ROME
BY DEBORAH N. CARLSON
During the last three centuries b.c.e. the monarchs of sev-
eral Greek kingdoms embarked upon a kind of naval arms
race dedicated to the construction of enormous oared war-
ships, or galleys, descended from the famed Athenian tri-
reme (a warship with three banks of oars). Various ancient
authors describe the thousands of oarsmen required to row
these enormous vessels, called polyremes. If the numbers
are to be trusted, then these ships must have been outfi tted
with multiple-rower sweeps, or several rowers pulling each
oar on one or two levels. Th e growth in vessel size brought
with it an increase in the number of marines as well as a
tactical shift away from ramming and toward the deploy-
ment of artillery, such as arrows, grapnel, and missiles, fi red
from catapults.
According to the historian Polybius (ca. 200– ca. 118
b.c.e.), Rome’s entrance into the world of naval warfare
occurred rather suddenly, with the emergency construc-
tion of a fl eet against the Carthaginians in the First Punic
Wa r (26 4 –241 b.c.e.). Th e warships built and employed by
the Romans during the Punic Wars were quinqueremes, or
“fi ves,” powered by 300 oarsmen and equipped with 120 ma-
rines and 50 crewmen. Th e Romans’ early success at sea was
due in no small part to their eff orts to turn a naval confron-
tation into a land battle at sea, as exemplifi ed by the corvus
(Latin for “raven”), a boarding plank outfi tted with a large
metal tooth, which, when deployed onto the deck of an en-
emy ship, held fast, locking the two vessels together and al-
lowing Roman marines to board and fi ght at sea as they did
on land.
Th e large polyremes that had dominated the fl eets of
Hellenistic Greece gradually became less and less common
among Roman commanders, who favored instead a smaller,
more maneuverable vessel called a liburna. Th e liburna was
probably the creation of piratical groups living along the
Dalmatian coast of Illyria (modern-day Croatia), for whom
speed at sea was a professional necessity. Piracy remained a
persistent threat to commercial shipping in the Mediterra-
nean until the campaign of Pompey the Great in 67 b.c.e. Th e
liburna played a key role in Octavian’s (r. 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.)
historic defeat of the allied fl eet of Marc Antony and Cleopa-
tra at Actium, Greece, in September 31 b.c.e. Following his
victory at Actium, Octavian erected a commemorative stone
monument that had as its centerpiece about 30 bronze rams
taken from the captured ships of Antony and Cleopatra.
Although none of the rams has survived, comparison
of the sockets in this image with the bronze ram found in
isolation off the coast of Israel at ‘Atlit suggests that the lat-
ter belonged to a vessel about the size of a quinquereme. Th e
Actium monument continued a tradition that dates back to
at least the fourth century b.c.e., when the Romans, fi ghting
the Italian Volsci at Antium, captured some enemy ships and
displayed the prows along the facade of a low platform in thecenter of the forum. Th is speaker’s platform, called the ros-
trum, takes its name from the Latin word for “prow.”
Nautical archaeologists have virtually no detailed in-
formation about the construction of Roman seagoing war-
ships, since none has yet been found, but they are markedly
better informed about the size and construction of Roman
merchant vessels, owing to the thorough and meticulous ex-
cavation of dozens of ancient shipwrecks. Th e Roman ship-
wright followed the same general principles of “shell-fi rst”
construction as did his Greek predecessor, fi rst creating a
shell of wooden planks fastened together using pegged mor-
tise-and-tenon joinery. Next he nailed large frames (oft en
called fl oor timbers) inside the hull over the keel and shorter
timbers (oft en called half-frames) along the sides of the hull’s
interior. Atop the frames the shipwright nailed thin ceiling
planking to protect the frames from the weight of the cargo,
and outside he coated the ship’s planks with pitch or thin
sheets of lead to protect the hull from the destructive eff ects
of wood-boring worms. Depictions of sailing ships indicate
that most were rigged with a single square sail and occasion-
ally a second smaller sail at the bow and were maneuvered by
a pair of steering oars slung on the stern quarters.
Other, less conventional but no less interesting construc-
tion techniques existed in various regions of the empire, in-
cluding the Adriatic, where some shipwrights produced what
may be the vessels that the Romans called naves sutiles, or
“sewn ships.” Farther north, archaeological excavations have
shown a distinct tradition of assembly characterized by large
iron nails, represented in part by the shipwrecks at Black-
friars (England), Zwammerdam (Netherlands), and Mainz
(Germany).
Th e shipwright himself was called either a faber nava-
lis or an architectus navalis, to judge from various surviving
epitaphs and dedicatory inscriptions. In some Roman cities,
like Portus at the mouth of the Tiber River, shipwrights or-
ganized themselves into collegia, or guilds, and excavations
at nearby Ostia have uncovered the remains of that local
guild’s headquarters building. Th e excavation of Roman har-
bors on occasion also has yielded the remains of boats and
ships abandoned and covered with riverine silt (as at Pisa)
or deliberately incorporated into the various concrete struc-
tures that constitute the quays and breakwaters (as at Ostia).
Careful study of the harbor at Caesarea, Israel, suggests that
shipwrights were directly involved with the construction of
several concrete-fi lled wooden caissons (large water-tight
chambers) that formed part of a massive breakwater.
Archaeological evidence indicates that most Roman
merchant ships transported a wide range of commodities, in-
cluding wine, oil, garum (fi sh sauce), fi sh, nuts, and fruit, in
two-handled clay storage jars called amphoras. To date, the
largest amphora carriers are represented by the shipwrecks
at Madrague de Giens, France, and Albenga, Italy, with thou-
sands of jars amounting to some 400 to 600 tons. Th e Romans
would have classed these vessels as naves onerariae (ships of
burden), but there also existed a number of specialized ship982 ships and shipbuilding: Rome0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i982 982 10/10/07 2:30:39 PM