In 31 bc the last two great generals of the Roman civil wars faced each other at Actium off the coast of Greece in a naval battle that would settle the future of Rome. For months Mark Antony and Egyptian Queen Cleopatra had tried in vain to break Octavian's land and naval blockade of their forces in Greece. By late summer Antony's armies were low on supplies and ravaged by disease. On September 2 his fleet of more than 200 ships carrying 20,000 marines and 2,000 archers put to sea to challenge the blockade. They faced a fleet of some 400 ships carrying 16,000 marines and 3,000 archers under the command of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Military History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Antony's fleet comprised big quinqueremes and even larger ships of Levantine design whose decks were high off the water, affording his marines and archers a significant advantage in close combat. Agrippa's ships were mostly liburnae—smaller, lower biremes of Illyrian design constructed two years earlier in Naples. But they were lighter and faster than those of his opponent.

Antony intended to fight a typical Roman sea battle: Close with the enemy ship, board it with marines and slaughter the enemy. Agrippa, however, was the most daring and imaginative commander Rome had produced since Caesar and was the real genius behind Octavian's military successes. He had a different plan.

Antony's 5,000-yard line of ships was the first to attack. For four hours the fleets skirmished and maneuvered in light winds without result. Just past noon the breeze freshened, and Antony's ships increased the intervals between each ship to lengthen their line and prevent envelopment by Agrippa's longer line of ships. But Agrippa had anticipated this move, and his biremes raced toward the heavier and slower quinqueremes, passing them closely to break their oars and rudders. Agrippa then brought his numerical advantage to bear by having several biremes attack a single quinquereme. Whenever a bireme successfully rammed a quinquereme, it would disengage and maneuver away. After a few hours many of Antony's large ships lay dead in the water, awaiting the final boarding attack.

The attack never came. Instead, Agrippa's biremes maneuvered close to the drifting quinqueremes and with onboard ballistae, or crossbows, launched flaming pots of pitch and charcoal at the ships. Historian Dio Cassius wrote later that crews tried to quench the fiery projectiles with water, but "as their buckets were small and few and half-filled, they were not always successful. Then they smothered the fires with their mantles and even with corpses. They hacked off burning parts of the ships and tried to grapple hostile ships to escape into them. Many were burned alive or jumped overboard or killed each other to avoid the flames." Thousands perished.

Thanks to Agrippa, Octavian's Rome was now master of the Mediterranean. Yet there was no permanent navy. Until Actium, the empire had simply created one whenever the need arose. Octavian thus established the Roman imperial navy, which historian Chester Starr termed "the most advanced and widely based naval structure in antiquity." For the next 500 years the Roman Empire would control the region, depending as much on its fleets as on its legions and roads for survival.

At the outset of the 3rd century bc, Carthage, with its fleet of 300 ships, was the preeminent naval power in the western Mediterranean. At that time, Rome had no naval force or experience in naval warfare. But when the First Punic War broke out between the two powers in 264 bc, Rome quickly realized that victory could only be achieved at sea. The Senate ordered Cornelius Scipio, grandfather of Scipio Africanus, to construct the first Roman fleet.

Italy had large forests of fir from which to build boats but no ship designers, crews or captains to take them to sea. The Romans hit upon the idea of copying a quinquereme that had fallen into their hands. Although commonly believed to have come from the Carthaginians, it was actually a vessel from the navy of Hannibal of Rhodes. Using the captured boat as a template, the Romans constructed a fleet of 100 quinqueremes and 20 triremes in just two months. As historian Polybius described, production required 165 woodcutters, carpenters and metalworkers working full-time on each of the ships, or a labor force of 20,000 men.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to