Ex libris: CASTRO FiLiPe
——6§—
Late Roman, Byzantine, and
Islamic Galleys and Fleets
CTAVIAN'S defeat of Antony and
Cleopatra at the batle of Actium in
31 BC marked the effective end of
classical naval warfare, in which massed flets
‘of heavy, muli-banked warships faced each
‘other in set-piece battles determined by the
success or failure of ramming attacks. Octavian
boule a monument to his victory at nearby Nic-
copolis,! where he mounted the rams sawn off
the largest ships of the vanquished fleet, This
wall of trophies might be seen not only a8 a
testament to youthful boasting, but aso as a
tombstone for 2 naval way of life. For more
than half a millennium, warships had grown
steadily larger and heavier, from the deri and
‘mitts of Archaic and Classical Athens through
aquadriremes and quinqueremes upward to tens
and sixteens, even the grand folly of a forty,
built by competing Hellenistic kingdoms
Jocked in an arms race for prestige and political
dominance in the eastern Mediterranean.
Rome, once stirred to naval effort by the Punic
threat, assembied comparable Alets to support
its wars of conquest against those same
kingdoms
But the victor of Actium, as Augustus Cae
sar, eliminated the last organised challenge to
Roman rue in the Mediterranean and sonsoli-
dated Roman administration over the shores of
the great sea. As the sole naval power in the
Mediterranean, Rome had no need of great
fleets or heavy warships manned by arge num:
bers of men. A few larger ships were kept as
flagships for the commanders of a peacetime
navy, but standing battlefleets were largely re-
tired, not to be seen on Mediterranean waters
for almost half a millenniues. Instead, Rome
concentrated on smaller ships and squadrons to
patrol the sea lanes and keep an effective lid on
View of Ocavien Comp Monument at Nici
aommamrtig bevy ne the feof Antony
tind Clapaors at ain i 31 BC. Th moon ot
riginallysrnde by the re eno te
pub shi ofthe ene, he ck fr rich can
‘il be sin th Ie lof masonry. (By courtesy
of William M Murray)
piracy or to guard the frontiers. These duties
required swift, manacuvrable ships ta chase the
equally swift ships of pirates and raiders, or
light boats that could be rowed up and down
the rivers that formed the German border.
While these ships were more than adequate to
deal with small, poorly organised raids or spo-
radic pirate attack, they were incapable of re-
sponding forcefully to larger lets; when the
decline of political order led to civil war in thé
third and fourth centuries, naval flets had
to be cobbled together and were quickly
dispersed.
‘With the collapse of western Roman admin-
istration in the fifth cenrury AD, competing
naval powers were free to emerge, and for 2
brief period in the fifth century, one of the
invading peoples, the Vandals, was able 10
‘establish sizeable naval presence inthe Medi
terranean, Thei?piratical raids under the ener:
igetic king Gaeseric became such a nuisance to
trade that two naval expeditions ~ che fist of
sganised Roman flet operations in nearly five
centuries were sent out to pur down the bar-
barians, but without great success. Ie was not
‘until the early sixth cencury that the Byzantine
‘emperor Anasthasus began the slow process of
fleet organisation that led tothe large standi
navy of the Byzantine Empire, with is Imperial
Fleet guarding Constantinople and regional
(Thematic) flees drawn from dhe principal ad-
ministrative districts (Themes) of the rest of
the Empire, This navy was co become essential
in the seventh century with the appearance of
Islam on the Mediterranean shores of Syria and
Palestine, The Moslems wasted lite time in
assembling theit own naval lets to challenge
Byzantine dominance of the Mediterranean,
and the stage was set for che return of fleet
actions featuring large, heavily armed ships as
Byzantiym and a succession of Islamic dynas-
ties struggled for nearly four cencuries forthe
naval supremacy essential to Mediterranean
hegemony.
Anote on the sources
"The primary sources for later Roman and By,
zantine naval history are almost all documen-
«ary. In addition to histories by late Roman and
|. Mary nd ess 198 provides hor
disep ft se May sd Petes BY providers
tar gee oeLATE ROMAN, BYZANTINE, AND ISLAMIC GALLEYS AND FLEETS
87
he cai lf hiphiing eb of be emit
Melarances donate y ths ominot rel
‘Boving «Romano werk ate end
(anh rd onary AD). Tegal tte
“Arbol Maram, Rava
medieval writers, and a few eyewitness ac
‘counts of particular events, we ae fortunate to
haves seties of specifically naval texts? Most of.
‘our detailed information comes from tenth-
‘century sources, primarily the tactical manuals,
(of Leo the Wise? and Nicephoros Ouranos,* a
shorter descriptive document known as Anon
PBPP ot PBPPS and a number of inventories
‘of men, ships, and equipment sent on several
tenth-century'naval expeditions. There is vir~
‘ually no iconographic or archaeological evi