Sea Movement and the Cimbri/Teutons Invasion

[cmacq]

Just finished some quick research on the marine-corvus combo. Seems it was only effective for a very short period of time. I didn't know that, so junk that idea.

After more reading and some translating, which reminds me how much I hate the greek, I believe I’m a bit closer to the bottom of this marine-corvus/harpago subject. It seems that the western Greeks actually invented the Corvus/Harpago and it only became extremely effective after it was coupled with heavy infantry (marines). Despite what some sources claim (Wallinga 1956), the marine-Corvus combo was the decisive arm of Roman victory in the 1st Punic War.

The claim that the Corvus feature caused instability, and was the reason two Roman fleets were lost at sea (Camarina and Cape Palinurus) appears completely unfounded. In fact, the Romans of this period were very inexperienced and both disasters occurred as a result of horrific storms with high winds that forced ships onto rocky shorelines. The additional assertion that the Corvus devise was not used at the Aegates Islands because it was not mentioned, is baseless as well. At the time the Romans had been using the Corvus for about 20 years, it was no longer new, why would it be mentioned anew by the same author?

Ancient naval combat typically resulted in the desertion of most of the secondary actors and the ramming/sinking of a couple of the principles. Unless some type of ruse was employed, the capture of an intact ship was exceptional. However the ratio of captured Carthaginian ships at the Aegates Islands was much higher than earlier engagements in which we know the Corvus was used (ie. 41.17% [n=170] of enemy fleet captured-Aegates Islands in 241 BC and 23.84% [n=130] of enemy fleet captured-Mylae 260 BC). These ratios are impressive when compared to Artemisium, Salamis, or Actium where nearly all enemy losses were sinkings due to ramming.

In fact, the Romans appear to have continued to use the Corvus-type of boarding tech as it appears at Naulochus in 36 BC, were again the ratio of enemy fleet captured was high (85%). Here the device was called the Arpax. Caesar/D Brutus also used some type of grapple device and marines to great effect during his campaign against the Veneti (Brittany) during the Gallic War in 56 BC. The point here is not that the Corvus was a war-winner; rather the combination of some type of grapple device and well-trained, heavily armed marines was a decisive tool in the hands of the right commander.