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Roman as coin of the second half of the 3rd century BC, featuring the prow of a galley, most likely a quinquereme. Several similar issues are known, illustrating the importance of naval power during that period of Rome's history. After the Roman victory, the balance of naval power in the Western Mediterranean had shifted from Carthage to Rome. [15]
Roman corvus boarding plank, educated guess Boarding-bridge diagram, educated guess. The corvus (Latin for "crow" or "raven") was a Roman ship mounted boarding ramp or drawbridge for naval boarding, first introduced during the First Punic War in sea battles against Carthage.
Roman ships are named in different ways, often in compound expressions with the word Latin: navis, lit. 'ship'.These are found in many ancient Roman texts, and named in different ways, such as by the appearance of the ship: for example, navis tecta (covered ship); or by its function, for example: navis mercatoria (commerce ship), or navis praedatoria (plunder ship).
The traditional naval tactic of ramming wasn't abandoned, but the Roman ships were fitted with a corvus to accommodate their strengths in land combat. This movable boarding bridge enabled the Romans to transform naval combat from ramming and sinking to boarding with marines through capturing and plundering the vessels.
The war saw land battles in Sicily early on, such as the Battle of Agrigentum, but the theatre shifted to naval battles around Sicily and Africa. For the Romans, naval warfare was a relatively unexplored concept. [92] Before the First Punic War in 264 BC there was no Roman navy to speak of, as all previous Roman wars had been fought on land in ...
The ram was a naval weapon in the Greek/Roman antiquity and was used in such naval battles as Salamis [2] and Actium. Naval warfare in the Mediterranean rarely used sails, and the use of rams specifically required oarsmen rather than sails in order to maneuver with accuracy and speed, and particularly to reverse the movement of a ramming ship ...
Naumachia (detail): an imaginative recreation by Ulpiano Checa, first exhibited in 1894.. The naumachia (in Latin naumachia, from the Ancient Greek ναυμαχία / naumachía, literally "naval combat") in the Ancient Roman world referred to both the staging of naval battles as mass entertainment, and the basin or building in which this took place.
A Roman naval bireme depicted in a relief from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste (). Naval warfare in the ancient world can be traced back to the Mediterranean in the third millennium BC, from evidence of paintings in the Cyclades and models of ships which were made across the Aegean. [9]