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The Romans actually had a difficult time beating the Carthaginian navy. They tried to copy their ships, but without the ship-building experience, they didn't ha

The Romans actually had a difficult time beating the Carthaginian navy. They tried to copy their ships, but without the ship-building experience, they didn't have much success. To level the playing field, they invented the corvus (AKA the "crow") [1] which was a boarding bridge designed to pierce the enemy ship and allow combatants to board. This played to Rome's strength as a land power with much better hand-to-hand combat troops. The Corvus had much success in battle, but it is thought to have significantly weighed down ships and offset their center of mass. So at one point, the Roman Navy was stuck in a storm and is thought to have lost over 350 naval ships (and 300 cargo ships) and 100k men at once. It is thought that the corvus might have been responsible for making the ships more likely to capsize during this storm, as the Romans stopped using them after this disaster [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_(boarding_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_(boarding_device) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_withdrawal_from_Africa_(255_BC)#Storm_off_Camarina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_withdrawal_from_Africa_(...

nolok 3y ago
Sadly for Carthage, in that era Rome's main strenght was its ability to take aburd losses and then just recruit back a giant army right after. There is quite a number of times where they lost a % of their army / populace similar to what that has crumbled many empires through history, but Rome just got back up like it's nothing. I can't imagine how their ennemies must have felt in those instances.
- borissk 3y ago
  Ask a Ukrainian. Russians like to call Moscow the third Rome and their leaders don't care about losses.
  - nolok 3y ago
    Russia maybe have the numbers, but the troops and equipment they're fielding today in Ukraine is not equal to what they were fielding two years ago.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      True. But if they do win (for the record, I hope they don't), it won't be because they had superior technology. Or superior generals. It won't be because their cause was righteous. They will have won because they kept piling on with more infantry beyond what anyone would have thought possible. Denialism's a fucking superpower.
      - nolok 3y ago
        Oh I agree, but I'm also of the very macabre and morally evil view that, for the west/nato, the current situation is the best one we could hope for (short of the dream of "ukraine beats russia"). We don't lose lives, we spend money but not enough that we actually feel it, Russia need to concentrate so much on it their ability to act elsewhere is disminished (sure they launch all their triggers/ Houthi, Venezuela, Sub-saharian africa, but it's not 2016 anymore), ... It's frankly horrible, but every time an ukrainian solider dies to kill two russian soldiers, western countries safety position improves. I'm not saying I agree with that, or think it's good, to be clear. But I think that the west never considered Ukraine in their sphere and the horrors that have happened since 2013 have invariably been in favor of "us" and not russia, and russia is so focused on playing the game the way it was played last century it feels like they missed it.
        chubot 3y ago
        western countries safety position improves This is just weird, because Russia is a much weaker country than the US, and many European countries. Economically, they are tiny. e.g. I just Googled and found this https://twitter.com/BWJones/status/1568223569947275264?lang=en https://twitter.com/BWJones/status/1568223569947275264?lang=... It says Russia's economy is smaller than that of California, Texas, and New York. That sounds about right. (and of course war is mainly an economic contest) --- They are not a threat to the West. The West is a threat to Russia. Russia is aggressive and violent because they're in a weak position. They were invaded by Napolean, by Germany in WW I, and by Hitler's Germany in WW II (notably, these are all western powers). Russia lost ~27,000,000 people in World War II, while the US lost ~400,000. In the meantime, the US has NEVER had a war on its soil. --- The US would not accept missiles in Cuba in the 1960's. Would we accept Chinese missiles in Mexico in 2024? It's not a surprise that they would not accept NATO weapons in Ukraine. Obviously I'm not condoning the invasion, but I'd also say that old men in the US are playing with the lives of young Ukrainian men. If the US wanted to end this war, we could do it today by actually winning it with our weapons. Instead we trickle out the bare minimum of weapons, ensuring the war grinds to a stalemate. --- If I were Zelensky, I wouldn't make myself and my citizens dependent on powers who actually don't want to win the war. I wouldn't want to be dependent on people like you, who just want to use the lives of my citizens for to gain an inch in an imaginary game that has little consequence for them.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Roman success as a lengthy enduring civilization, from what I understand, has much to do with implementing and optimizing repeatable processes. E.g. Recruiting and equipping a huge army once, but losing it in a battle. Versus building an economic machine around the ability to continually recruit, train, and equip huge armies.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    I wonder how different the recruiting process for the Romans was from today's modern recruitment efforts. 1) start with prisons, 2) offer service to those facing prison, 3) look for the unemployed, 4) tell potential recruits that they will experience the exact opposite of what will actually occur
    - vkou 3y ago
      Today's modern recruitment process in volunteer armies is more like: 1) Start with children who don't know any better. 2) See #1. The reason that Russia is enlisting prisoners, is because the MOD needs more people than their peace-time mandatory service contracts are able to provide, but knows that a full draft would be highly unpopular. Roman recruitment was nothing of the sort. It was not voluntary, it was expected that everyone would participate, and there would be serious consequences for draft-dodgers, both on the level of their local communities, and on a wider social scope.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        That's selling modern and historical recruitment short: there's always been personal economic calculus for volunteer armies. "Will service improve my personal situation? Enough to be worth it?" Hence why recruitment correlates with unemployment. Nations with effective recruitment policies understood this, and typically funded it with things they had in abundance (e.g. land grants, pensions, etc).
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  >Sadly for Carthage Before you sympathize too much with Carthage, bear in mind that their (well documented by contemporary sources even if you account for anti-Carthagian propaganda from some Roman sources) religious practices were distinctly grotesque, involving no shortage of child sacrifice that even included burning children alive. Notable families were also encouraged to do the same to their first sons in times of crisis, but would often buy the children of poor people to go in their place. I know the Romans really, really disliked the Carthagians, so it must have tainted their view on them in all circumstances, but even then, there are enough sources professing outright disgust about their sacrificial practices to give the complaints some weight. And if Romans of all people are disgusted with how brutal a country's cultural practices are, you can imagine that they probably were pretty damn awful.
  - Aspos 3y ago
    It just happens that current world we live in is influenced by European civilizations, which were significantly influenced by the Romans. So your world view is stemming from Roman culture. Now imagine Carthage won the Punic wars and destroyed Rome, what would we be disgusted with while reading about Roman customs? What would we be considering brutal, awful and barbaric?
    - incrudible 3y ago
      Are we not considering many Roman customs brutal, awful, and barbaric? What did the Carthaginians not do that the Romans did?
    - southernplaces7 3y ago
      I would consider sacrificing living children to be brutal and grotesque no matter who does it or for what reason, Roman, Carthagian or Aztec, or anyone else. As for your premise, it's flawed. For a society whose world view supposedly stems from Roman culture, we're kept extremely aware by many sources about how brutal the Romans could be too. It's hardly something painted pretty by modern media or books. Quite the opposite. It's also generally absurd to think that I must automatically be influenced by some propaganda if I consider plausible the ancient records and evidence of another society's extreme sacrificial practices. As another comment in this reply thread mentions, (though it mistakes Aztecs with Maya), people spent decades thinking that accounts of mass Aztec child sacrifice were colonial era-biased exaggerations, until mass graves of children were much more recently found showing signs not only of sacrifice but torture in advance (to induce tears for the god Tlaloc among other reasons). Sometimes historical cultures are just awful in certain ways that have to be mentioned in posterity, even if we can appreciate other aspects of those cultures. This applies to any culture and should.
chubot 3y ago
Yes! The Ikea reverse engineering, the Corvus, and the sudden huge Roman casualties were all mentioned in the Fall of Civ episode! Pretty crazy and fascinating

nolok 3y ago

Sadly for Carthage, in that era Rome's main strenght was its ability to take aburd losses and then just recruit back a giant army right after. There is quite a number of times where they lost a % of their army / populace similar to what that has crumbled many empires through history, but Rome just got back up like it's nothing. I can't imagine how their ennemies must have felt in those instances.

borissk 3y ago
Ask a Ukrainian. Russians like to call Moscow the third Rome and their leaders don't care about losses.
- nolok 3y ago
  Russia maybe have the numbers, but the troops and equipment they're fielding today in Ukraine is not equal to what they were fielding two years ago.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    True. But if they do win (for the record, I hope they don't), it won't be because they had superior technology. Or superior generals. It won't be because their cause was righteous. They will have won because they kept piling on with more infantry beyond what anyone would have thought possible. Denialism's a fucking superpower.
    - nolok 3y ago
      Oh I agree, but I'm also of the very macabre and morally evil view that, for the west/nato, the current situation is the best one we could hope for (short of the dream of "ukraine beats russia"). We don't lose lives, we spend money but not enough that we actually feel it, Russia need to concentrate so much on it their ability to act elsewhere is disminished (sure they launch all their triggers/ Houthi, Venezuela, Sub-saharian africa, but it's not 2016 anymore), ... It's frankly horrible, but every time an ukrainian solider dies to kill two russian soldiers, western countries safety position improves. I'm not saying I agree with that, or think it's good, to be clear. But I think that the west never considered Ukraine in their sphere and the horrors that have happened since 2013 have invariably been in favor of "us" and not russia, and russia is so focused on playing the game the way it was played last century it feels like they missed it.
      - chubot 3y ago
        western countries safety position improves This is just weird, because Russia is a much weaker country than the US, and many European countries. Economically, they are tiny. e.g. I just Googled and found this https://twitter.com/BWJones/status/1568223569947275264?lang=en https://twitter.com/BWJones/status/1568223569947275264?lang=... It says Russia's economy is smaller than that of California, Texas, and New York. That sounds about right. (and of course war is mainly an economic contest) --- They are not a threat to the West. The West is a threat to Russia. Russia is aggressive and violent because they're in a weak position. They were invaded by Napolean, by Germany in WW I, and by Hitler's Germany in WW II (notably, these are all western powers). Russia lost ~27,000,000 people in World War II, while the US lost ~400,000. In the meantime, the US has NEVER had a war on its soil. --- The US would not accept missiles in Cuba in the 1960's. Would we accept Chinese missiles in Mexico in 2024? It's not a surprise that they would not accept NATO weapons in Ukraine. Obviously I'm not condoning the invasion, but I'd also say that old men in the US are playing with the lives of young Ukrainian men. If the US wanted to end this war, we could do it today by actually winning it with our weapons. Instead we trickle out the bare minimum of weapons, ensuring the war grinds to a stalemate. --- If I were Zelensky, I wouldn't make myself and my citizens dependent on powers who actually don't want to win the war. I wouldn't want to be dependent on people like you, who just want to use the lives of my citizens for to gain an inch in an imaginary game that has little consequence for them.
ethbr1 3y ago
Roman success as a lengthy enduring civilization, from what I understand, has much to do with implementing and optimizing repeatable processes. E.g. Recruiting and equipping a huge army once, but losing it in a battle. Versus building an economic machine around the ability to continually recruit, train, and equip huge armies.
- dylan604 3y ago
  I wonder how different the recruiting process for the Romans was from today's modern recruitment efforts. 1) start with prisons, 2) offer service to those facing prison, 3) look for the unemployed, 4) tell potential recruits that they will experience the exact opposite of what will actually occur
  - vkou 3y ago
    Today's modern recruitment process in volunteer armies is more like: 1) Start with children who don't know any better. 2) See #1. The reason that Russia is enlisting prisoners, is because the MOD needs more people than their peace-time mandatory service contracts are able to provide, but knows that a full draft would be highly unpopular. Roman recruitment was nothing of the sort. It was not voluntary, it was expected that everyone would participate, and there would be serious consequences for draft-dodgers, both on the level of their local communities, and on a wider social scope.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      That's selling modern and historical recruitment short: there's always been personal economic calculus for volunteer armies. "Will service improve my personal situation? Enough to be worth it?" Hence why recruitment correlates with unemployment. Nations with effective recruitment policies understood this, and typically funded it with things they had in abundance (e.g. land grants, pensions, etc).
southernplaces7 3y ago
>Sadly for Carthage Before you sympathize too much with Carthage, bear in mind that their (well documented by contemporary sources even if you account for anti-Carthagian propaganda from some Roman sources) religious practices were distinctly grotesque, involving no shortage of child sacrifice that even included burning children alive. Notable families were also encouraged to do the same to their first sons in times of crisis, but would often buy the children of poor people to go in their place. I know the Romans really, really disliked the Carthagians, so it must have tainted their view on them in all circumstances, but even then, there are enough sources professing outright disgust about their sacrificial practices to give the complaints some weight. And if Romans of all people are disgusted with how brutal a country's cultural practices are, you can imagine that they probably were pretty damn awful.
- Aspos 3y ago
  It just happens that current world we live in is influenced by European civilizations, which were significantly influenced by the Romans. So your world view is stemming from Roman culture. Now imagine Carthage won the Punic wars and destroyed Rome, what would we be disgusted with while reading about Roman customs? What would we be considering brutal, awful and barbaric?
  - incrudible 3y ago
    Are we not considering many Roman customs brutal, awful, and barbaric? What did the Carthaginians not do that the Romans did?
  - southernplaces7 3y ago
    I would consider sacrificing living children to be brutal and grotesque no matter who does it or for what reason, Roman, Carthagian or Aztec, or anyone else. As for your premise, it's flawed. For a society whose world view supposedly stems from Roman culture, we're kept extremely aware by many sources about how brutal the Romans could be too. It's hardly something painted pretty by modern media or books. Quite the opposite. It's also generally absurd to think that I must automatically be influenced by some propaganda if I consider plausible the ancient records and evidence of another society's extreme sacrificial practices. As another comment in this reply thread mentions, (though it mistakes Aztecs with Maya), people spent decades thinking that accounts of mass Aztec child sacrifice were colonial era-biased exaggerations, until mass graves of children were much more recently found showing signs not only of sacrifice but torture in advance (to induce tears for the god Tlaloc among other reasons). Sometimes historical cultures are just awful in certain ways that have to be mentioned in posterity, even if we can appreciate other aspects of those cultures. This applies to any culture and should.

chubot 3y ago

Yes! The Ikea reverse engineering, the Corvus, and the sudden huge Roman casualties were all mentioned in the Fall of Civ episode! Pretty crazy and fascinating