History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

Single-banked galleys of the Liburni.

Unlike the Phœnicians and Carthaginians, the Romans had no inclination to expeditions of mere discovery, and never cared to become acquainted with any country whose remote situation appeared to defy their arms. Vain of their own power and of the extent of their dominions, they did not hesitate, in almost every instance, to bestow the name of barbarians on the civilized inhabitants of India as well as on those of other parts of the world, whose manners or customs were indistinctly known to them. Despising commercial pursuits, they looked to Greece and other nations to regulate their over-sea trade and to supply their wants; and when their fleets obtained the dominion of the sea, their object was less to protect their rapidly extending maritime commerce than to consolidate and preserve their power and dominion upon the land. In the reign of Augustus the plan of fixed naval stations was, for the first time, adopted; two being appointed, one at Ravenna to command the eastern, the other at Misenum to command the western division of the Mediterranean. By this time the Romans had learned from experience that galleys of more than three banks of oars were unsuited for real service, and consequently their more important fleets, from the reign of Augustus, consisted almost exclusively of the light and swift vessels known as Liburnians, from the people who were the first to build them.

Single-banked galleys of the Liburni.

Occupying a district a little north of the present Dalmatia, and devoting their attention almost exclusively to sea-faring pursuits, the Liburnians[286] had obtained a great reputation for their knowledge of the art of navigation. Provided with excellent harbours, and holding in their grasp many of the small islands of the Adriatic, which afforded them shelter from storms and a convenient rendezvous for their swift craft, they unfortunately made but little distinction between the duties of the honest trader and the predatory habits of the buccaneer: but to them Octavianus was mainly indebted for his victory over Antony at Actium, and Rome itself for the introduction of a better and swifter type of war-vessel.[287]

The fleets of Rome.

Their creation and slow progress.

The form and construction of their galleys.

Although Ravenna and Misenum were the principal stations of their navy, the Romans had fleets at various other places. Forty ships and three thousand soldiers then guarded the waters of the Euxine; a very considerable force was stationed at Frejus (Forum-Julii); numbers of Roman vessels cruised in the English Channel to preserve the communication between Gaul and Britain; while, throughout the whole period of her supremacy, a strong force was maintained on the Danube and Rhine to protect the empire from the inroads of the Northern barbarians. But these fleets were the slow growth of centuries; and the navies of Rome were for a long time of comparatively little note, and obtained celebrity only when the first Punic war roused her citizens to extraordinary exertions to deprive Carthage of its maritime supremacy.[288] Roman fleets were then constructed and spread over the Mediterranean with such rapidity that the Carthaginians would not credit the reports of their number and equipment. In their construction they displayed the energy they had ever shown when they had once determined on their plan. Skilled artisans, from friendly or subjected states, were ready to execute their orders, and the banks of the Tiber resounded with the noise of the axe, the adze, the hammer, and the mallet. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the first fleet Rome sent forth to oppose the powerful squadrons of the Carthaginians was so much inferior to the galleys of Augustus as has been supposed by some writers.[289] But the real character of the Roman vessels cannot now be ascertained; as no Roman historian has thought it worth his while, probably from ignorance on such matters, to give details from which they could, even in imagination, be constructed.

It is, however, reasonable to suppose that they were much the same as the ships of the Greeks and Carthaginians, or of the merchant vessel, already described, in which St. Paul made his celebrated voyage, and that their form and dimensions were regulated by the services they were expected to perform. In a note we subjoin a list of the number of fleets the Romans are known to have had in the brief space of twenty years, as they will give a better idea than anything else of the vigour of their administration, and of the energy wherewith, in the best days of the republic, they surmounted disasters which would have crushed to the ground a less self-reliant people.[290]

But so far as commerce is concerned, it was only when they had brought the third Punic war to an end, and had destroyed the great trading cities of Carthage and Corinth,[291] that the Romans really began to devote their abilities to commercial pursuits, and recognize in the site of one of them (Corinth), a great centre of trade for Asia, Western Greece, and Italy. Hence it was that, when the Corinthian people joined the Achæan League, for the preservation of the independence of Greece, the Romans found an excuse for the capture, though not for the plunder and destruction of Corinth.