Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: October 11, 2025
The Carthaginians had such contempt for their enemy that they advanced in irregular order, permitting thirty of their ships to begin the battle unsupported by the rest of the fleet. One after the other the Carthaginian quinqueremes were grappled and stormed, for once the great corvus crashed down on a deck all the arts of seamanship were useless.
And the consul Fabius ordered his son, Quintus Fabius Maximus, to lead the remains of the army of Fulvius, which had been collected, amounting to three thousand three hundred and thirty-six, into Sicily to Marcus Valerius, the proconsul, and to receive from him two legions and thirty quinqueremes.
Notwithstanding the invention of quadriremes by the Carthaginians before B.C. 400, and of quinqueremes by Dionysius the Elder soon after, the trireme stood its ground, and from first to last the Persian fleets were mainly composed of this class of vessels. The trireme was a vessel of a considerable size, and was capable of accommodating two hundred and thirty persons.
As to offensive measures, a squadron of 20 quinqueremes with 1000 soldiers on board was to sail from Carthage for the west coast of Italy and to pillage it, and a second of 25 sail was, if possible, to re-establish itself at Lilybaeum; Hannibal believed that he might count upon the government making this moderate amount of exertion.
Caius Aurunculeius was appointed to command, in Sardinia, the same legions with which Publius Manlius Vulso had occupied that province. Publius Sulpicius was continued in command for the year, with orders to hold Macedonia with the same legion and fleet. Orders were given to send thirty quinqueremes from Sicily to Tarentum, to the consul Fabius.
Africa fell to the lot of Tiberius Claudius, who was to cross over into Africa with a fleet of fifty ships, all quinqueremes, and have an equal command with Scipio. Marcus Servilius obtained Etruria. Caius Servilius was continued in command in the same province, in case the senate resolved that the consul should remain at the city.
The Cameritans, as they were joined with the Romans in league on equal terms, sent an armed cohort of six hundred men. Having laid the keels of thirty ships, twenty of which were quinqueremes, and ten quadriremes, he prosecuted the work with such diligence, that, on the forty-fifth day after the materials were taken from the woods, the ships, being fully equipped and armed, were launched.
Nor yet, perhaps, for some time, much in things unmarketable: I will not say there is any great beauty of scenery in these rather stubborn and arid hills. As to the fifth, we need not try to row the quinqueremes of history beyond that Gaulish waterfall.
About the time that Quinctius first pitched his camp opposite to Philip's, at the entrance of Epirus, Lucius, the consul's brother, whom the senate had commissioned both to the naval command and to the government of the coast, sailed over with two quinqueremes to Corcyra; and when he learned that the fleet had departed thence, thinking that no delay ought to be incurred, he followed, and overtook it at the island of Zama.
None of the states affected by the war had any fleet corresponding to the Roman fleet of 220 quinqueremes, which had just returned from the Adriatic to the western sea. The natural and proper application of this crushing superiority of force was self-evident. It had been long settled that the war ought to be opened with a landing in Africa.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking