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Map of the Roman fleets and major naval bases during the Principate. After the end of the civil wars, Augustus reduced and reorganized the Roman armed forces, including the navy.
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.
13 kwi 2014 · Rome had employed naval vessels from the early Roman Republic in the 4th century BCE, especially in response to the threat from pirates in the Tyrrhenian Sea, but it was in 260 BCE that they built, in a mere 60 days, their first significant navy. A fleet of 100 quinqueremes and 20 triremes was assembled in response to the threat from Carthage.
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."
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.
11 maj 2012 · In these pages the author looks at all the aspects of the Navy in turn. Shipbuilding, rigs and fittings, and shipboard weaponry are covered as are all the principal ship from the earliest types...
