Their creation and slow progress.
The form and construction of their galleys.
- traordinary exertions to deprive Carthage of its
maritime supremacy.[1] Roman fleets were then constructed and spread over the Mediterranean with such rapidity that the Carthaginians would not credit the reports of their number and equipment. In their construction they displayed the energy they had ever shown when they had once determined on their plan. Skilled artisans, from friendly or subjected states, were ready to execute their orders, and the banks of the Tiber resounded with the noise of the axe, the adze, the hammer, and the mallet. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the first fleet Rome sent forth to oppose the powerful squadrons of the Carthaginians was so much inferior to the galleys of Augustus as has been supposed by some writers.[2] But the real character of the Roman vessels cannot now be ascertained; as no Roman historian has thought it worth his while, probably from ignorance on such matters, to give details from which they could, even in imagination, be constructed.
It is, however, reasonable to suppose that they
- ↑ The first Roman ships were probably little better than the boats used on the Tiber, called from their thick coarse planks Naves Caudicariæ—whence Appius Claudius, A.U.C. 489, B.C. 264, who first induced his people to fit out a fleet, obtained the name of Caudex (Senec. de Brev. Vit. 13. Varro de Vit. Rom. 11). According to Polybius a stranded Carthaginian ship was their first good model (i. 20, 21), though this is hard to reconcile with Livy, ix. 30, 38. Possibly their first ship of war was copied from one of Antium (Livy, viii. 14). The treaties with Carthage long before the Punic wars prove that the Romans had a fleet even then—though, probably, of a very inferior kind.
- ↑ Instances occur in which fleets were fitted out with great rapidity—green wood being necessarily used. Thus Scipio fitted out a large fleet within forty-five days after the timber had been felled (Liv. xxxiii. 45), and Julius Cæsar in thirty days, at Arles, against the people of Marseilles (Cæs. B. Civ. i. 34).
