier than the Carthaginian vessels, and so slower and less manoeuvrable.
There were repeated naval clashes during the rest of the war, including the 256 BC battle of Ecnomus, possibly the largest naval battle in history by the number of combatants involved. In 241 BC the Romans destroyed the Carthaginian fleet at the Battle of the Aegates Islands, forcing the cut-off Carthaginian troops on Sicily to negotiate for peace and ending the war. The Romans and Carthaginians now had rough equivalence in terms of naval strength in the western Mediterranean.
Invasions of Britain
Julius Caesar employed warships and transport ships in order to carry out his invasion of Britain in 55 BCE.
Battle of Actium
Types
Merchant vessels
The city of Rome was heavily reliant on the delivery by ship of the large amounts of grain it consumed. Rome imported about 150,000 tons of Egyptian grain each year over the first three centuries AD. Not only were insufficient amounts available in the agricultural areas around the city, but it was cheaper to transport it substantial distances by sea than short distances by land. It has been estimated that it cost less for a sailing ship of the Roman Empire to carry grain the length of the Mediterranean than to move the same amount 15 miles by road.
Merchant ships, such as naves onerariae, had always been pressed into service for military purposes such as for transporting troops to North Africa in the Second Punic war. In 204 BCE, Scipio Africanus ordered the impressment of merchantmen for the invasion of Africa, four hundred ships according to Livy.(29.26.3)