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Ancient Shipwreck Points to Site of Major Roman Battle
Live Science ^ | October 18, 2010 | Clara Moskowitz

Posted on 10/19/2010 8:17:39 AM PDT by decimon

The remains of a sunken warship recently found in the Mediterranean Sea may confirm the site of a major ancient battle in which Rome trounced Carthage.

The year was 241 B.C. and the players were the ascending Roman republic and the declining Carthaginian Empire, which was centered on the northernmost tip of Africa. The two powers were fighting for dominance in the Mediterranean in a series of conflicts called the Punic Wars.

Archaeologists think the newly discovered remnants of the warship date from the final battle of the first Punic War, which allowed Rome to expand farther into the Western Mediterranean.

"It was the classic battle between Carthage and Rome," said archaeologist Jeffrey G. Royal of the RPM Nautical Foundation in Key West, Fla. "This particular naval battle was the ultimate, crushing defeat for the Carthaginians."

Rams reveal clues

The shipwreck was found near the island of Levanzo, west of Sicily, which is where historical documents place the battle.

In the summer of 2010, Royal and his colleagues discovered a warship's bronze ram - the sharp, prolonged tip of the ship's bow that was used to slam into an enemy vessel. This tactic was heavily used in ancient naval battles and was thought to have played an important role in the Punic fights.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: aegates; aegatesislands; ancientnavigation; carthage; carthaginians; egadiislands; florida; godsgravesglyphs; keywest; levanzo; mediterranean; navigation; phoenicians; punicwars; romanempire; rpmnautical; shipwreck; shipwrecks; sicily

1 posted on 10/19/2010 8:17:42 AM PDT by decimon
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To: SunkenCiv

Clew of the ram ping.


2 posted on 10/19/2010 8:18:19 AM PDT by decimon
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To: decimon

and number 41 was missing from his oar...


3 posted on 10/19/2010 9:01:41 AM PDT by camle (keep an open mind and someone will fill it full of something for you)
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To: decimon; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach ·
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Thanks decimon.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
 

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4 posted on 10/19/2010 11:23:10 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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I couldn't find the topic(s) we had about the search for the ships lost in the Battle of Actium, but found these of interest, the fourth of which is the other topic where RPM Nautical Foundation is mentioned.
5 posted on 10/19/2010 11:44:14 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: decimon

Didn’t the Romans utilize grappling & boarding tactics to defeat the ramming attacks of the Carthaginians? Takes a lot of training to do a successful ramming attack. OTOH, boarding made use of Rome’s best asset... infantry (Marine Infantry in this case).


6 posted on 10/19/2010 11:44:53 AM PDT by Tallguy ("The sh- t's chess, it ain't checkers!" -- Alonzo (Denzel Washington) in "Training Day")
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To: camle

He was cleaning the poop from the bilges, it was tough being a slick sleeve in those days.


7 posted on 10/19/2010 11:46:08 AM PDT by Little Bill (Harry Browne is a Poofter.)
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To: Tallguy
Didn’t the Romans utilize grappling & boarding tactics to defeat the ramming attacks of the Carthaginians?

I think they used a sort of claw to keep the ships engaged.

8 posted on 10/19/2010 12:08:34 PM PDT by decimon
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four keywords, chrono sort, duplicates and irrelevants removed:
9 posted on 10/19/2010 2:06:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: camle

LOL! We keep you alive to serve this ship.


10 posted on 10/19/2010 2:08:46 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: decimon

I believe it was called a “Corvus”.


11 posted on 10/19/2010 2:12:47 PM PDT by BlueLancer (I'm getting a fine tootsy-frootsying right here...)
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To: Tallguy

They did. They also got lucky — a Carthaginian warship had been abandoned and beached in a storm, and the Romans just took it apart and reproduced it board by board, mass-producing it, and creating a huge navy from nothing, practically overnight. They didn’t know the subtle nuances of trireme warfare, so they adapted their land-based tactics, as you noted, grappling and boarding and fighting it as a land battle, and destroyed the Carthaginians where they were supposed to be strongest.


12 posted on 10/19/2010 2:13:29 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: BlueLancer

Quoth the raven, thanks for more. ;-)


13 posted on 10/19/2010 2:31:22 PM PDT by decimon
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To: decimon; SunkenCiv
I believe this is about the Battle of the Aegates Islands, which was a decisive Roman victory that brought the First Punic War to a close. The Carthaginian fleet was burdened with supplies for their Army in Sicily, from which they intended to embark troops to fight the Roman shipboard troops, but the Romans intercepted them.
14 posted on 10/21/2010 4:06:06 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: Bigg Red
Just a reping to an old topic.

15 posted on 01/29/2015 2:44:21 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Tallguy; SunkenCiv; decimon

Hannibal cheated. 11 of the 12 elephants were under-inflated.


16 posted on 01/29/2015 2:48:39 PM PST by Larry Lucido
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To: Rockpile

This isn’t about Actium, still interesting.


17 posted on 05/13/2016 1:18:31 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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