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Carthago was refounded as a roman colonia in a first attempt by Gaius Grachus 122 BC that was refused by the senate and finally by Augustus 29 BC following a decision of Julius Caesar to rebeuild the city 46 BC. It quickly become one of the largest cities in the empire and antiquity again with some 100.000 inhabitants. This is one of the main reasons why there such few remains of the punic city.Quote:
Originally Posted by matteus the inbred
:bow:
shows how much i listened in Roman history eh?
having bothered to check my facts this time, i see that the Arab conquest in the 7th century resulted in Tunis displacing Carthage as the significant city in that part of the world...
Baghdad suffered something similar during the Mongol invasion, estimates varying up to 1 million dead and the removal of Baghdad as a significant city until fairly modern times.
Only the Persian ships were not of trireme design, at leas not the majority. Most of the ships were the boxy biremes of Phoenicia. They had a smaller crew of around 140.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atilius
It is most likely that the Greeks simply sailer over any strugling Persian. The heavy oars woul do the rest. And those Persians that couls swim are said to have been brought to the island, the Athenians had taken refuge on, by the current. Of course here they weren't treated all that nice and kindly shown a sword, club or similar.
The ships that fought in the 1st Punic wars were Quinqeremes for the most part with crews of about 320. Thus it is clear that the sea battles in that war was far more costly in lives.
It has been indicated that the Carthies lost some 250.000 sailors in seabattles, while the Romans lost some 150.000 (and another 250.000 sailors and troops in storms). These are absolutely staggering losses.
But if we are to talk about the single most devastating single day battle, then we hav to go to Russia. I don't even know the name of the battle, but according to both German and Russians the Russians lost a masive 150.000 killed in that single day. They were hardly equipped with more than rifles, and were desperately trying to break out of an encirclement. The Germans only needed to pour artillery and machinegun fire into the densely packed men. I saw a program about it with a former German soldier, who was clearly still half nazi (or at least held the low regard for Russians lives close). But what he could say was bloodfreezing.
And the worst part is that it isn't even recognized as a battle, but a continuing struggle, and one of the many encirclements during Barbarossa.
See, even I can't tell the name of where it was or anything like that. It is disgusting to think about when to many lives were lost for nothing on that day.
The Persian fleet was probably made up of many different types of vessels. Phoenician, Cilician, Egyptian, Ionian, Carian, and Hellespontine squadrons are mentioned. The last three probably consisted mostly of triremes; I'm in the dark about the first three. Herodotus (in 7.184) assumes an average complement of 200 crew per vessel and 30 additional marines. What is your source for Phoenician biremes? This would be good to know.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraxis
In aggregate you are correct of course. But individually none of the great sea battles of the 1st Punic war are likely to have killed as many men as Salamis. Lets do some more quick and dirty casualty estimates: assume that each ship sunk loses its entire crew and that there are no losses otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraxis
At Ecnomus Carthage lost 30 ships sunk to 24 for the Romans. At 320 men per ship we get about 17,000 dead. Carthage also lost 64 ships captured, Polybius says "together with their crews", so we can assume that most of the captured crewmen survived.
At Drepana, Polybius mentions no Carthaginian losses and Roman losses are put at 93 ships captured. This battle was fought in very shallow water and many, if not all, of the captured Roman ships actually ran aground, perhaps explaining why no sinkings are mentioned. Again, the captured crews don't seem to have been killed, and Polybius says some of the captured Roman ships were grounded intentionally by their crews, who then escaped. This gives us (ahem) no deaths, but casualties couldn't have been greater than those at Ecnomus.
Finally, at the Aegates Islands, Polybius fails to mention Roman losses and says that 50 Carthaginian ships were sunk and 70 more captured, so we estimate 16,000 deaths.
At Salamis I guessed 200 Persian ship sunk (actually Euphemus gives this same number) and we'll use 120 men per ship if you like. This gives 24,000 dead Persians to which we would need to add the 40 sunk greek triremes at 200 men per ship for a total of 32,000 dead.
I apologize for my slapdash methodology here, but I'd be surprised if doing anything more complicated would tell you that Salamis wasn't the deadliest of these battles.
This is an excellent point: the Romans lost more men to weather than to the Carthaginians. This is often attributed to poor Roman seamanship early in the war and use of the corvus which raised the ship's center of gravity making it less seaworthy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraxis
I don't have any sources as this is not my area, just something I have had an interest in. In any case the Phoenicians didn't use triremes just yet, and they were for obvious reasons the most numerous of the Persian fleet. I wouldn't be surprised if the Cilicians had triremes though, they were always on the edge when it came to technology at sea. The Ionians had triremes (or at least I would expect them to), but they couldn't have supplied that many, perhaps 40-60.
A lot of mention goes to the Phoenicians and their superior seamanships, which was lost in the straits. And what I have read almost always mentions on stronger (but less maneuverable) Greek ships. The biremes were slimmer and thus more maneuverable, but also clearly less structurally sound.
In any case I remembered the losses in the seabattles of 1st Punic differently, obviously I was mistaken.
But what about the seabattle at Salamis on Cyprus between Demetrios Peliorketes and Ptolomy Soter. That was quite big if I don't remember wrong, and the losses among Ptolomy's ships was absolutely huge. And in that case the ships were also of quinqereme size with a number that were even bigger and of course the flagships which were just immense (800 crew).
KraxisQuote:
Only the Persian ships were not of trireme design, at leas not the majority. Most of the ships were the boxy biremes of Phoenicia. They had a smaller crew of around 140.
How do you get that number? When Herodotus describes the battle fleet in (book 7) is explicit in numbering counting first the Trieres in the fleet (at 7.89.1) and then contrasting that with the horse transports, and the smaller 30 and 50 oared vessels. It seems to me Herodotus is implying that the battle fleet was composed solely of trieres while the smaller galleys were auxiliary ships not likely to have been involved in the battle at Salamis.
Thanks Kraxis, I'm looking into it. The sources of information I've been able to find so far contradict one another. Plutarch describes the battle in his life of Demetrius but his numbers don't square with other things I've dug up. Peter Connolly says that the battle was originally recorded by Hieronymus which survives only in Diodorus' book 20, but I can't it find online: Perseus seems to have only 9-17.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraxis
I was looking for just that description of the Persian fleet and couldn't find it last night, but your post led me right to it. Thanks to you also.Quote:
Originally Posted by conon394
Atilius
You might find these links useful for Salamis (on Cyprus). They are from for a class on naval power in antiquity by William M. Murray.
The first is of the relevant text from Diodorus and Plutarch with notes.
The second is just a summary of the ships at the battle
The Third is a link with Murray’s argument that the marine/missile platform view of the large Hellenist warships is overstated that they still remained primarily ramming units; although not in the same fluid way that the Athenians and Rhodians liked to use 3’s or 4’s.
http://luna.cas.usf.edu/~murray/clas...ds-sources.pdf
http://luna.cas.usf.edu/~murray/clas...ttle-notes.pdf
http://luna.cas.usf.edu/~murray/clas...ole-of-ram.pdf
I found them very useful and enjoyed reading the article. Thanks again.Quote:
Originally Posted by conon394
Kraxis,
The Cyprian Salamis naval battle is difficult to analyze because neither fleet was homogeneous. Ptolemy had both quads and quinquiremes, while Demetrius had (literally) everything from triremes to 7s. According to Diodorus, (not counting transports) Ptolemy lost 40 ships captured and 80 disabled, while Demetrius had 20 ships disabled. The losses are not broken down by type.
I'm assuming that "disabled" is what other sources usually (and I think incorrectly) call "sunk": vessels of this type didn't really sink, they swamped.
I'm also assuming that Ptolemy's losses were half 4s and half 5s and that the crew of a 4 was about 255, halfway between a 3 (200) and a 5 (320). Then Ptolemy's losses are (using the same criteria as before) about 23,000.
Diodorus says that 5s predominated in Demetrius' fleet. Although there is apparently reason to doubt this, we'll take Diodorus at his word and assume all of Demetius' losses were 5s, meaning he lost about 6500 men.
Total deaths for the battle come to just under 30,000 men which is very close to the 32,000 I had estimated for the Salamis battle of 480 BC. I might quibble at this point that the average crew size of the Persian ships lost in the earlier battle was probably greater than 120, but even so, the casualty numbers would still be close enough that these rough estimates could not really tell us which was the deadlier battle.
Let's call it a tie, and hats off to you.
[EDIT: Formatting]
A tie... hmmm... I think that is the best I can hope for. The captured ships must have lost a significant number of people as well. By this time the decks did have a fairly significant amount of marines (not many though). So one can perhaps expect some 70-80 killed for the captured each?
That's reasonable, but it would boost the bodycount of the Cyprian Salamis battle by only about 3000, which would still be a virtual tie. And it would only be fair to apply a similar adjustment to the Greek Salamis battle which would be difficult since we don't know how many Persian vessels were captured.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraxis
The Macedonian dynasts generally preferred not to execute Macedonians or Greek mercenaries. I suspect Demetrius would be more interested in capturing the professionals (sailors, rowers or marines) of Ptolemy’s fleet as potential employees. In contrast aside from the Ionians, I think the evidence from Aeschylus (the Persians) suggests the Greeks were going out of their way to kill the Persian troops in the water, not capture them. Overall I think it’s likely the ratio of killed to captured was higher at Salamis in Attica than at Salamis in Cyprus.Quote:
That's reasonable, but it would boost the bodycount of the Cyprian Salamis battle by only about 3000, which would still be a virtual tie. And it would only be fair to apply a similar adjustment to the Greek Salamis battle which would be difficult since we don't know how many Persian vessels were captured.
I think your being too conservative for the crews of the Persian ships. As trieres, their rowing and sailing crews amounted something around 185/6. The key is the marines, the fact is that Athens used relatively few marines (compared to other Greeks) and add to that the fact Xerxes is specifically noted as overloading his ships with Persian or Mede Marines. I would put the average Persian crew at likely over 230.
It important not to forget that fastness or maneuverability was not a permanent trait. Herodotus suggests that Themistocles intended his ships to be fast and his preference for a light crew of marines seems to reinforce this. Themistocles however had to build his ships quickly at a time when Athens cannot have had any significant stockpiles of navel supplies (that is he almost assuredly did not use in most or all cases properly treated wood - the hastily build fleet at the Arginusae was certainly not ‘fast’) or a cadre of navel experts to oversee the building; add to that that Athens also largely lacked the infrastructure to dry and maintain their hulls (between fighting and the evacuation the Greeks never seem not to have the luxury Xerxes did of taking the time to properly put their fleet in fighting condition). The Phoenician fleet was fast because it had just been fully overhauled, while the Greek fleet was in constant use.Quote:
A lot of mention goes to the Phoenicians and their superior seamanships, which was lost in the straits. And what I have read almost always mentions on stronger (but less maneuverable) Greek ships. The biremes were slimmer and thus more maneuverable, but also clearly less structurally sound.
I think that Themistocles, unlike most Greeks and Persians and even Phonecians was not blind to the Phocaean ‘revolution’ that well handled and trained galleys could win by maneuver and ramming alone vs. even extreme odds over those who persisted in largely fighting a land war at sea. In execution however his ships were not in as a good a shape as he needed and the balance of the Greek (the non Athenian components of the fleet) navy was no more ready to use maneuver than the Persians.
Guilty.Quote:
Originally Posted by conon394
I was juggling a number of contradictory ideas in my head when thinking about this: Ships in the Persian fleet were often described as faster than the greeks, yet also mentioned as carrying a larger complement of marines. Some sources say they have higher stern castles. So are they triremes, or bigger, or smaller? Herodotus puts crew at 200 and adds 30 marines. But is the fleet really uniform? Is Herodotus correct? I was fairly certain that the Medizing Greek squadrons would have been triremes but uncertain about the types used in the other squadrons because I was unable to hunt down the passage in 7.89.1.
So I chose to be conservative.
You've helped my unravel some of this by the way. Your point about maintainence is a good one - the Persian ships would be faster if they were doing a better job of keeping their hulls dry.