The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History

by Chester G Starr

  Rome had won its mastery of the eastern Mediterranean primarily by land battles, but wherever and whenever naval forces were useful they had been provided out of Roman resources of funds and men. The Romans gained control of the seas not through tactical skills; for Polybius the Carthaginians were superior in efficiency and equipment, but Rome was successful `owing to the gallantry of their men."23 There were other factors as well.

  Rome thus had the financial strength and the timber to build fleets that were always larger than those of their opponents; "history might have run a very different course if Italy had not been well forested."24 To secure technical guidance it could draw on the skills of the Greeks in south Italian ports, who provided pilots and trainers of crews; in the initial Roman fleet of the First Punic War the crews were prepared by rowing in mock-ups on land. Rome also had the manpower to staff its navies just as it could raise legion after legion in the disasters of the war against Hannibal; and sailors as well as soldiers were generally loyal, though mutinies in Roman armies were not unknown. The admirals who directed the fleets were not brilliant, but dogged in carrying out their orders. The battle of Ecnomus was, in particular, a remarkable illustration of the ability of Roman consuls to keep control of their forces even when committed in battle, for their squadrons shifted positions to meet unexpected Carthaginian tactics enough to win the day.25 Finally, the motive force for Roman policy, the Senate, rarely failed to see what needed to be done and to execute its plans without hesitation.

  A student of Latin poetry has carefully analyzed the view of the sea expressed therein and concludes that Roman poets at the most preferred to stand on the shore and simply look out at this hostile element. "What joy it is," said Lucretius, "when out at sea the storm winds are lashing the waters, to gaze from the shore at the heavy stress some other man is enduring!"26 The Romans disliked the sea, but so too the early Greeks were equally distrustful of open waters; the enthusiasm of Athenian thalassocrats was not necessarily the norm, and true celebration of the challenge of the sea was to come only in modern Portuguese, Dutch, and English poetry. Yet when it became necessary for the Romans to provide fleets and utilize them for the ends of Roman policy they simply did so.

  For the rest of ancient history power lay in the hands of Rome, "master of land and sea" as the Alexandrian poet Lycophron baldly put it.27 During the last two centuries B.c., however, those hands were unsteady, often even palsied. This uncertainty critically tested the fundamental strengths of classical civilization and its economic structure as well as the system of government of the Roman Republic, which tottered ever more precariously. The Romans did not question their right to mastery; Cicero proudly proclaimed, "We have overcome all the nations of the world because we have realized that the world is directed and governed by the will of the gods."28 But they proved not very eager to accept the concomitant burdens; as a result their rule came to be hated in much of the Greek East, where an intense debate raged on the problem whether Roman imperialism was justified or was the evil consequence of Chance (Tyche).29

  Nowhere was this instability more critical than on the sea in the late second and early first centuries. The Romans had carried out the most complete process of naval disarmament that the world has ever seen and let their own naval establishment rot away. This cavalier dismissal of sea power produced retribution in one of the worst waves of piracy in classical times. Pirates could not base themselves on shores the Romans directly occupied, but there were other holes, partly in Crete but more hand ily in the rocky harbors of Cilicia.30 The Romans made Cilicia a province in 102 to counter this threat, but their writ ran only in the lower, more open reaches of the eastern part of the area; Rocky Cilicia remained outside their control, and it must be admitted that the Romans were too eager to buy the slaves whom the pirates poured into the markets of Delos to be overly concerned at their depredations, at least at the outset.31 According to one source, pirate vessels numbered a total of 1000, and 400 coastal settlements were sacked.

  In 88 the Aegean erupted in a revolt against Roman misgovernment, which was led by the astute king of Pontus, Mithridates, who gained the adhesion even of the sleepy university town of Athens. He had his own fleet but was much assisted by the pirates; to counter his threat the Roman commander sent to the east, Sulla, had to recruit ships of his own from every available source. This makeshift force proved victorious and was the nucleus for a Roman naval revival in following decades; unlike the Punic wars, when the Roman navy was built by public funds, the Romans for some time relied only on requisitions from maritime cities, which were thus ordered in 84-83 to construct and lay up in reserve a number of ships for possible future use.32

  This strength, ranging up to 100 vessels, was enough to cope with Mithridates when war broke out again, but it was far from adequate to master the pirates who tyrannized the East and extended their raids to the shores of Italy during the years 70-68. They seized two praetors for ransom, sank a Roman squadron in the port of Caieta, and seriously threatened the food supplies of the Roman masses. Rhetorically indicting Roman sloth, Cicero asserted, "Who sailed the seas without opening himself to the risk either of death or of slavery? . . . What province did you keep free from the pirates during these years? What source of revenue was secure for you? . . . How many islands do you suppose were deserted, how many of your allies' cities either abandoned through fear or captured by the pirates?"33

  When the flow of grain to Rome was endangered, the city eventually reacted, and the popular hero Pompey was entrusted in 67 with powers over all the Mediterranean, the first extraordi nary command in a chain that was to lead to the end of the Republic. Pompey divided the sea into 25 districts, each with its own ships and admirals, and in three months swept from the western end to Cilicia, eliminating the pirates without open engagement, and seized their native strongholds. Those who had become pirates "not through wickedness, but from poverty" he settled inland.34 Sporadic piracy by sea was to continue for a few more decades, but essentially the Romans had learned the consequences of naval disarmament; as the terms of Pompey's triumph ran he "had restored the rule of the sea to the Roman people."35

  In 58 Caesar began his own extraordinary command, this time in Gaul, which he conquered in the next few years. At home conservative senators feared ever more his growing power and engineered a break between Caesar and Pompey which led in 49-48 to the first great civil war of the dying Republic. Caesar invaded Italy so swiftly that Pompey and his senators had to flee to Greece, but Caesar was temporarily prevented from following him inasmuch as Pompey still held the navy under his control. Caesar ordered ships to be built in every Italian port; Pompey prepared his forces to return to Italy. As Cicero wrote to a friend, Pompey "holds with Themistocles that those who are masters of the sea will be victors in the end."36

  Unfortunately the sea itself had its own ideas. When some ships were ready Caesar evaded the blockade of Brundisium and crossed the Adriatic in the winter of 48. The opposing admiral, Bibulus, caught some vessels on the return and sank them, but eventually Antony was able to bring over the rest of Caesar's army; the inability of galleys to catch sailing ships in a good wind has been noted in an earlier chapter. Although Pompey used his naval power to provide his own army and deny food to Caesar, the battlefield of Pharsalus in September 48 saw a complete Caesarian victory. Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was at once beheaded by the fearful Egyptian government; Caesar followed with far too few ships and men and was besieged for almost a year in the Ptolemaic palace at Alexandria-together with Cleopatra, sister of the king. Once land troops from Syria had broken the siege Caesar returned briefly to Rome, but then once again with inadequate naval strength invaded Africa to end Pompeian resistance there. On land Caesar was a tactical genius, who inspired the blind loyalty of his troops; but on the sea he was barely competent-even in invading Britain during his Gallic campaign he failed to realize that there were tides in the Atlantic and so had his ships stranded on the coast.

  After his murder
on the Ides of March 44 Antony took command at the outset but soon faced the challenge of the Younger Caesar, a grandnephew only 18 years of age, who had been adopted in Caesar's will as his son. Octavian, as he was called for a few years, was determined to avenge the murder of his "father." First he secured an army of his own, largely from Caesar's veterans, and forced his election as consul in 43. Then he joined with Antony and a secondary leader, Lepidus, to form a cabal (the Second Triumvirate) that avenged itself on opponents and also raised funds by proscribing many Roman leaders, including Cicero. Finally, Antony and Octavian marched east and destroyed the tyrannicides Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in Macedonia. Thereafter Antony took the east (and Cleopatra) and Octavian the west, which involved settling a large number of veterans on confiscated lands.

  To add to his unpopularity Octavian faced a serious threat in the son of the great Pompey, Sextus Pompey, who had gained most of his navy and used it from bases in Sicily and Sardinia to master the Tyrrhenian and put pressure on Rome by interfering with its grain supply. Slaves, the proscribed, and other discontented elements ran off to join Sextus, but Octavian initially had no naval strength to meet this threat.

  A temporary peace was arranged between the two by Antony in 39, but open warfare broke out the next year. Sextus' pressure on Roman food supplies became even more dangerous, and Octavian was almost mobbed in the Forum on one occasion by hungry citizens. He built fleets at Rome and Ravenna and began a dextrous campaign of propaganda, at which he was becoming a master, to portray Sextus as a glorified brigand; either by force or voluntarily, the wealthy of Italy, irked by Sextus' reception of runaway slaves and angered by his plundering, supported Octavian by furnishing money and rowers. The problem of manning a fleet in the western Mediterranean, moreover, was now easier, for the civil wars had scattered seafarers over all the coasts.

  Yet Octavian's first squadrons were destroyed in storms and defeat. Determined to cope with Sextus, he recalled his main military aide Agrippa from Gaul to build new warships in 37. A flotilla was constructed near Naples in an artificial harbor, and the new ships were built far more heavily than those of Sextus; to secure rowers Octavian took the unusual step of recruiting 20,000 slaves, but he freed them before formal enlistment 37 Finally in 36 Agrippa won decisively off Sicily, though Octavian himself had at one point to flee to Italian shores. Sextus escaped, but soon was executed by one of Antony's governors. A gilded statue of Octavian was erected in the Forum bearing the inscription "Peace, long disturbed, he re-established on land and sea."38 Roman leaders of the previous generation had been rudely educated by the pirate scourge as to the importance of keeping firm hands on the sea; Octavian himself learned by bitter experience the same lesson.

  Soon Antony, bewitched according to Virgil by the Oriental siren Cleopatra, was drawn into war with Octavian. The fact that the struggle was settled by naval battle reflects the importance sea power had attained, but the final result was clearly foreshadowed by the physical and psychological skirmishing before the battle proper. Antony and Cleopatra came up to Greece in the winter of 32-31, where many of their rowers died of a plague. Agrippa in the spring of 31 quickly snatched the initiative by bold attacks on Antony's supply lines to Egypt, and through one of the most skillful campaigns of ancient times hemmed in Antony by the summer on the west coast of the Balkans. On September 2 Antony sought to break out from the Gulf of Actium, but his disaffected navy with its poorly trained rowers fought badly. Cleopatra fled, and Antony deserted the struggle to follow her to Egypt.

  After asserting his authority in Greece Octavian also made his way to Egypt with overwhelming forces by land and sea. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide; on August 1, 31 B.C., the victor entered Alexandria, where he looked down on the embalmed body of Alexander. The great Macedonian had begun as unquestioned king; Octavian had commenced his career as a virtual school boy two years younger and now was master of the Mediterranean world.

  CHAPTER V

  The Roman Imperial Peace

  Alexander died at the age of 33; on his final victory Octavian-or as he was soon to be named Imperator Caesar Augustus divi filius-had another 45 years in which to consolidate a superb system of veiled but complete mastery and pass it on to succeeding emperors of the Roman world. Deftly he inured the ostentatious, militaristic senatorial class to support his position; by care for the food, water, and entertainment of the Roman masses he gained their loyalty; provision of more orderly government and protection of justice in the provinces led to his acceptance by the upper classes of the cities in an unwritten bargain to trade imperial fealty for local control.

  To safeguard his own authority and also the world he ruled Augustus devoted careful attention to a great military reorganization in which he probably was aided by Agrippa.' The solution was to create a professional, long-term army. Its backbone consisted of citizens, theoretically at least volunteers, who were organized in heavy infantry divisions, the legions, some of which were to last 400 years-the longest-lived units in history. Alongside the legions served non-citizens, provincials who were recruited initially from tribal units in smaller auxiliary groups of infantry or cavalry. Together, the army of legions and auxilia numbered about 250,000 men, but it had to garrison some 4000 miles of frontiers in Europe, Asia, and Africa as well as maintaining internal order. The expense of this force was the main obligation of the state budget, but the prosperity of the Roman Empire in the first two centuries after Christ was able to bear this burden.

  Augustus also proceeded to the parallel, systematic creation of a permanent navy. After Actium he had 400 vessels of his own to which he now could add roughly 300 of Antony's ships. Ten of these, including Antony's flagship, were dedicated to Actian Apollo; others were burned or scrapped as surplus; the remainder were sent to Forum Iulii on the south coast of Gaul, which had been used as a naval base against Sextus Pompey. With this event the history of the Roman imperial navy formally begins; thereafter the Empire had standing naval forces almost as long as it was an effective state.2 As Tacitus commented on the Augustan system, "the empire's frontiers were on the ocean or distant rivers. Armies, provinces, fleets, the whole system was interrelated."3 The role of the navy was well put by a scholar years ago, "We hear very much about the influence of Roman roads in promoting Roman civilization, but the influence of Roman fleets in bringing about that miracle has been almost entirely ignored. Yet it is demonstrable that the Roman empire depended quite as much on its fleets as on its roads."4

  Although Forum Iulii continued to be a base for several decades, it was essentially supplanted by two great war harbors in Italy itself. One was Misenum, just north of Naples, near the ports of western Italy, as close to Rome as any other good harbor in Italy at the time; moles guarded an inner and outer harbor and a reservoir of Augustan date husbanded its water supplies. The other base was artificially constructed on a lagoon south of Ravenna, connected by a canal to the Po River. Subsidiary detachments from these two Italian flotillas, of temporary or permanent character, are attested by tombstones of sailors and literary references."

  To judge from the number of surviving tombstones and names of ships, the classis Misenensis was larger than the classis Ravennas and had the imperial flagship, but both were large enough to provide a whole legion in the civil wars of A.D. 68-69 (and the Misene fleet another temporary legion). If it appears odd that sailors could thus be turned into soldiers, it must be remembered that the crew of each galley was organized not only on naval lines but also as a military century under a centurion; sailors had themselves depicted on tombstones in military dress and called themselves milites, not nautae.6 The strength of the two squadrons may be estimated at some 15,000 men; provincial flotillas in the Mediterranean and on the northern rivers were perhaps in total as strong so that the Roman imperial navy, as we may call a structure never unified under one command, totalled about 30,000 men.

  The largest units were based on Italy partly for geographical reasons, inasmuch as the peninsula was
the center of the Mediterranean Sea, and at this time the primary trade routes tended to run to Italian ports. Also Italy traditionally was exempt from military garrisons, but the presence of the navy could be tolerated and gave the emperors direct, sure control both of Italy and of avenues of approach.? The fact, however, that command was divided reflects Augustus' caution in keeping his generals, and admirals, from gaining too independent a position. The prefects of the fleets were not even senators, as was true of legionary commanders (save in Egypt), but came from the second rung of the Roman aristocracy, the equestrians, who could not easily attempt rebellion; in the early decades, indeed, some prefects were even freedmen, and equestrian prefects themselves were low on the ranks of the military hierarchy. Only once were both fleets placed under a single commander, though they cooperated in policing the Mediterranean. The most famous prefect of the Misene fleet was Pliny the Elder, the polymath author of the Natural History and several historical works, who died from exploring too closely the fumes of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79; three other naval prefects, however, reached the highest military post in the Empire, that of praetorian prefect.

  The sailors themselves were certainly not citizens, unlike the legionaries, but they were not slaves as Mommsen and others asserted on flimsy evidence; rather they were provincials, largely from the Balkans and Egypt, who volunteered to serve for 26 years (28 by the third century).8 Letters preserved in Egyptian papyri reflect their enthusiasm on enlistment, such as that of Apion to his father, hoping for speedy promotion: "I send you a little picture of myself by Euktemon. My name is now Antonius Maximus."9 As the last remark suggests, sailors were subject to the process of Romanization, including the use of Latin. From Claudius onward they also received the prestigious grant of citizenship on discharge, inscribed on a bronze plate in Rome; each new citizen also got his own copy, a "diploma," numbers of which have survived.