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The tasks at hand for the Roman navy were now the policing of the Mediterranean waterways and the border rivers, suppression of piracy, and escort duties for the grain shipments to Rome and for imperial army expeditions.
13 kwi 2014 · In 31 BCE, near Actium on the western coast of Greece, there occurred one of the most significant naval battles in history. Still battling for control of the Roman Empire, Octavian now faced Mark Antony and his ally, the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra. Both sides amassed a fleet and made ready to attack the other.
Roman fleet was named in ancient Rome as clasis. Its main centres were in Ravenna and Misenum, and smaller ones in some coastal provinces and on the Rhine and Danube. Seamen were recruited from the lowest sections of Roman society, even from slaves.
The Roman fleet had extraordinary success in the great naval Battle of Mylae off northeast Sicily, destroying or capturing 44 ships and 10,000 people. After other victories, and some defeats, by the end of the First Punic War, 241 bce, Rome had become the leading sea power.
The Roman Navy was always considered an inferior arm and was strictly under army control. But already during the First Punic War, Rome proved itself capable of launching a fleet capable of checking an established naval power such as Carthage.
Between the Battle of Mylae in 260 bc (when Rome defeated Carthage off the north coast of Sicily) and the Battle of Myonnesus in 190 (when Rome defeated the Seleucid navy off the west coast of Asia Minor), the Romans established naval domination over the whole Mediterranean.
The structural history of the Roman military concerns the major transformations in the organization and constitution of ancient Rome's armed forces, "the most effective and long-lived military institution known to history."
