a roman naval reform

[gaius valerius]

as the polybian reform came up with the message "after fighting celts, carthagians, etc" something crossed my mind. when the first punic war broke out the romans had no fleet, no type of ship rdy for naval combat with carthage her fleets. they only managed to compete with the latter after one of their ships stranded on roman soil and they just imitated it (with all the interesting modifications later on, like balista towers etc).

so i wandered:

1) could it be possible to have a naval reform giving the romans their better ships after they clash with carthage? either a random event based on wether you actually have a naval clash or just the historical date of when that ship wrecked (i dont remember the exact date )?

2) also in the end the romani ships aint that special now are they? cuz if i remember correctly in war times the romans could get realy inventive with their ships and add all sorts of extras (towers for onagers, ballistas, archers; ramps for boarding) and i find that the ingenious mind of the romans isn't displayed correctly on the naval field? in vanilla the scipii had some 'special' ships, though they were mostly uberships and i doubt the romans used such against carthage at the time. but anyway, having more types of ships would make the naval scene a lot more interesting

otherwise great mod

[konny]

when the first punic war broke out the romans had no fleet, no type of ship rdy for naval combat with carthage her fleets. they only managed to compete with the latter after one of their ships stranded on roman soil and they just imitated it (with all the interesting modifications later on, like balista towers etc).

That is certainly a Roman myth. Rome controlled a peninsula in the middle of the Mediterranian. The city itself was a very important trading center - and that is not trading with the hinterland peasants. So, she had very certainly allready a navy that was 'fit' for contemporary naval warfare, and all the knowledge to build even more and larger ships. May be they used that wreck to copy a detail or two from the Carthagian model, but they didn't need it to learn how to build war-ships at all.

I am also not sure that ballista on ships was Roman invention. For example, at least the legends wants that the Bythinians threw pots with snakes on the ships of their enemies. For that they needed some ballistik tools on their ships as well.

[joerd9]

I don't know if it is still the case with 1.0, but in .81 you did actually get new ships when the vanilla marian reforms triggered. Liburnes and Covered Liburnes who were pretty good and cost effective.

[Leão magno]

Another Roman myth are the numerous victories in sea against Carthage just to have the entire fleet sunk in "storms"... what a Rman Ego ! They could not just admit pyrrhic victories and losses to Carthaginians

[Giuliano Taverna]

Another Roman myth are the numerous victories in sea against Carthage just to have the entire fleet sunk in "storms"... what a Rman Ego ! They could not just admit pyrrhic victories and losses to Carthaginians

Well remind me who won the Punic wars? I don’t hear the majority of the world speaking Aramaic and talking about the once mighty Carthaginian Empire. They speak Latin and copy Rome. We Romans deserve that so called “Ego” your wining about hehehe.

Rome Victorious!!!!!!!

[Leão magno]

Well remind me who won the Punic wars? I don’t hear the majority of the world speaking Aramaic and talking about the once mighty Carthaginian Empire. They speak Latin and copy Rome. We Romans deserve that so called “Ego” your wining about hehehe.

Rome Victorious!!!!!!!

Do not take it personaly, Roma did their propaganda about almost all conflict they got involved and has been like this till our days... today many people talks about USA ego, Russian Ego, British Ego, Chinese Ego, and everybody is right about it, it is part of a high morale army to have an almost unstopable ego... the Romans certainly did not admit many defeats along history just the same as many other powers! Do not you think it is strange that their fleets were, during the entire PW I, constatly destroyed by storms? Just after supposed great victories???? Come on, history is written by the winners!

Besides that, commenting some of your last etnichal posts, you need to agree that Romans were really good in adopting knowledge and tecnology from other peoples... they did not invented the maniples, think the Saminicity already used it, they improved it... They did not inveted hot baths and plumbing, they perfected tecnologies available to Carthaginians and, as far as I remeber, Etruscans, they did not invented the dome, it was an evolution of the architecture that they pretty much learned from Greeks... Anyway this is not a diminishing comentary... Japan is evolved because they learned how to copy and make it better, in WW2 one of the saviours of Soviet Union tanks was the T42 an evolution and adaptation of an old Americans tank (T26 I believe), and it was one of the best tanks in WW2! So take the copy and develop behaviour as a compliment but you need to reverence those who copied and developed before...

[Juggernaut]

Another Roman myth are the numerous victories in sea against Carthage just to have the entire fleet sunk in "storms"... what a Rman Ego ! They could not just admit pyrrhic victories and losses to Carthaginians

Do you have any primary source to prove the contrary, that the Roman ships that were supposed to be sunk in the storm was actually lost in a unknown battle?
Or are you just saying what you think happened?

[Leão magno]

Do you have any primary source to prove the contrary, that the Roman ships that were supposed to be sunk in the storm was actually lost in a unknown battle?
Or are you just saying what you think happened?

Not being a professional of history nor an archeologist myself, I must say it is a personal belief, one based on fact that history is told by the victorious one and not the loser one... anyway, it would not be the first time a civilization (Romans, Greeks, English’s, Chinese’s they have all done that before) tells the battle history different from what it was.

For example, only recently we came to learn that Carthaginian Empire was a very advanced one in agricultural technology, Romans made the world believes, especially after Hannibal, that they were simple thieves and barbarian horde. Only recently the non historian community learned that Carthage had a complex scientific library that was stolen by Romans.

The Carthaginians history from the early period is brought to us from Greek and Italic writers, both full with prejudge and, sometimes, arrogance. Ask yourself is it believable that a non maritime people could build a fleet from the merchant scratch, train rammers, sailors and soldiers in numbers great enough to fill an entire 300 quinquireme fleet, fight those who naturally have been doing that for centuries and after just one battle of learning became so invincible that in the next fights they only lost some ships, never more than ten of them just to loose all of them in a storm! That happened (the storm) just after almost every major engagement!

You see, once we were told by our teachers that antiquity thought earth to be flat and the same teachers told us that Aristotle’s lecture included the ideal of circumnavigate from India to Egypt and back to Greece , that an ancient mathematician measured Earth circumference, how someone that thinks it is a flat world comes to the idea of measuring it’s circumference?

But many of us did not see what was obvious, that history was not as told! Europa Barbarorum is a good example f it, many of us just now realizes how Romans, Greeks and other civilized people misinterpreted and miswritten “barbarians”. In Carthaginians case, it is a too old history to be easily re-written.

How many other lies have we founded about Roman history? Lies that served a public agenda, the political campaining, and many other objectives… I only considered that it is not easy to believe that the decedents of Phoenicians, the same ones that stood (in naval matters) valued as naval power would loose so badly to such an unprepared foe as Rome (in that period).

Remember that even pirates were a threat to Romans in the early ages … how if they dealt so well against the major maritime empire of mediterrain? I am not saying Rome lost the battles, I am just dared enough to say that their victories were not so easy and so without loses! For me it is certain they lost many ships and that the storms may have happened but the storms can not be credited to sink 250 ships while the battle was responsible for only 5!

That is, again, a personal believe. What do you think about… before answering, try reading the sea battles of PW 1, even the Winkpedia can help one out to come to his conclusions, you will see how great “were” Roma’s victories and how disastrous were the “storms”. To finish my point observation, 17 years of battle without a fleet to resupply armies with fresh recruits from Africa, since the fleet was lost, how could they resist so long? How could they survive without reinforcements, 15 ships could never reinforce the war effort long enough for the war last so many years.

[Juggernaut]

When Romans suffered a defeat, they usually blamed it on the commander, and they might downscale the casualty figure a bit but they never pretended that the defeat never happened.
And I see you don't have a evidence to prove your case, apart from your speculations based on personal impressions and the old over used phrase of "history is written by the winners".
And in a case you didn't know, the prejudiced Roman propaganda very clearly records a crushing naval defeat against the Carthaginians, the battle of Drepana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Drepana
Why did they suddenly decide to record this utterly humiliating defeat while covering up the other unknown ones as "storms"?
The Carthaginian sailors were no more experienced in naval battle than the Romans:the last fleet engagement happened years ago and most of them wouldn't have had any combat experience before.
They had the advantage of tradition, but it was not an overwhelming advantage.
And why was it only Naval defeat they wanted to cover it up?
Why didn't they cover up the destruction of Regulus' army in Africa?
Losing a naval battle which they never had a real experience before would be far more excusable than losing a land battle, of which the Romans already had a plenty of experience.
Why is this?
When talking of history, you need evidence.
You can virtually claim anything if you say "the winners destroyed the evidence for propaganda".
A claim without evidence is at best speculation.
Nothing more.

[Leão magno]

When Romans suffered a defeat, they usually blamed it on the commander, and they might downscale the casualty figure a bit but they never pretended that the defeat never happened.
And I see you don't have a evidence to prove your case, apart from your speculations based on personal impressions and the old over used phrase of "history is written by the winners".
And in a case you didn't know, the prejudiced Roman propaganda very clearly records a crushing naval defeat against the Carthaginians, the battle of Drepana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Drepana
Why did they suddenly decide to record this utterly humiliating defeat while covering up the other unknown ones as "storms"?
The Carthaginian sailors were no more experienced in naval battle than the Romans:the last fleet engagement happened years ago and most of them wouldn't have had any combat experience before.
They had the advantage of tradition, but it was not an overwhelming advantage.
And why was it only Naval defeat they wanted to cover it up?
Why didn't they cover up the destruction of Regulus' army in Africa?
Losing a naval battle which they never had a real experience before would be far more excusable than losing a land battle, of which the Romans already had a plenty of experience.
Why is this?
When talking of history, you need evidence.
You can virtually claim anything if you say "the winners destroyed the evidence for propaganda".
A claim without evidence is at best speculation.
Nothing more.

The other members did a great job defending the point here but I can not stay silent before a blind or narrow way to view history (please I do not mean to ofend). History is to be learned and rationalised before being stated as true, oterwise it becomes a form of "religion".

I never said they lost battles, I never said they lost the war, I said and still say that as far as I believe, based in the rational hability that set us apart from many other primates, that it is not impossible that "the storms" covered up for Pyrric victories in the sea, if not, losses.

Tell me, does any of those historians explain how did Carthage kept the island reinforced and armed for such a long period of time without a fleet?

Nowadays we have airplanes, ICBMs, Tomahawks, cruise missiles and we still need a fleet to keep the war effort in distant places, how does the historians explain that?

Yes history is written by the victorious side! It is a proven argument, only recent , using the modern methods of research we are relearning history, Yes history is written by the victorious side because in terms of punic war, the losser is dead!

I do not mean to ofend the historians, no way, just as much I do not intend to ofend today's midia but can we say we shall believe in everything that is on internet? TV? Radio?

Please do not ask me to have a historian or a proof to what I say or you will be comparing yourelf to those mifddle age priests who asked scientists to prove that Earth was moving around the sun ...

Things do not become true because someone wrote it and that is the central point of every science. Speculations you say... the Atomic science once was an speculation too, have you ever seen an atom? I just hope you believe they exist for something more than "because someone who is already dead wrote about them"

Again, it is my personal believe and I do not invite other to believe too, but all along history the human behaviour in wars have many examples that makes the "speculation" a possiblity.

[Companion Cavalry]

Rome would never have been founded if the Doric tribes had not invaded

mainland Greece and displaced the Greeks there to far off coasts. What is

there to copy of Rome? They borrowed culture from Phoenicia and Greece as

well as art, architecture, mathematics, and medicine and it is remarkable how

little was changed once all of it was in Roman hands for 600 years!

[Giuliano Taverna]

Rome would never have been founded if the Doric tribes had not invaded

mainland Greece and displaced the Greeks there to far off coasts. What is

there to copy of Rome? They borrowed culture from Phoenicia and Greece as

well as art, architecture, mathematics, and medicine and it is remarkable how

little was changed once all of it was in Roman hands for 600 years!

first of I'm from magna grecia and 1/4 neopolitian ie roman second the romans invented heated baths, public restrooms, the modern super dome the vaulted celing and the most advanced military in the world for more than 2000 years.
the greeks had cold baths and craped in ceramic jars.

[Companion Cavalry]

Giuliano, you would have noticed I hadn't even mentioned you in my preceding

post so please enough about your ethnicity. As for the inventions, in six

hundred years if all they could invent in was heated baths and arches they

must not have been very advanced. The military was based of all of their

neighbours, the only roman innovation in the armour was lorica segment which

took 400 years for them to think of. As for organization, they did divided their

armies into cohorts and such, something that was done in the Successor

Kingdoms for a long time before the Romans did it.

[Giuliano Taverna]

Giuliano, you would have noticed I hadn't even mentioned you in my preceding

post so please enough about your ethnicity. As for the inventions, in six

hundred years if all they could invent in was heated baths and arches they

must not have been very advanced. The military was based of all of their

neighbours, the only roman innovation in the armour was lorica segment which

took 400 years for them to think of. As for organization, they did divided their

armies into cohorts and such, something that was done in the Successor

Kingdoms for a long time before the Romans did it.

Not exactly while the Greeks did have plumbing it wasn’t even close to that of the Romans the Romans also had the first highways in the world and a highly advanced medical knowledge that combined the Greek concept of religious medicine with more tangible surgical knowledge learned on the front lines. In addition many of the inventions of Greece and Alexandria where made after its incorporation into Rome.

You have to give the Romans credit not only for the improvement on past inventions but for being open enough to adopt those technologies in the first place ask your self why did the Romans rule the world for so long? You can’t just say that they owe there prosperity to the Greeks if that was the case why didn’t the Greeks conquer Rome? Or for that matter why didn’t Hannibal take Rome?

The answer is simple the Romans where more advanced and while much of there technology was borrowed they used it better than every one else and improved it significantly give the Romans some credit the quality of life in the roman empire wasn’t equaled until about 50 years ago. Also remember Romans invented the republican form of government if not for Rome the western world as we know it would not exist the Greeks may have had democracy and Carthage might have had a type of republic but the roman model is what we use and that in itself is a resent to appreciate Rome.

[Internazionale]

"You can’t just say that they owe there prosperity to the Greeks if that was the case why didn’t the Greeks conquer Rome? Or for that matter why didn’t Hannibal take Rome?"

The reason Hannibal didn't conquer Rome was because he didn't want to, he thought he won the war against Rome. And Alexander died just as he was planning invasion of the Italian Peninsula. Before they did reforms in tactics and equipment, the Greeks and Carthaginians could have whooped their asses.

Just telling the truth.

[Leão magno]

Not telling Rome own anything more then respect for those who came before and openned way for then, ey they even own some to the Celts (gauls especialy), Saminites, and every one else... Romans were good and unique at enduring dificulties, learning, improving and aplly!

[Giuliano Taverna]

All I’m saying is Rome deserves credit. The modern world is largely based on roman life and if not for Rome it’s unlikely that the disparate elements of all the contemporary cultures would have come together the way they did.

Also technology aside roman culture was a roman invention separate for the Greeks, Etruscans, Punics, and Gauls.
Here is a link to a good resource on roman culture please do the research before you make dismissive comments about Romans.

http://www.novaroma.org/

[pauli]

so about them boats.

[Companion Cavalry]

Pauli, the whole "boat" question was answered, what more is there?

[Melificus101]

Hannibal didn't conquer Rome because he didn't have the manpower to accomplish the feat. His pleas for more men from Carthage went largely unanswered because the governemnt was more concerned about Spain. Carthage never had a chance at beating Rome.