The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History

by Chester G Starr

  By 301 the political structure of the Hellenistic world was beginning to take shape in three prominent dynasties: the Ptolemaic in Egypt; the Seleucid in Asia Minor, Syria, and on to the borders of India; and eventually the Antigonid in Macedonia. In the latter there was some sense of what may be called national loyalty; in the others Macedonian and Greek generals and bureaucrats controlled native populations for their own profit and power. The interstate relations of this era were as complicated in dynastic marriages and feuds as were those of early modern Europe and produced a great deal of hostilities by land and sea. Since the present study is not a general history we may pass lightly over specific wars; the manner in which sea power was used in practice led to a very unexpected result, that is, the destruction of the Hellenistic state system.

  Not only were the political units much larger than the earlier Greek poleis, so too were the squadrons launched in Mediterranean naval warfare across the centuries to the final victory of Octavian in 31 B.c.; also the warships of the age were behemoths when compared to triremes. Early in the fourth century Dionysius of Syracuse had introduced ships called in Latin quadriremes and quinqueremes which evidently had sets of four and five rowers respectively. The usual interpretation is that instead of tugging individual oars as in the trireme larger groups manipulated great sweeps, the Venetian system a scaloccio, though in an alternative explanation quadriremes had two banks of two oarsmen each and a quinquereme two and three.3 Before the end of Athenian naval strength it too was building the larger ships, and Hellenistic navies came to be composed largely of quinqueremes, with crews of some 300 rowers, which were almost impregnable to attacks by the smaller old-style galleys.4 Indeed numbers of oarsmen crept up as far as 10 and 16; Ptolemy 11 even boasted a 40, which was probably a catamaran in construction, with groups of 20 rowers on each side, in a parade vessel.

  This change was the consequence of two other alterations. In the first place crews especially of Egyptian ships were drafted from the countryside and had no naval training; more important perhaps was the revolution in tactics, which much reduced the reliance on maneuver, exhibited by Phormio and other com manders in the great days of Athenian thalassocracy. Warships now were fully decked and equipped with stone- and arrowthrowing machines and much larger complements of marines. It would not be exactly true to say, as one modern student does, that Hellenistic admirals "were content to see naval actions as opportunities for men in full armour to fight it out on deck,"6 for in the rather chaotic seafight off Chios in 201 there was a great deal of ramming and other maneuvers; but the statement can be applied, as we will see shortly, very aptly to Roman naval practice.

  In the Hellenistic age economic interests played a more visible role in state policy. If there were six Syrian wars between the Ptolemies and Seleucids the causes were in part personal pride and desire for glory, but also the advantage to be gained from controlling the Mediterranean ports to which the luxuries of India and Arabia largely flowed. These wars did not involve any important naval combat, but another aspect of Ptolemaic objectives did do so.

  The Ptolemaic system of exploitation of Egypt was designed to secure large supplies of wheat that could be sold abroad mainly through Rhodes as entrepot to provide funds for its foreign policy in the eastern Mediterranean, which was aimed at naval control of the Aegean.° This led directly to competition with Macedonia, firmly in the hands of Antigonus Gonatas, son of Demetrius, from 276 on. Athens and Sparta, spurred by Egyptian funds, launched the Chremonidean war against him probably in 267-63, but the Egyptian navy, though occupying some forts on the mainland, did nothing of any value; as its admiral Patroclus pointed out, his marines were only native Egyptians.7 Subsequent naval conflict between Macedonia and Egypt is very poorly illuminated in our fragmentary sources "which continually tempt one to go off on a tangent."8 There were at least two battles, off Cos about 255 and Andros in 245, both of which Macedonia won. Thereafter Ptolemaic attention to the Aegean waned. The uncertainties of these wars are well illustrated by the great statue on a staircase in the Louvre, the Victory of Samothrace, which depicts a figure of victory on the prow of a galley; often connected to Cos or Andros it most recently has been identified as a Rhodian dedication in the first decades of the second century, and not Macedonian at all.s

  In general, "No Power maintained a standing fleet, that is, one always in commission, with one possible exception [Egypt]. .. . What is called the command of the sea, at this time, only meant that the Power who claimed it had a good prospect, if challenged, of getting a fleet to sea which might defeat the challenger."lo

  It was the island state of Rhodes, indeed, that played the most useful role in the eastern Mediterranean well into the second century. It had a squadron of about 30 quinqueremes, which were manned by citizens and commanded by essentially professional captains and admirals; Rhodian dockyards were so carefully guarded that one effort by a Macedonian king to set them afire badly miscarried. The state took seriously its responsibility of keeping the sea open for commerce and faced down one threat by Byzantium to levy tolls on Hellespontine traffic; it also did much to repress piracy, an effort for which one Rhodian admiral was publicly honored at Delos.'1 This policy was clearly appreciated by other states; following the devastating earthquake at Rhodes in 226 all the Hellenistic monarchs contributed timber and grain to restore and supply its ships, and Seleucus III even presented 10 quinqueremes already built and fully equipped.12

  Hellenistic naval history, as we have seen, can scarcely be written and does not provide very useful illumination of the value of sea power except in the case of Rhodes. In any event, strength at sea in the eastern Mediterranean was to be coldly and swiftly eliminated by the intervention of a new naval power from the west.

  Carthaginian mastery in this area had been unquestioned until the third century. Syracuse had supported a fleet large enough to defeat the Etruscans off Cumae in 474, but it never ventured seriously to oppose on the sea Carthaginian invasions of Sicily from 480 onwards; instead Dionysius used his new quadriremes and quinqueremes to secure control only of southern Italy and the Adriatic. In 264, however, a minor problem arising from the occupation of Messana by a band of mercenaries called Mamer- tines threw Carthage and Rome at odds.

  The immediate occasion was an attack by Syracuse on the Mamertines, who in desperation appealed both to Carthage and Rome for assistance. Carthage responded at once with men and ships; the Roman Senate, which normally made decisions in foreign policy, found itself in a quandary. If it intervened, it would face the Carthaginian supremacy on the sea; yet if it did nothing, Carthage would have a firm grasp on the vital strait between Sicily and Italy. Modern historians normally suggest that Rome was concerned in this respect purely for the sake of its south Italian Greek subjects, but in fact Roman trade by sea was far more vital than it is usually portrayed. By the early third century Rome was among the bigger cities of the Mediterranean, with a population of possibly some 90,000, and so large a mass of inhabitants required grain not only coming down the Tiber from Etruria but also by sea from Sicily and elsewhere. Since the Roman state at this time did not yet enjoy the profits of empire this grain had to be paid for, and there is adequate evidence that Roman potters, smiths, and other craftsmen made products that could be sold abroad. So too Roman ships plied Mediterranean waters; it was a Roman vessel that saved the Greek politician Aratus in a storm in the Adriatic in 254. The conventional picture of simple Roman tillers of the soil, created by Livy, Cicero, and other patriots of the Late Republic, is in reality very mis- leading.13

  Yet what answer to give the Mamertines? The Senate finally referred the problem to the assembly of citizens, which voted to provide assistance, and so Roman military forces were despatched to south Italy, where they succeeded in crossing the strait and wresting control of Messana from the Carthaginians. The result was the First Punic War, which was to drag on from 264 to 241.14

  Since Carthage did not have a nearby base from which it could successfully block
ade the strait, Roman armies were free to enter Sicily and by 261 had conquered almost all the island save for the western stronghold of Lilybaeum. Then it became apparent that Rome could win total control only by gaining command of the sea from Carthage; the Senate, clear-headed on strategic matters, without hesitation proceeded to order the building of 20 triremes and 100 quinqueremes. Italy fortunately supported great forests of fir, preferred for warships, which could easily provide the necessary timber. Some ingenious shipwright, perhaps Greek, also devised a counter to Carthaginian superiority in naval tactics by equipping the Roman quinquereme with the "crow," a gangplank fixed to the prow but capable of being pivoted and coming down with an iron spike on the deck of an enemy ship so that Roman soldiers could more easily pour over and turn the action into hand-to-hand conflict.15

  In 260 the new Roman fleet rowed west along the north coast of Sicily and won a signal victory at Mylae over the enemy, whose ships were caught and fixed one by one; an elogium in the Roman Forum proudly but erroneously praised the admiral C. Duilius as the first Roman to venture on the sea.16 Rather than besieging Lilybaeum, the Romans, once again focusing on the main problem, invaded Africa in 256 so as to strike directly at Carthage. To do so they had to meet the Carthaginian navy off Ecnomus, on the south shore of Sicily. The Roman ships were encumbered by the transport vessels for the army and arranged themselves in three lines as customary in their land battles. The two consuls Manlius and Regulus were in the van before the line of galleys towing the transports; a third line was in the rear. The Carthaginian admirals Hamilcar and Hanno weakened their center to draw the consuls on, and then their flank squadrons swooped around the sides to fall on the Roman rear. The end result, however, was not what the enemy had expected; the individual Roman squadrons turned to meet the encircling threat, drove off the seaward ships in disarray, and penned the inshore Carthaginian ships against the coast. The Romans took 50 vessels and sank 30 others against a loss of only 24 Roman galleys. The consuls could then proceed to Africa and landed their army in Tunisia, but winter came before the Romans could launch a full attack on Carthage, heavily fortified. In despair, the Carthagin. ians turned to a Spartan mercenary general, Xanthippus, skilled in Hellenistic tactics, who combined Carthaginian infantry, Numidian cavalry, and elephants to defeat the Romans. The Roman navy evacuated the survivors; but its admirals disregarded the warnings from their naval experts, and a storm off the south coast of Sicily destroyed almost all the fleet.

  Thereafter Roman consuls squandered most of the replace ments in 253 by insisting on sailing in heavy weather despite the advice of their pilots; as Polybius observed, "The Romans, to speak generally, rely on force in all their enterprises . . . when they come to encounter the sea and the atmosphere and choose to fight them by force they meet with signal defeats."17 Between battles and storms about 600 Roman warships and 1000 transports were sunk; probably no naval war in history has seen such casualties by drowning.

  After the Romans gave up the topheavy crow, a battle in 249 in which Claudius Pulcher foolishly pursued a Carthaginian squadron into the narrow harbor of Drepanum (on the west coast of Sicily) was a disaster, though that perhaps owed as much to the anger of the gods of Rome as to Carthaginian naval skill. Roman commanders always had to gain divine blessings before a battle; since it was impracticable to carry sacrificial cattle on shipboard, crates of sacred chickens were provided. From the way they pecked at grain soothsayers could divine the will of the gods, but on this occasion the chickens refused to do their duty. Claudius Pulcher, angered at their failure to cooperate, threw the crate into the sea with the observation that if they would not eat they could drink. The result was inevitable; nearly 100 warships were lost-the only serious defeat the Romans suffered by sea during the First Punic War.

  Fora time both Rome and Carthage lay in exhaustion, but finally the Senate assessed itself for funds to build a last flotilla of 200 warships. This expedition instituted a tighter watch at Lilybaeum; when the Carthaginians sent their galleys to break the blockade-but without a normal complement of marines, which was to be picked up at Lilybaeum-the Roman commander C. Lutatius Catulus took his stripped-down ships out despite stormy seas and crushed the relief fleet in the battle of the Aegates islands. Carthage had to sue for peace and yielded Sicily and naval mastery of the western Mediterranean to Rome. Almost immediately, the victor seized Sardinia and Corsica and thereafter used its navy to repress the piratical states on the Illyrian coast of the Adriatic.

  The Romans kept a wary eye on Carthage, which rebuilt its strength in Spain. When the young, brilliant Hannibal became its general there from 221 on, the Romans were even more alarmed and finally sent ambassadors to Carthage to require his surrender. On its refusal, the Second Punic War began in 218, and the Romans prepared to launch a two-prong attack, one army being sent by sea to Spain to contain Hannibal, the other marching to Sicily to be ferried to Carthage. Their navy, which numbered 220 quinqueremes, was master of the sea as against only a few more than 50 Carthaginian vessels.18

  The Romans, however, proceeded too slowly and failed to measure the audacity of Hannibal, who planned to invade Italy itself, overcome the Roman armies, and incite the subjects into rebellion. To do so he had to make his way from Spain to northern Italy, where the recently conquered Gauls could provide a base; contrary to the views of Mommsen and Mahan noted in the Introduction, he had to march by land not simply because the Romans controlled the sea but by reason of his large forces of cavalry and elephants that could not easily have been transported by sea. In one trap after another Hannibal decimated Roman armies, but he could never succeed in his essential aim; some Roman allies did revolt, but most remained loyal. From time to time Carthage could muster fleets but not large enough to meet Roman naval power or to reenforce Hannibal, who finally in a truce evacuated Italy. At the final battle in North Africa at Zama in 202 the Roman commander Scipio Africanus had the advantage in cavalry, for the Numidians had joined him, and, using Hannibalic tactics against Hannibal, won.

  The peace of 201 was harsh-a "Carthaginian peace" in Keynes' famous term. Carthage yielded its elephants and all but 10 of its warships, surrendered Spain, and promised to pay a large indemnity. In the further agreement not to wage war in Africa itself without Roman approval lay seeds for later troubles that were eventually to bring the total destruction of Carthage (Third Punic War, 149-46). Rome itself was drained financially-and proceeded at once to intervene in the eastern Mediterranean.

  This peculiar juxtaposition presents one of the most puzzling problems in Roman history. For the past two generations the conventional explanation has been that wily ambassadors from Rhodes and Pergamum, alarmed by the machinations of the Seleucid king Antiochus III and Philip V of Macedonia, deftly played on Roman fears of Eastern despots and the philhellene enthusiasm of Roman aristocrats, now much more imbued with Greek culture, and so led Rome to declare war on Philip to "liberate" Greece. This, however, will not do; as a recent student has rightly commented, "the very idea of philhellenism as national policy would be unintelligible to a Roman."19 Rome already had no reason to love Philip, who had declared war on it in 213 in concert with Hannibal so as to regain his claim to the Illyrian coast (First Macedonian War). He had been totally unable to face Roman naval strength and had concluded peace in 205, but Rome continued to show interest in Greek affairs.

  Another powerful line of explanation, as noted earlier, has argued that Rome was deliberately imperialistic from the late fourth century onward to provide military reputations to its aristocrats as well as financial profit.2° Despite support from some remarks of Polybius, the second-century historian who sought to account for the rise of Rome, this view also must be carefully qualified. Empires may not be created in a fit of absent-mindedness, but their evolution over many decades, even centuries, is not a result of conscious plans; as Harris himself puts it, one does not have to aim at empire to acquire one.

  In the Second Macedonian War the Romans initially underestimat
ed the support the Macedonians gave to their king and only after several stumbles reenforced their army sufficiently to defeat the Macedonian phalanx; in the peace treaty Philip surrendered almost all his navy. The war inevitably led to conflict with Antiochus III, who tried to regain ancestral territories in Asia Minor and Thrace. This time the Romans viewed the great Eastern conqueror with alarm and prepared both army and navy for serious action. Since their most experienced general Scipio Africanus now held a religious position that prevented him from commanding troops, his brother was made technical commander with Africanus as his "advisor." To counter the sizable Seleucid navy the Romans enlisted the aid of the Rhodians and mastered the enemy in the battle of Myonnesus: Antiochus was defeated on land, and in the ensuing peace of 189 he gave up all but 12 warships.21 Since Egypt by this point was a broken reed, which was to need Roman aid several times in subsequent years, every naval power in the Mediterranean had vanished, save for Rome itself. Rhodes remained, but its turn soon came. When the son of Philip V, Perseus, led a Macedonian revolt against Roman overlordship (Third Macedonian War, 171-67), the Romans took the matter so lightly that their forces did not do well at the beginning; Rhodes made the serious blunder of sending envoys to Rome to mediate the conflict, but alas they arrived after the news of the final Roman success. The Senate saw no need for direct action; instead it struck at the heart of Rhodian strength by making the island of Delos a free port.22 Thereafter Rhodes did not have the financial power to keep up its navy, though it continued to have some warships down to 42 B.C.