THE ROLE OF SEA POWER IN ANTIQUITY:
A REJOINDER TO CHESTER STARR
By James J. Bloom
This article is the core of a planned book-length treatment on ancient maritime power, which will be more
than a simple rebuttal to Starr. It was presented as a lecture at the New York Military Affairs Symposium at
the City University of New York facility in Manhattan on June 25, 2004.
I. Chester Starr Adrift
In researching the naval aspects of the Roman-Jewish War, it struck me that there was no
comprehensive overview of ancient maritime power (or sea power, if you will) apart from Chester
Starr’s 1989 survey, The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History.
Other books on the topic tended to get mired in the minutiae of nautical archaeological research.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not dismissing the importance of studies of ancient wrecks,
the various artifacts therein and their origins and implications. To be sure, there have been several
excellent books on the finer points of ship design and construction, seamanship, navigation,
maritime technology, economics of shipbuilding and the evolution and precise configuration of that
supreme ancient warship the trireme. All bring together diffuse data such as inscriptions,
pictograms, relief carvings on tombs, temple walls and columns, images on seals and coins,
fragments of statues (such as the famous Nike/Victory frieze in the Louvre) vase paintings, votive
models, friezes, mosaics, ambiguous references in the written record and the recovered underwater
carcasses of ancient ships or their cargoes and harbor fixtures. In keeping with the varied scope of
the data, the books severally deal with particular aspects of ships & fixtures, payloads, crews and
harbors. But there are few overview books that examine the ancient world’s maritime aspect in the
manner of Mahan, Richmond or Corbett. The nautical archaeological studies are quite narrowly
focused and rarely elevate to the level of the overall implications for the exercise of the maritime
component of ancient statecraft.
There are some other good books, to be sure on the “big picture”, such as Lionel Casson’s Ancient
Mariners (1959, revised 1991) and the studies by Fik Meijer History of Seafaring in the Classical
World (London: Croom Helm, 1986) and J. H. Thiel, the latter concentrating on the Roman navy up
to the time of the second Punic War A History of Roman Sea Power before the Second Punic War
(Amsterdam 1954) and Studies on the History of Roman Sea-Power in Republican Times
(Amsterdam 1946. (Observe how many of the leading authorities on ancient navies are Dutch.).
That’s about it for the grand strategic viewpoint, comparable to what Edward Luttwak did for the
Roman land forces in his Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire. Jean Rougé, in his La marine dans
l' antiquité (Paris 1975) gave a review of the components of the game with merely a glance at how
and why the fleets were deployed. Ironically, Starr was one of the few who present a peep at the
ancients in the fashion of the great modern naval theorists, if only to shadow-box with his bete noir.
It was all the more regrettable, then, that I found that Starr’s book was caught up in the “publish or
perish” syndrome – publishers pushing their favorite authors for a fashionable “hook”. After but a
few pages into the slender volume, I realized that the dust jacket’s ambitious objective is in no way
seriously broached.
The late Chester Starr has written some well-regarded books on ancient empires and his study on
the anatomy of the roman imperial navy is the standard reference. He, or Oxford U Press, probably
decided to issue this potboiler in order to exploit the 100th anniversary of the Mahan's The
Influence of Seapower on History.
The book could have stood on its own merits as a handy little summary of the naval side of ancient
empire-building, defending and destroying. However it certainly does NOT prove that sea power is
overrated as a factor. Nor did Mahan – Starr's supposed target – really make any such claims with
respect to antiquity. Mahan's brief paragraphs on Athens (in his lecture notes) and the Second Punic
War (in his Influence of Sea power book) were not only peripheral but were rather cautious
compared to his claims for sea power’s role in building the British Empire – his main topic.
In fact, Starr's narrative and discussions are pretty supportive of the SIGNIFICANCE of naval and
maritime dominance in ancient times, albeit not in the sense that Mahan intended for the British
navy of the 17th through 19th centuries AD. The most forceful, and practically only, argument
advanced by Starr in order to debunk naval power is with reference to the Minoans. What's the
point? Mahan never mentioned Crete or Minos at all.
In the dust jacket hype, Oxford U Press and Barnes & Noble mention that Mahan's “disciples”
inflate the maritime factor with regard to antiquity. If so, Starr never mentions who these disciples
are or their works, let alone refutes them.
Starr – or OUP’s – dubious assertion that naval power was not all that significant to ancient empires
was confusing. The book’s failure to deliver on its promise is especially unfortunate, as not many
books published in recent decades deal with the broader aspects of sea power in the ancient world.
All in all, this is a concise and informative reference on the use of ships before the medieval period.
Its shaky hypothesis offers nothing new and in fact, devalues the book's true worth. Maybe we need
some standard measure of significance or decisiveness.
We know that Salamis, in which a Greek naval alliance defeated a Persian armada, is considered
one of the “decisive battles” of history. Apart from the oft-told tale of how Greece saved Western
Civilization by this bold stroke, the clash between the land power Sparta and the sea power Athens
a century or so later, and the controversy over how a trireme was configured, the history buff finds
little about “sea power” until the Viking epoch and the age of exploration that followed. The epic
contest between Carthage, the paramount naval power of its era, and the land-minded Roman
upstart – the Punic Wars – has received uneven attention. The First Punic War, which was decided
on the seas, is the subject of several monographs. However, the Second Punic War, in which the
celebrated Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca was ultimately defeated, is commonly treated as an
extended land campaign, the naval component receiving inadequate consideration.
As mentioned, the guru of modern navalism, Mahan, in fact didn’t seem much interested in
anything prior to the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the late 17th century. His paradigm to explain his
theories for the late Victorian era was the Royal Navy versus the French fleets of the 18th century.
Focusing on Athens and Carthage, Starr, according to his publisher, I’ve italicized several key
phrases that are patently absurd or simply superfluous.
“demonstrates that control of the seas was not always a strategic necessity.[Comment: whoever said
it was? And why then is it necessary to assert that it was not “always” a strategic necessity?]
Similarly, he examines the Roman imperial navy--the most advanced and widely based naval
structure in antiquity--noting that when Rome fell it was due to invasions by land, not sea.
[Comment: And??? Does this imply that navies had no role in supporting such invasions by the
barbarians, or that had Rome maintained its fleet of the imperial heyday, the invasions could not
have been thwarted? What drivel!] Starr describes major naval battles in fascinating detail, and
analyzes technological developments as they reveal the limitations of galleys in warfare.
[Comment: Nonsense. I could not find one instance where Starr “revealed the limitations” of
galleys except in his throwaway line that they could not maintain a maritime blockade, presumably
in the manner of the German U-Boats of the first and second world wars, or the British surface fleet
contra Germany in both conflicts, His “observation” that galleys didn’t have the “sea legs” to
sustain such operations is about as relevant as saying that the Zeppelins or Gotha bombers of 1916
could not bring Great Britain to her knees]. This innovative study provides an important corrective
to Mahan's thesis, both as applied to ancient history and to modern strategic thought [Comment:
Hardly, given that Mahan made no such claims regarding ancient naval power] - making it
provocative reading for those interested in ancient history and also for those who follow military
history (from publisher’s blurb from the dust jacket of the 1998 Barnes & Noble reprint of The
Influence of Seapower on Ancient History.)
It had long been fashionable to attack the imperialist haughtiness of that salty old curmudgeon.
Upon scrutiny, the book’s declared purpose – to debunk Mahan’s supposed distortion of sea power
in antiquity – is reduced to one or two inane sentences, oddly severed from their context. Clearly,
OUP’s or Barnes & Noble’s rhetorical overstatement doesn’t reflect a sincerely held position. Lest
this assertion seem to be a truism, I can point to a tendency in American historiography to debunk
“navalism” as tantamount to imperialism and thus naval history unworthy of serious study. While
this proclivity marked the fallout from the American fiasco in Vietnam, there are earlier examples
of the trend. For example, the distinguished American military historian Walter Millis sparred with
Mahan’s imperialist apparition on the eve of the Second World War. Finally, I contend that Starr’s
depiction of wars and empires actually proves the opposite of what he – or his literary agent –
claims he set out to establish.
Where, indeed, can one find Mahan’s supposed unjustified claims for sea power’s omnipotence in
antiquity? He devoted but a few pages: pp 13-21 to the Second Punic War and another 8 pages of
reflection on the Athenian expedition to Syracuse in the Peloponnesian war in his collected lectures,
Naval Strategy, published in 1911. These discussions are rather cautious in tone, regularly
reminding readers about the paucity of documentation.
Mahan’s vantage point from which to demonstrate his sea power doctrine was the British Navy of
the 17th through the early 19th centuries. He does not pretend to apply the lessons of Trafalgar to
Salamis and Cannae. Using Mahan as a fulcrum, the book feigns to expound upon Starr’s ostensible
thesis that ancient Crete, Greece and Rome exhibited neither the economic nor the political stability
to possess and protect the sea. Although many historians of antiquity and naval analysts dismiss
Starr’s polemic, his little potboiler keeps finding its way into bibliographies and “further reading”
lists.
The thrust of Starr’s tract is that land campaigns and battles were the ultimate determinants of the
Persian, Peloponnesian and Punic Wars; in his view sea power was an ancillary, albeit important
factor. This is hardly a thunderbolt. Nobody seriously holds to the “decisive battle” proposition
anymore, whether on land or on the water. The idea that wars were won or empires lost, as the
result of a solitary coup de main is the stuff of dorm or hobby club chatter. More so than any other
facet of national potential, naval mastery is characterized by deliberate and gradual “presence”
rather than bold dramatic strokes. Further, it is in the naval sphere that the military and economic
facets of power are substantially interlaced. Neat dichotomies of land versus naval operations are
likewise inappropriate and out of tune with reality.
Whether or not the Greeks prevailed over the Persian fleet at Salamis, it is likely that Greece would
have eventually checked the Persian drive to the West. A Persian victory at Salamis is likely only to
have slowed rather than stopped Greek ascendancy. This is not based on any counterfactual fancy,
but the evidence of embedded trends and capabilities.
Sea power was indisputably a substantial component in the growth and sustenance of the great
empires of antiquity. Like much of the world’s history, economic and social influences affected the
integrity of empire more constantly than the odd land battle or sea fight. The ability to traverse open
waters, to carry goods thereon, and to protect such mercantile traffic became essential to any
pretenders to empire. It should not require a detour into counterfactual alternatives to comprehend
that reality.
If the book’s premise is so clearly unsound, one might reasonably ask, “Why devote so much
energy to shooting it down?” Because, wrong-headed or not, Starr’s little booklet compels a
reexamination of the true role and capabilities of ships and navies up through the Viking epoch.
Starr’s tract serves as a handy compendium of ancient sea fights and “fleets in being. Pondering its
thesis gave me a chance to present my own commentary on the character and importance of navies
before 1000 AD. I plan to do so in a forthcoming book, now in preparation.
I will employ a more restrained notion of sea power, in keeping with the limited capabilities of
ancient ships, to demonstrate that merchant and combat fleets were significant determinants
controlling the fate of Mediterranean civilizations between 500 BC and 300 AD.
The preponderance of Starr’s slim (84 pages of text) exposition comprises a sprightly tour of how
civilizations from Pharaohnic Egypt to the Byzantine Empire used their fleets to acquire and
maintain power. His relative handful of paragraphs debunking ancient naval power appears as
obtrusive non-sequiturs in his otherwise well-crafted review of the ships and seamen of ancient
times. Starr’s particular criteria for “influence” and “sea power” (wrongly imputed to Mahan in this
context) are incompatible with the power projection particulars of the arrow-like triremes and
unwieldy fat-bellied merchantmen of antiquity. This is his straw man that he feigns to knock down.
In disputing Starr’s half-hearted proposition, my forthcoming manuscript hopes to offer a
“revisionist Mahanian” or, more accurately, a Corbettian critique of naval capabilities in antiquity.
British naval historian and theorist Julian Corbett, and his disciple, Herbert Richmond provide a
more nuanced and adaptable paradigm of sea power that is more well-suited for evaluating the
navies of ancient Greece and Rome than Mahan’s high seas battle fleet blueprint. In each instance,
with regard to both the ships & fleets and the battles and campaigns, my book will thrash out the
applicability of such concepts as “sea control” and freedom of shipping in the context of what was
possible with the archaic sail and muscle powered craft and what was probably done – given the
sparseness and idiosyncrasies of the sources. Hopefully, this book will offer readers a fresh
examination of sea power before the Viking epoch.
Was controlling the seas always a strategic necessity? Starr’s simplistic either/or treatment fails to
come to grips with this issue. The fact that some or even most military campaigns may have been
implemented through land battles does not demonstrate the converse – that commanding the sealanes was irrelevant. It’s not a zero-sum proposition.
Let’s take a modern example. The 2003 campaign in Iraq was most definitely decided by land
operations, closely supported by airpower. Let’s disregard for the moment whether sea-based
airpower was the determining factor – let alone whether the war was, or can ever be, “won”. The
fact is that Saddam’s Iraq, or its potential allies, was incapable of challenging American/coalition
dominance along the maritime approaches to the theater. Sealift and waterborne air support were
indispensable to success on land, if one might indeed describe the present pickle a triumph. Sea
power was the dog that didn’t bark. The Iraqi capacity to interdict crucial seaborne supply or to
interfere with aircraft carrier deployments was nil, so American maritime projection was simply a
given. So too were ancient fleets and admirals often the overlooked facilitators of the phalanxes and
legions as they clashed on and beyond the shoreline.
It might be useful here to consider the concept of “Thalassocracy.” Literally it means the rule
(krateîn, to rule) of the sea (thálassa, or thálatta in Attic). In other words it means rule by those who
control the sea. In fact, Mahan, without actually using the term, provides the first systematic
discussion of the idea in his The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 [1890, Little
Brown and Company].
Mahan actually wrote minimally about sea power in antiquity. Below, we will consider point-bypoint his concise analysis of the Second Punic War as a curtain raiser in his Influence. His
reflections about Hannibal were simply a prelude to his observations on the British use of naval
force. In fact the only other mention of pre-1660 maritime operations is in his compilation of
lectures at the Naval War College, published in 1911 as Naval Strategy wherein he devotes eight
pages and a map to the Athenian expedition against Syracuse in the Peloponnesian War.
A thalassocracy is a state that utilizes its fleet to extend its power and to link its various possessions
that are separated by water. Some nations, like the 17th century Dutch, have been naval powers
while not necessarily being a thalassocracy. The true thalassocracy is a state that, should its navy be
annihilated, would completely collapse.
The first nation whose power depended principally on its ships may have been Crete, about which
we known little, and then Phoenicia, about which we know a great deal. Phoenicia, however, was
never politically unified, was often under foreign rule, did not effectively retain control of its
colonies, and never used colonies as footholds of conquest. The greatest Phoenician colony,
Carthage, itself came rather closer to a thalassocracy, retaining control of colonies in the Western
Mediterranean and then, under Hamilcar Barca, undertaking the conquest and development of Spain
as a Carthaginian imperial possession.
By then a major thalassocracy had already come and gone. In general Greece exhibited the same
characteristics as Phoenicia. Greek city states founded colonies but then retained little or no control
over them. With Athens, we got something different. The power of Athens began with the League
of Delos, a defensive confederation formed to oppose the Persian invasion of Greece in 480. All
members made proportional contributions to the common defense, which were kept at the Temple
of Apollo on the Island of Delos. Hence the name. With the Persians defeated, the League
continued. But the status of Athens as the predominant member began to tell. Pericles wanted to
move the Treasury of the League from Delos to Athens. He did this even though no other members
of the League agreed. Athens then began spending the money for its own purposes, and the
contributions of League members became in effect Tribute paid to Athens. The League became
what historians now like to call the "Athenian Empire," although such terminology is pretty
anachronistic. Nor is it apt. The "Empire" of Athens, with more or less unwilling participants,
depended wholly on the ability of Athens to maintain naval supremacy in the Aegean Sea. If that
were lost or disrupted, Athens would be powerless.
This is exactly what happened in the war with Sparta, the Peloponnesian War (430-404). Sparta had
an invincible army, so the best that Athens could do was avoid it – relatively easy in a land of
peninsulas and islands. If some Spartans could be trapped on an island, as did happen, then they
could even be defeated and captured. This all worked fine until the Spartans began building their
own navy. Now Athenian "allies" had an easier time defecting, since they were no longer entirely at
the mercy of Athens. The Spartans could now support even island friends. And, if Sparta could
wipe out the Athenian fleet in a great battle, it would win the war in one day. The great battle came
in 405 at Aegospotami. Destroying the Athenian fleet, the Spartans proceeded at once to the siege
of Athens, which surrendered in 404. The Athenian thalassocracy burst like a bubble.
The next state heavily dependent on sea power was, indeed, Carthage. In the First Punic War (264241) the Romans defeated Carthage and conquered Sicily, in great measure by destroying the
Carthaginian fleet. No one would ever say this was done by finesse. The Romans simply filled their
ships with soldiers, grappled the Carthaginian ships, dropped gangways, and overwhelmed the
enemy with infantry. Carthage never regained naval supremacy. The response was Hamilcar's, to
recreate Carthage as a land power in Spain. Hamilcar's son, Hannibal, then invaded Italy itself in the
Second Punic War (218-202). The Romans, unable to defeat Hannibal in open battle, then used their
own sea power to defeat him indirectly. Spain was conquered behind him. And then Africa itself
was invaded. Hannibal had to abandon his army in Italy and return to defend Carthage itself. There
he was finally defeated in battle.
The Romans turned the Mediterranean into their own lake, the Mare Nostrum, "Our Sea." This
control, except for some periods of piracy, endured until the Vandals captured Carthage in 439.
They then, with exquisite irony, built a fleet that swept the Romans from the Western
Mediterranean. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, they came by land, but when the Vandals
sacked Rome in 455, they arrived, and left, by boat. This supremacy survived until Belisarius
arrived in 534. Their base was abruptly yanked from under the Vandals by the Roman fleet and
army from Constantinople. This reestablished Roman maritime control until the 9th century.
Conceivably illustrations using two distinctive occurrences from the Roman period might help to
illuminate my difficulties with Starr’s book.
II. Sea Power in the Second Punic War
It is said that Rome, like Wihelmine and Hitlerian Germany, was forced to go to sea against her
will. Unlike the Phoenicians and Athenians before them, Romans allegedly had no fondness for
ships and seafaring. This is attested by the way she jerrybuilt fleets in an emergency, quickly
neglecting them when the crisis passed. Whether or not this is a well-founded assessment of Rome’s
maritime attitude is a matter for poets, anthropologists and psychologists. Here, we need only look
at her actions to gauge her respect for matters nautical, begrudging or not.
There’s no end to arguments about Hannibal Barca’s “what if’s” both on the Internet and over beer
and pretzels. Most discussions focus on Fabius’ potential and failure to deliver a knockout blow or
Hannibal’s prospects for besieging Rome. The hypotheticals involve battles on land, and the precise
enumeration of Hannibal’s transit of the Alps. The naval aspects of the campaign get short shrift.
However, the whole raison d’etre for Hannibal’s tortuous and debilitating march through the
Pyrenees is popularly attributed to Roman control of the more direct sea route to the Italian
heartland.
Being as the renowned American seapower strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan cut his eyeteeth on the
Second Punic war at sea, it’s worth examining in more detail. This is particularly so since the
distinguished historian of ancient empires, Chester Starr wrote his quarrelsome little pamphlet
chiefly in order to dispute Mahan’s so-called exaggerations about the significance of naval forces in
that conflict – and the importance of seapower in antiquity more generally. Professor Starr advances
a peculiar argument against Roman seapower as a deterrent to Hannibal. As noted above, the
publisher implies that Starr’s title should read “The LIMITATIONS of Seapower in Ancient
History”. Starr concisely recapitulates the sequence of events as given in Mahan. His only quibble
is that “contrary to the views of Mommsen and Mahan … he (Hannibal) had to march by land not
simply (emphasis supplied) because the Romans controlled the sea but by reason of his large forces
of cavalry and elephants that could not easily have been transported by sea”. I’ll return to this piece
of sophistry in a bit.
After the end of the First Punic War in 241 BC, Carthage chose to concentrate on controlling Spain
rather than going directly for the Italian jugular near the seat of power. One factor among several in
determining the Carthaginian strategy, albeit a large one, is said to be the decline of Carthaginian
seapower, and the concurrent rise of Roman naval mastery at the conclusion of the First Punic War.
As Starr asserts, there certainly were considerations other than the Roman naval threat prescribing
the Spanish operational base/ long land route approach: (1) Carthage wanted to gain direct power
over Spain’s mineral resources and (2) she needed to mount an army of its inhabitants to go against
the Roman legions. In 218 BC, Hannibal took control of the Greek city and Roman ally, Saguntum,
and set up a strong Carthaginian base there. Immediately after hearing the news of Saguntum’s fall,
Rome declared war on Carthage. From his new base at Saguntum, Hannibal planned to march
across the Pyrenees and the Alps in winter to surprise the Roman army. Along the way, Hannibal
recruited reinforcements from the warlike Celtic tribes who rejected Rome’s dominion. To maintain
his hold in Spain, Hannibal left about 20,000 men under the control of his brother Hasdrubal.
Hannibal’s long march and subsequent rampage in Italy is too well known to bear repeating. In
sum, there were some good reasons, other than Roman control of the sea lanes, for Hannibal to
establish a base of operations in Spain where he could both recruit and exploit the natural resources
to equip and feed his invasion force. But it is also clear that the perils of transiting short-sea
crossings or cruising coastwise in Roman dominated waters loomed large.
Let’s briefly examine the war from the maritime perspective. After death of Hasdrubal in 221,
Hannibal assumed command in Spain. Crossing both Pyrenees and Alps, he carried the war into
Italy, winning a succession of victories: Ticinus and Trebbia (218), Lake Trasimenus (217) and
Cannae (216). After this the Roman army avoided battle with Hannibal; their fleet, meanwhile
controlled the sea. In 217 there is an action at the mouth of the Ebro wherein a Roman fleet under
Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio decisively beats the Punic squadron in Spain. There follows a series of
seesaw land battles in Spain, Sicily and Greece, but command of the sea permitted Rome to
redeploy her forces rapidly. In 215, successfully wooing the Greeks in southern Italy away from
Rome, Hannibal concluded an alliance with Philip V of Madedonia; but since the Roman fleet
controlled the Adriatic, the Macedonians were unable to intervene in Italy.
In 212, the Roman consul Marcellus captured Carthage’s ally Syracuse with his fleet and army,
despite the ingenious defense by Archimedes (who died in the fighting). Meanwhile, on land,
Hannibal captures Terentum (Taranto) and wins a battle at Capua (211). In 207, Hasdrubal crossed
the Alps with reinforcements, but lost a battle on the Metaurus River (near Sena Gallica) and was
killed. In 206, P. Cornelius Scipio (to become known as Scipio Africanus) completes the conquest
of Carthaginian Spain, while Hannibal’s youngest brother, Mago, manages to land at Genoa with
the remnants of the Spanish army. Here he attempts vainly to lead the Ligurians and Gauls against
Rome once more. This evacuation is the only large-scale Carthaginian sea operation during the
Second Punic War. In 204, Consul P. Cornelius Scipio, thanks to Roman mastery at sea, landed in
Africa and won a battle at Tunis (203). Hannibal was thus compelled to evacuate southern Italy in
an improvised transport fleet. In 202, P. Cornelius Scipio defeated Hannibal at Zama, and Carthage
was finally forced to conclude peace. She lost Spain to Rome, and Numidia became independent.
Carthage was obliged to pay reparations, hand over all but 10 of her warships, and could not declare
war without Roman permission.
As Mahan pointed out in his The Influence of Seapower on History, Hannibal rejected taking the
maritime hop directly across the Straits of Messina to Italy because of logistical difficulties
resulting from the inferiority of Carthaginian sea power at the time. While Mahan’s book is
principally concerned with the British exercise of naval command in the 17th –19th centuries, he
devoted a few introductory pages to the application of seapower in the Second Punic War, which
provided him with the germinal insight. Nowhere in his brief (about 2 pages) passages on PW2 does
he suggest that the concept of blockade and sea control exercised by the British Navy from 16601793 is applicable to PW2.
Chester Starr elsewhere includes the non sequitur that “in battle galleys were blunt instruments by
comparison to the razor-sharp modern warship” and often merely lurched along shorelines to
protect supplies. Now, the ability of an Aegis DDG, or a carrier battle group or an SSN to monitor
and dominate maritime chokepoints is totally irrelevant to a discussion of what it meant to exercise
maritime power in the ancient world. This is quite elementary. Ultimately, the publisher’s hype
goes on to say, ancient societies simply did not have the economic or political stability to possess
and protect the seas”.
The rationale that Hannibal’s heavy troops and their mounts could not be conveyed by sea is
without foundation. Roman cargo ships (corbitas) could and regularly did convey horses as well as
their riders and equipment for decades before PW2. While transits of several weeks were out of the
question simply due to the problems of feeding and maintaining horses at sea, the short trip across
the Strait to Sicily did not preclude the ferrying of cavalry. Scipio Africanus did this in the opposite
direction near the war’s end, culminating in the battle of Zama. The Phonecians/Carthaginians were
quite experienced in shipping bulky cargoes including livestock. As for the elephants, it should not
have been beyond the capacity of the ingenious Hannibal and his intrepid admiral Bomilcar to
transport the beasts as deck cargo on a one-week’s sea crossing. Certainly the rate of attrition would
not have exceeded that encountered in the long march.
Mahan never maintained that “Control of the Sea” in antiquity consisted of a seamless blockade of
all enemy maritime movements. He conceded that the Romans in general “controlled the sea” yet
they “permitted” Carthaginian admiral Bomilcar, in the 4th year of the war, following the stunning
Carthaginian victory at Cannae, to land 4,000 men and a body of elephants [so much for Starr’s
disbelief that it could be done] in south Italy. Nor did Roman command of the sea prevent Bomilcar
in the 7th year of the war from evading the Roman fleet at Syracuse and reappearing at Tarentum,
then in Hannibal’s possession. Likewise, Roman naval mastery did not prevent Hannibal from
sending dispatch vessels to Carthage, or from finally withdrawing the remnants of his army from
Italy to Africa. These evasions and minor Carthaginian naval exploits create the impression that
more help could have been given: that is, constant support by sea from the Carthaginian base. Thus,
Mahan asserts, we have to examine “ascertained facts” to determine the kind and degree of
“influence”. It was the renowned historian of ancient Rome Theodor Mommsen who said (as cited
here by Mahan) that at the beginning of the war Rome controlled the seas. In PW2 there was no
“naval battle of significance”. Mahan feels that this situation, along with other “well-ascertained
facts” demonstrates superiority analogous to the same feature in later better-documented epochs.
Even though this control lasted throughout the war, didn’t preclude large or small maritime raids (as
noted) but it did deter sustained and secure communications which Hannibal needed.
On the other hand, it was also plain that for the 1st 10 years of the war, the Roman fleet wasn’t
strong enough for sustained operations on the sea between Sicily and Carthage, nor even to the
south of a line drawn from Tarragona in Spain to Lilybaeum (now Marsala) at the west end of
Sicily. Roman control extended from there around the north side of Sicily through the straits of
Messina down to Syracuse and from there to Brindisi in the Adriatic. At the early phase of
Hannibal’s campaign he used whatever ships were available to maintain communications between
Spain and Africa, which the Romans seemed incapable of impeding.
Roman seapower therefore threw Macedonia totally out of the war but couldn’t prevent Carthage
from assisting its useful harassing diversion in Sicily; it did prevent her from sending troops to
Hannibal in Italy at a time of dire need. This is the type of “sea denial” exercised by the Roman
admirals during Hannibal’s war. It certainly didn’t match the “razor sharp” capabilities of modern
warships – whatever Starr meant by the phrase – but it was sufficient to deprive an invading army
of sustenance during a crucial part of the war.
What of the limited sea-keeping capabilities of the racing-shell styled ancient war galleys? An apt
riposte to this argument is provided by Boris Rankov’s fascinating essay in The Second Punic War:
A Reappraisal. Rankov relates that by way of contrast to the First Punic War, the Second Punic war
saw no decisive encounter at sea. Rankov points out that the reason for this is geographical. In order
for large fleets to operate, they need to control harbors. As a result of the first Punic war, the
Carthaginians did not have access to landing spots in Sicily, and thus could not support Hannibal by
sea. The galleys’ short sea legs did not matter when naval forces moving along the shoreline while
legions marched along the seacoast parallel to the fleets could effect the control of the harbors.
This is a rational way to look at the actual meaning of “sea power” in the context of ancient fleets. It
has implications for other periods of ancient history, where control of the sea (and landing places)
proved less than decisive in the absence of an enemy who was prepared to contest the point. It was
only when Rome could free up resources to take advantage of its command of the sea, that sea
power mattered. And even as Chester Starr’s narrative acknowledges, superior Roman sea power, in
conjunction with operations on land, made a difference in PW2, even if it wasn’t the dominant
instrument that it proved to be in PW1. Let’s take a look at another episode treating with Roman
command of the seas, this one dealing with the early imperial period.
III. PAX ROMANA AT SEA: The Naval Factor in the Roman-Jewish War
Our discussion of Hannibal’s naval problem in the Second Punic War is perhaps better known than
the next episode; it might be even more enlightening to investigate naval issues in a relatively
obscure peripheral campaign: the Roman-Judaeo War, otherwise known as the First Jewish Revolt.
There were no prominent naval encounters in that conflict. Yet, much as in the First and Second
American Persian Gulf Wars, ships and crews exercised persistent, if inconspicuous, influence over
the events on land without inspiring epics or scholarly monographs on the subject.
The geography of their empire determined that the Romans would move most of their military
supplies by water. During both the Republican and Imperial periods, nearly all of the provinces had
extensive coasts along the Mediterranean, the Black Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. These
interconnected seas gave the Romans a distinct advantage over their adversaries around the
perimeter, who generally had to utilize coasts adjacent to or interdicted by Roman maritime control.
When Vespasian was given the task of bringing rebellious Judaea to heel in 66 AD, he had to rely
upon naval logistics for the simple reason that land communications between his staging area in
Antioch (now Syria) and the other main forward supply base at Alexandria, Egypt were tortuous
and tenuous and long stretches were under the control of hostile forces.
The carrying capacity of a single representative supply ship is 60 tons. In order to drag this quantity
overland it would take 140 wagons or 500 mules, not to mention their drivers. Moreover it would
have tied down thousands of troops devoted solely to maintaining and protecting the wagon trains.
One authority has estimated that the financial burden of land transport was 40 to 50 times that of
provisioning by sea. This doesn’t take into account the relative slowness of hauling the goods
through circuitous, rough trails – and there were plenty of these to traverse outside the vaunted
Roman road network.
In any event, Vespasian had to provide for an invasion army usually reckoned at 60,000 – for the
initial task force alone. One month’s supply of grain for such an army would have weighed some
1580 metric tons, which would have required only 26 ships with the conservative carrying estimate
of 60 tons each. As far as the speed is concerned, the distance from Seleucia – the port for Antioch
– and Caesarea, the chief offloading facility for the final siege of Jerusalem – is 350 km. The other
source of grain supply, Alexandria is reckoned at 600 km from that port. Even under unfavorable
weather conditions, it is estimated that the sea voyages would have taken respectively one and two
weeks. In order to get the grain and other food provisions from the Syrian and Egyptian agricultural
areas to the ports of embarkation, there was further reliance on ships. In Syria, the Orontes River,
and in Egypt, the Nile, allowed the use of river transport. Cargo capacity of the river craft is slightly
over half that given for the typical Roman merchant vessel. It is not unreasonable to conclude that
lacking the availability of ships, Vespasian’s (and later his son Titus’) forces could not have been
supplied adequately for at least six months and up to a year later than they were by sea, allowing the
Judaeans that much more time to organize their defenses.
In preparation for the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Titus ordered his troops to concentrate at
Caesarea, whereas the seacoast cities of Joppa and Jamnia were closer to Jerusalem. While the
Roman sailors could and did make effective use of offloading cargo directly onto beaches, the
harbor at Ceasearea had the considerable advantages of excellent dockyard facilities plus
warehouses and silos to store crops as well as a trained cadre of merchants, longshoremen and
shipping clerks all steadfastly loyal to Rome.
To be sure, sending supplies by sea was risky and the ships of the day were quite helpless in the
event of a storm. Witness the many tales of ships foundering (St. Paul, Flavius Josephus, among
others) in the teeth of storms against which today’s offshore fishing yachts could tough it out.
In connection with the coastal village of Joppa, mentioned above, we find another nautical aspect of
the Judaean rebellion that affected Roman strategy. It is notable that Vespasian turned his attention
to Joppa (modern Jaffa, just north of the present-day Tel Aviv) at a time when his attention was still
focused farther north and inland. Joppa, however, lies directly on the route which seaborne grain
shipments had to proceed from Alexandria to Caesarea. The city was host to a nest of Jewish pirates
(an odd coupling indeed) that had been harassing the coast-wise Roman supply vessels. These
pirates were not just a war-time contingency, as Strabo’s much earlier account attests to their
presence several generations before the outbreak of the revolt. Piracy was endemic throughout the
Roman Empire, entailing periodic maritime policing campaigns (this is how Pompey the Great rose
to prominence) and the Jewish contingent just a local manifestation. The Jewish buccaneers were
forced further out to sea by the Roman attack on the landward flank and an offshore storm forced
the coastal craft back towards the shore, most smashing against the rocky jetties and cliffs.
The potential to interdict Rome-bound grain convoys is one of the reasons that Vespasian had to
first solidify support among the legions throughout the Near Eastern region in order to exercise
leverage over events in the Imperial capital during the succession struggle following Nero’s demise.
Recall that Vespasian had to overcome legions loyal to Vitellius, stationed in Gaul and Germany.
Once he controlled the Levantine coast, Vespasian could have choked off the grain ships. Under
such circumstances, none of the other claimants to the purple could long have maintained order.
Finally, there is one further naval episode in this war that merits mention, since special naval
commemorative coins were struck in Rome to immortalize the event. While mopping up rebel
holdouts in Galilee in late summer, 67 AD, the assault on Tarichaea – near Tiberias – eventuated a
naval battle on the Sea of Galilee when the rebels attempted to evacuate some of the Jewish forces
on fishing boats. Titus had special rafts built for the occasion. The resulting battle on the Sea of
Galilee was a fierce, close-quarters action in which the Jews attempted by spear and archery volleys
to prevent the Romans from grappling and boarding, the latter’s preferred naval tactic. The Jews
lost the battle but only after inflicting some substantial casualties on the Romans.
IV. CONCLUSION: Ancient Ships as Instruments of Empire
I trust that the foregoing two Roman examples, one from the early Republic and the second from
the early Empire, help to establish that, contrary to Chester Starr ( or his agent’s) claims to the
contrary, triremes, biremes, and pot-bellied round merchantmen had a noteworthy, albeit perhaps
not central, affect on the establishment and preservation of hegemony in antiquity. It’s not an oversimplification to assert that had Rome not built up her naval power in the First Punic War,
Hannibal’s land campaigns in the Second might well have succeeded. Further, if the Jews had
successfully contested Rome’s ability to supply and transport her troops in the Judaean campaign,
the war might have been prolonged, with a possible compromise tolerating a degree, albeit much
reduced, of Jewish political power in the Near East. Don’t underestimate the power of sea-raiding
“pirates” to cause large ripples in Rome. After all it was the “pirate question” that led to Pompey’s
advancement to the point where he could challenge Julius Caesar’s clout.
Starr’s myopia can be attributable to his misunderstanding of specifically what is the essence of
ancient sea power, or maritime power. This is odd for someone who wrote a much-cited book on
the nuts and bolts of the Roman imperial navy. For maritime power was indeed crucial to the well
being of ancient Greece and Rome, never mind whether Herodotus , Thucydides, Tacitus or
Polybius are rated as land warfare or naval chroniclers. There were no clear-cut Trafalgar-like
victories in those campaigns; but any account of them would be quite incomplete without allusion
to the effects of maritime enterprise, however incremental. It is not even clear that Thucydides, who
coined the phrase, in fact asserted that the Greece of his day was, in fact, a thalassocracy in the
sense that it could only survive by virtue of the superiority of its mercantile and naval fleets.
Thucydides actual claims for the importance of maritime expertise were more nuanced than that. To
assert that ships and sailors were essential concomitants of political power, as well as the fact that
Rome could only rule her far-flung empire if she “ruled the waves”….or Mare Nostrum, as her
lawmakers described the Med. – is an axiom no less valid because it is clichéd.
This article is the core of a planned book-length treatment on ancient maritime power, which will be
more than a simple rebuttal to Starr. It was also presented as a lecture at the New York Military
Affairs Symposium at the City University of New York facility in Manhattan on June 25, 2004.
Copyright Jim Bloom © 2005
Chester Starr
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chester G. Starr (Centralia, Missouri, October 5, 1914 - Ann Arbor, Michigan, 22 September 1999) was an American
historian, authority in Ancient History, the ancient art and archeology of the Greco-Roman civilization. He studied at
the Cornell University, with Max Ludwig Wolfram Laistner. Between 1940 and 1953 was lecturer of History at the
University of Illinois in Urbana. He then became a professor in the same department, a position he held until 1970.
After thirty years at Urbana, he moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he practiced until 1973, in an
environment much more to his liking. From 1973 to 1985 he held the Bentley Chair at Michigan. In 1974 he was the
first president of the American Association of Ancient Historians. During World War II he served in the history section
of the Army of the United States, with the headquarters of the Fifth Army in Italy from 1942 to 1946. As a result of that
commission, he wrote a nine-volume compilation entitled Fifth Army History, and a popular book about it titled From
Salerno to the Alps (1948). Among his historical works are twenty-one books, dozens of articles and over one hundred
books reviews. His best-known university text, A History of the Ancient World, was reissued with successive
enlargements between 1965 and 1991. His historiographical methodology has been described as Hegelian, especially in
Civilization and the Caesars: the intellectual revolution in the Roman Empire (1954). In what has been called his
greatest work: The Origins of Greek Civilization (1961), he dismantles the Nordic theory which sought to interpret the
Greek cultural achievements in terms of a master race. His approach focuses on individuals as agents of historical
change, also opposing the dominant methodology of the time: the Annales School and the Braudelian concept of longue
durée. Among his other works are The Awakening of the Greek Historical Spirit (1968), Economic Growth of Early
Greece (1977), The Beginnings of Imperial Rome: Rome in the Mid-Republic (1980), The Flawed Mirror (1983) and
Past and Future in Ancient History (1987).[1]
Notes ^ Josia Hober Article inThe Independent 15 October 1999
THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER ON ANCIENT HISTORY Chester G. Starr New York
Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1989