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Hellenistic and Roman Naval Warfare 336BC-31BC, by John D. Grainger
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The period covered in this book, is well known for its epic battles and grand campaigns of territorial conquest, but Hellenistic monarchies, Carthaginians and the rapacious Roman Republic were scarcely less active at sea. Huge resources were poured into maintaining fleets not only as symbols of prestige but as means of projecting real military power across the Mediterranean arena.Taking the period between Alexander the Great's conquests and the Battle of Actium, John Grainger analyses the developments in naval technology and tactics, the uses and limitations of sea power and the differing strategies of the various powers. He shows, for example, how the Rhodians and the Romans eschewed the ever-larger monster galleys favoured by most Hellenistic monarchs in favour of smaller vessels. This is a fascinating study of a neglected aspect of ancient warfare.
- Sales Rank: #1060817 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-08-30
- Released on: 2012-08-30
- Format: Kindle eBook
About the Author
John D. Grainger is a respected historian with a particular reputation for military subjects. His recent publications include Cromwell Against the Scots (Boydell Press, 2005) and The Battle of Yorktown (Tuckwell Press, 1997).
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
A good (and almost comprehensive) summary
By JPS
First posted on Amazon.co.uk on 10 November 2011
This book does a great job in summarizing a complex and little known topic in about 200 pages (a bit less in fact, if you leave out the bibliography): that of naval warfare from Alexander the Great to the battle of Actium. It is generally well written and the author had certainly done his research, even if naval warfare may not be his favorite topic (he seems to have a soft spot for the Seleukids. His book on Seleukos is in fact excellent, although perhaps not targeted at a wider audience). The book should be both commended and recommended as a very useful introduction for anyone interested in the naval warfare of that period. It could also be seen as a companion book for any historical novel that includes some naval warfare for this period (such as some of the books in Christian Cameron's Tyrant series or the three books on the First Punic war by Mr Stack).
There are, however, a couple of limits. One has been to gloss over the logistical and economic aspects of naval warfare. The other has been the need to simplify, so that a large part of the discussions on ships' sizes and performances have been cut out.
Choosing to avoid most of the discussion on the logistical and economic aspects of naval warfare is understantable to a point. However, it is also a bit of a pity because by doing this the book fails to explain some of the events, such as the demise of Athens as a naval superpower. The drain that a large number of ever larger ships exercized on any city's (or medium-size kingdom) financial and human resources was such that only powers that had both large huiman and financial resources could afford a large fleet. This is probably also one of the main reasons explaining why Macedonia under both Philip V and Perseus never built a fleet of quinquerèmes to challenge Rome at sea.
According to some historians, and just to give a sense of proportions, the annual cost of maintaining (including providing the sails, oars, masts and rigging) a trirème was about a talent of Attic silver a year or 6000 silver drachmes. When you know that a talent was 25.92 kilos, and that was just for ship maintenance you get to release that we are talking serious money. On top of that, the crews had to be paid (both sailors and rowers which were all free men and generally citizens) and this could add another talent per year. Building a new trirème could have cost double that amount (that is 2 talents). Larger ships, with larger crews, were, of course, proportionnally even more expensive to build and maintain...
The author has omitted some of the discussions about the technicalities of the various ships types. While this is understandable, since this book is an introduction and a summary, it can also become a bit confusing at times.
For instance, the basis of larger ship types were the penteconters (one set of oars and one rower per oar on each side). Then came the biremes (two sets of oars per side and one rower per oar) and only AFTER that came the trière (or trirème) with three oars per side and one rower per oar. It is a bit of an over-simplification and NOT quite correct to state that the trirème should "always be the basis from which the discussion must proceed". In fact, that author's previous sentence, mentioning that "it was normal (by 336 BC) to propel a galley with two or three banks of oars" contradicts his previous statement and is also a simplification. A quadrirème was a development of a birème (two sets of oars per side and two rowers per oars instead of one) and NOT of a trirème. The quinquerème was a development of the trirème (two banks with two rowers each per side and a third bank with only one rower). Thus far, historians agree. For sixes, sevens and above, there is some disagreement because, depending on how many men you had per oars, these could be seen as further developments of birèmes (two oars per side and three men per oar)or of trirème (three oars per side and two men per oar). Anyway, the main conclusions are clear: as you added more and more teams of rowers, the ships became heavier, but also slower, more cumbersome to move around and MUCH more expensive so that, increasingly, their role was limited to command ships and floating fortresses, when used in action, or as ships built purely for prestige by the Successor Kings.
A related technical point is the number of rowers for each type of ship had. Conventional numbers are 170 for a trirème and about 270 for a quinquerème (although the author mentions 300). In reality, there seems to have been several sizes of ships called trirèmes or quinquerèmes and built in different countries or cities. There could be variations within a given type depending upon whether, say, the ship had been built in Phoenicia, Cyprus, Egypt, Greek Asia Minor (pick any of the larger coastal cities) or the Islands (Samos, Chios, Rhodes, Mytileni), Greek mainland (Athens or Corinth), Greek West (Corfou, Taranto or Syracuse), Carthage, Massalia or Rome (and I've left out quite a few). We do know, for instance, that trirèmes built towards the end of the 5th century BC in some places (e.g. Corinth) were heavier (and gave a greater role to boarding) than those built in others where the emphasis was put on swiftness under oars and ramming (Athens being the best example). What we do not quite know for sure is whether the number of oars for each side and in each file were necessarily the same in all ships and all countries. This seems unlikely because there was no reason for any uniformity and because ships were, quite litterally, hand made. However, the variations would have had to be limited and the number of oars per file and per side could probably not have varied between more than 25 to 30. For a trirème, for instance, this could have meant a minimum of 150 rowers and a maximum of 180. The 170 rowers given the author in his book is therefore very probably a simplification based on the standard number of rowers for an Athenian trirème which was built for speed, swiftness and raming.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A well-written and authoritative book
By Squirr-El
This is the third book by this author that I have read in as many weeks, so obviously I have a high opinion of him. The first two - Seleukos Nikator: Constructing a Hellenistic Kingdom; Hellenistic Phoenicia - were published by academic presses, whereas this is by a publisher targeting a more general readership. The book itself is as well written and researched as the previous two. The Notes however are mainly straightforward citation references, without the in-depth criticism of the sources you find in the academic volumes.
The 16 chapters are arranged thus:
1-6 66pp, Alexander, his Successors & the Ptolemaic Sea-Empire
7-9 46pp, Carthage, Sicily and Rome
10-14 60pp, Roman Domination and Empire-building
15,16 15pp, Roman Civil Wars
Plus Conclusion, Notes, Bibliography, Index and 10 pages of good maps.
Chapter 5 - Demetrios the Sea-King and the Super-Galleys - includes a discussion of ship-types and the introduction of the big ships, which dominate the fleets to the end of the period.
P51: "The names given to the ships describe the number of rowers. It was normal to propel a galley with two or three banks of oars, rowed by oarsmen in files, and it is the number of files which gives each class its name. The Trireme, always the basis from which the discussion must proceed, had three oars in each set, each pulled by one man, so there were six files of men the length of the ship. Quadriremes had two oars manned by two men each; quinquiremes had three oars, two of them pulled by two men, and the third by one. The size of each class of ship had to be greater, of course, as the number of files increased.
Going up from a trireme to a six was relatively straightforward, for a six can be considered to be just a trireme with two men rather than one man to each oar, though obviously it was bigger. The numbers of the rowers were growing, however, from the trireme's 170 to the quadrireme's 176 to the quinquireme's 300 - the quinquireme was thus a major change. Going beyond this size was more difficult, for the ships became heavier and required more men with each manipulation of size and shape. A seven, of which Demetrios had seven at Salamis, was a bigger ship than a six, and had about 400 oarsmen; it had three banks of rowers, one with three men pulling and the others with two. In some navies the six was the biggest ship built, and it was used as a command vessel, just as the quinquiremes had been in the navies of the Phoenician and Cypriot kings.
These larger ships, up to tens, were certainly used in battle, but anything above a ten was never seen in action, though they were certainly built. Nines and tens seem to have been bigger versions the quadrireme, with two banks of oars pulled by five and four men in a nine, and two sets of five in a ten.".
Chapter 13 - Pirates - is an interesting discussion of pirates and piracy; "The term 'piracy' is rarely applied by pirates to themselves and their activities. It is a description of the activities of one's enemies. It is therefore not necessarily an accurate characterization of that activity. The Phoenicians were regularly described as pirates by the Greeks, but most of what we know of them suggests trade with or without violence." P149.
Mr Grainger has been publishing books and articles for 20 years on this period. This is a well-written and authoritative book. The narrative flows smoothly from one period to the next, and you always know who is doing what, and most importantly, why they are doing it. The book shows you the importance of sea-power, and the right and wrong ways of using it.
Further recommended reading by John D. Grainger:
The League of Aitolians (Mnemosyne, Supplements)
The Syrian Wars (Mnemosyne, Supplements)
The Roman War of Antiochos the Great (Mnemosyne, Supplements)
Alexander the Great Failure: The Collapse of the Macedonian Empire (Hambledon Continuum)
Hellenistic Phoenicia
Seleukos Nikator: Constructing a Hellenistic Kingdom
An Aside - the Hellenistic period (Philip and Alexander to Actium) can be confusing, especially when there are both Greek and Roman versions of names. I have found that playing historical board games help in learning names & places. The following are particularly useful for this period.
Sword of Rome (GMT Games)
Successors (GMT Games)
Hannibal (Valley Games)
Julius Caesar (Columbia Games)
Spartacus (Compass Games)
boardgamegeek com
boardgameguru co uk
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Time of the Quinquereme
By P. Weiser
This is not quite a blow-by-blow description of centuries of Mediterranean naval warfare, but close. And that's a good thing: it's a compact book, information-rich and well written. On a scale of technology to history, it is weighted more to the latter, i.e. there is little (though sufficient) description of warship types and more thorough treatment of general history including Successor politics and the Roman-Carthaginian feud which make sense of the strategies and alliances.
On the Kindle edition specifically: this has the most viewable illustrations (on my Kindle Keboard) of any I've seen - that is, they work properly on a non-backlit display instead of being too small or too low-contrast.
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