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skasion posted:This is the town that gave us “goodbye wondrous femininity” after all That word doesn't really translate into "femininity".
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Sep 22, 2023 20:15
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Zopotantor posted:That word doesn't really translate into "femininity". 
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Sep 22, 2023 20:33
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Tulip posted:I mean its clearly fantasy but also p funny to portray 3 very famously maritime civilizations as having pretty minimal coastlines. I'm not entirely sure I'd describe the Romans (qua Romans) as being particularly maritime. I mean yes mare nostrum and all that, but once they'd established their empire they mostly had the Greeks do the sailing stuff, they were more comfortable on land.
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Sep 23, 2023 09:16
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feedmegin posted:I'm not entirely sure I'd describe the Romans (qua Romans) as being particularly maritime. I mean yes mare nostrum and all that, but once they'd established their empire they mostly had the Greeks do the sailing stuff, they were more comfortable on land. My more serious response is that ethnically Greek Romans are still Romans, my less serious response is you need the sea for garum.
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Sep 23, 2023 12:02
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The ships are why the city can be fed.
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Sep 23, 2023 17:12
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feedmegin posted:I'm not entirely sure I'd describe the Romans (qua Romans) as being particularly maritime. I mean yes mare nostrum and all that, but once they'd established their empire they mostly had the Greeks do the sailing stuff, they were more comfortable on land. An empire that had massive maritime trading networks all across a sea that they surrounded and which got a not insignificant amount of its food from fishing not being maritime is a new one by me.
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Sep 23, 2023 20:56
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It's a bit of an odd definition/category because I'm struggling to think of an empire that wouldn't be considered maritime if the defining characteristics are significant coast/water trade and getting a decent chunk of your food from fishing. I imagine every empire with coastal access would fulfill at least one of these criteria.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:07
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Telsa Cola posted:It's a bit of an odd definition/category because I'm struggling to think of an empire that wouldn't be considered maritime if the defining characteristics are significant coast/water trade and getting a decent chunk of your food from fishing. The key is that most empires, by definition, are large and multi-cultural/multi-ethnic. The Romans, as in the Latin-speaking population of the Italian Peninsula, are maritime as gently caress at least in part because of, you know, being from a peninsula that has "is surrounded by water full of trade and food opportunities" as one of its major defining characteristics. The people living deep into Gaul? Significantly less so. See also: Austro-Hungary. I've got a friend who did a lot of research on the A-H Navy and ended up having to dive around archives in Prague and Vienna, the capitals of two land-locked countries very much not known for having a proud maritime tradition. But once upon a time the empire they were part of had bits that sure as hell did.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:11
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Cyrano4747 posted:The key is that most empires, by definition, are large and multi-cultural/multi-ethnic. The Romans, as in the Latin-speaking population of the Italian Peninsula, are maritime as gently caress at least in part because of, you know, being from a peninsula that has "is surrounded by water full of trade and food opportunities" as one of its major defining characteristics. The people living deep into Gaul? Significantly less so. I'm not disagreeing that Rome has maritime traditions or actually did poo poo with their navy. But a maritime empire is a fairly specific thing that Im not confident Rome falls under in the same way that Venice, British Empire, Portugual, or the Phoneicans do. Rome generally flexed its might through adjacent lands and through land based militaries and, yes, while naval trade and transporting was very important it wasn't really a defining part of how they did poo poo if it's compared to the above noted examples. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 21:19
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Telsa Cola posted:I'm not disagreeing that Rome has maritime traditions or actually did poo poo with their navy. But a maritime empire is a fairly specific thing that Im not confident Rome falls under in the same way that Venice, British Empire, Portugual, or the Phoneicans do. Rome was highly reliant upon an internal trade network that was utterly dependent upon sea trade, to the point where the breakdown of that trade was one of the things that made the end of the Empire really suck. poo poo, at its high point Egypt was rather famously the "breadbasket of the Roman Empire" and that wheat wasn't getting there the long way via Anatolia. If "we are literally at risk of food riots and civil war if our maritime trade breaks down" doesn't define a maritime empire, I don't know what does.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:27
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Also you're thinking of the way the empire flexed at its height. If you look at earlier periods a ton of their wars were started over that trade and neighbors loving with it. Rather famously the Punic Wars, for one. Their interest in Massalia wasn't because it was the doorway into Gaul. See also: Sicily, and Roman entanglements and fights with the Greeks thereon. And then there are the big campaigns that they fought against piracy once they started dominating the region. Pompey's anti-piracy campaign was a big loving deal for a reason.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:29
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Cyrano4747 posted:Rome was highly reliant upon an internal trade network that was utterly dependent upon sea trade, to the point where the breakdown of that trade was one of the things that made the end of the Empire really suck. poo poo, at its high point Egypt was rather famously the "breadbasket of the Roman Empire" and that wheat wasn't getting there the long way via Anatolia. Again that's true for a lot of places to the point where it dilutes the meaning. The Inca empire would meet this criteria and I have not seen a single source that credible claims its a maritime empire. Pretty much every large population center by a water way is hosed if said waterway became unusable for transportation. If you remove the naval aspects of Rome it's still on paper a vast empire with interconnected land linkages and ability to flex said power in a way the the British or Portuguese or Venice was absolutely not. A maritime empire is basically an empire where their naval power and connections is the defining feature of said empire, and I think that's a pretty hard sell for Rome. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 21:31
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Telsa Cola posted:Again that's true for a lot of places to the point where it dilutes the meaning. The Inca empire would meet this criteria and I have not seen a single source that credible claims its a maritime empire. Again, you're looking at a rather narrow point in its history. Remove the naval aspects of Rome and they lose the Punic Wars. Remove the naval aspect from Rome and it never becomes a vast empire with interconnected land linkages. I think you're also over-estimating the interconnectedness via land. Is it possible to get from Rome to Alexandria via road at the peak of the empire? Sure, but it is no where near as fast or secure as going by ship. Again, there are reasons why the grain trade from Egypt to Rome was done via ship.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:40
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I guess you could define it as an empire who expands and expresses military power through naval means, not just through the use of ships as a transport technology, but at a certain point you're also creating a definition that might not meet anything until, like, 1400 AD.
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Sep 23, 2023 23:01
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rome isn't going out and gunboating people but that doesn't make them not maritime. safe travel across the mediterranean was absolutely key to the empire's functioning and was something that a lot of time and effort was spent on even if that isn't reflected in our largely aristocratic sources except for pompey's big pirate hunt
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Sep 23, 2023 23:05
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i'll be honest when I described Rome as a maritime civilization (I didn't say empire because it was responding to a thing that lumped Rome with Vikings and Greeks, neither of whom I think could be said to have 'an empire' in a singular or unified way) I was not thinking of comparing them to Portugal in 1500CE but China in 0.
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Sep 23, 2023 23:09
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If I went back to British Empire times and asked an Englishman if they rule the waves they'd say "aye". If I asked a Venetian they'd tell me they are the finest sailors and traders in the world, as would the Portuguese, The Spanish, and the Dutch. If I went back to Rome and asked Hadrian if he was a boat boy or a land lad you think he'd take the former or the latter? How can we call an empire Maritime if they'd not even call themselves it.
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Sep 23, 2023 23:09
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If you ask Rome "do you rule the Mediterranean?" they'd say 'hell yeah' "What do you call it?" "Our sea." Telsa Cola posted:It's a bit of an odd definition/category because I'm struggling to think of an empire that wouldn't be considered maritime if the defining characteristics are significant coast/water trade and getting a decent chunk of your food from fishing. Mongols?
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Sep 23, 2023 23:17
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I mean they built a navy capable of defeating the other empire on the Mediterranean that certainly was maritime, then dominated the most important body of water in the region for centuries. It’s hard to call them a maritime empire because for so long in their history they had no challengers in the seas they controlled. Which sorta makes them by default the most successful Mediterranean maritime empire?
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Sep 23, 2023 23:19
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Cyrano4747 posted:Again, you're looking at a rather narrow point in its history. Remove the naval aspects of Rome and they lose the Punic Wars. Remove the naval aspect from Rome and it never becomes a vast empire with interconnected land linkages. Having naval aspects and using them, even successfully does not an maritime empire make. I'm sure there are plenty examples of civilizations which used naval power or sea trade to become successful (again basically anything that is by a major water way) that are not considered a maritime empire. Rome downsized their navy after the 2nd century because they no longer needed it and farmed most of the tasks out to allies. This seems like a pretty solid mark against them being considered a maritime empire at that point, as a maritime empire would have retained the ships to use as a geopolitical tool. Being interconnected through land means you have access and trade routes. It's not as fast or as cheap as using waterways, but Rome spended a significant amount of money on in land infrastructure development to facilitate trade so its not some meaningless component of the empire. We know that the silk road and amber road were predominantly land based routes into the Empire, and I'd be willing the bet there were quite a few major land based routes that did heavy lifting economically. Nessus posted:I guess you could define it as an empire who expands and expresses military power through naval means, not just through the use of ships as a transport technology, but at a certain point you're also creating a definition that might not meet anything until, like, 1400 AD. I'd argue it's more about using the navy as the primary tool to express geopolitical power and/or the extent of how much maritime matters actually play in your country. Phoenician, Athenian, Ptolemaic, probably a fair amount of Indoesia, Carthage all would imo be more defensible than rome, though Carthage is borderline by its max extent maybe? Probably some areas in scandavia as well. Obviously cutting off sea trade for anyone would absolutely ruin anyone, but there's a world of difference imo of Rome having its sea corridors cut compared to the British Empire suddenly not being able to travel by boat. Rome could still express geopolitical power through it's legions, even if they have to walk. The British can't do poo poo. There needs to be a bit more to it than just "using boats to be succesful" because than it's a meaningless definition. Tunicate posted:Mongols? Based on the arguments presented in the thread they would be considered a maritime empire. They used naval invasions, probably had a significant portion of their income derive from water-based trade, and lotta food from fishing. Well Played Mauer posted:I mean they built a navy capable of defeating the other empire on the Mediterranean that certainly was maritime, then dominated the most important body of water in the region for centuries. They dumpsterd the navy after the 2nd century because they didn't need it to do the things they wanted to do which is one of the reasons pirates became an issue. Its hard for me to swallow the argument that this is the defining moment in making them a maritime empire when they basically go "Boats gently caress em we don't need them any more" and farm off the task to other people. Rome ultimately viewed the legions as the way it expresses power and the navy in the punic wars was ultimately a way to get the legions over to Carthage to stab people. But yeah them not having any competitors in the body of water next to them makes it difficult. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 23:26
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Again, you are looking at Rome at the peak of its empire. All the stuff you are talking about - secure overland routes in particular - do not exist in the way you are describing until the actual Imperial era. Are we just discounting the Republic?  Look at Rome ca 133 BC. How is that not a maratime empire? If they don't have control of the oceans there is zero way to effectively control Hispania, and frankly I suspect the narrow strip of land along the Dalmatian coast that they control is more useful as safe harbors and provisioning posts for ships than a way to push armies into Greece. If you want to move some legions from Rome to Greece you're going to put them on ships and use the coast you control to make that safer rather than packing them up and marching.
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Sep 23, 2023 23:36
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Cyrano4747 posted:Again, you are looking at Rome at the peak of its empire. All the stuff you are talking about - secure overland routes in particular - do not exist in the way you are describing until the actual Imperial era. Are we just discounting the Republic? Because the naval/marine forces are not the main instrument of geopolitical power in all of this. It's the land based legions which are needed to actually have boots on the ground and control significant portions of inland areas which constitute the majority of the roman empire and republic Compare to either the Delian league or Venice possessions.   The narrow strip of Dalmatia and the smaller Greek Islands are about the only areas of land I would concede that the navy can actually deal with militarly by itself and would fit into the sterotypical look of the territory of a maritime empire. But Hispania and Greece require actual boots on the ground to hold because they are pretty big, inland areas. Rome hegemony is not spreading because they are pointing to the navy and saying the navy is going to gently caress you up. It's rather famously the legions that will. Yes, the navy plays a huge role in allowing that to happen, but its not the key player.
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Sep 24, 2023 00:26
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The idea of "a maritime" culture is inherently subjective, and Rome ended up being more famous for its roads anyways. The Vikings and Greeks incite more feeling because they have big stories about zoomin' around in boats to parts unknown, and that being proportionately a larger amount of their place in pop culture. And then people will also will discount things like Carausius's pirate thing as "not proper Roman" or forget about the naval components of the civil wars.
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Sep 24, 2023 00:26
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looks more like rome hit up the stuff they could conquer with boats first, then when they ran out of shores to conquer in the med, reverted to conquering over land routes
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Sep 24, 2023 00:35
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SlothfulCobra posted:The idea of "a maritime" culture is inherently subjective, and Rome ended up being more famous for its roads anyway. The Vikings and Greeks incite more feeling because they have big stories about zoomin' around in boats to parts unknown, and that being proportionately a larger amount of their place in pop culture. Empires of the Sea tries to work out a definition for maritime empire , though I don't fully agree with it. They point out part of the problem is the term was really coined somewhat recently and that it doesnt work super great if you work backwards so they toy with some definitions. There's also Thalassocracies. Empires of the Sea posted:...we tentatively defined “maritime empires” as systems of political and/or economic control that employ naval (trade) routes as their main arteries of connectivity and communication. Maritime empires aim primarily at controlling ports, coastal regions and islands rather than large land masses. For warfare, and coercion in general, they rely on naval power more than on armies. They should ideally emphasize sea power in their representation and do not necessarily have to be centralized states. This means that in order to be a meaningful heuristic concept, ‘maritime empire’ should signify more than just an empire whose territories are so dispersed that they are dependant on maritime lines of communications. The Spanish Empire in the Americas, for instance, to our mind qualifies less as a maritime empire than the voc empire in the East Indies, or the chain of fortresses and emporia created by Medieval Genoa in the eastern Mediterranean. Some of their takeaways is that basically, being a naval power is different than being a maritime empire, and there needs to be several boxes you tick before you get the title. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Sep 24, 2023 |
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Sep 24, 2023 01:11
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I don't think the distinction makes sense for the Romans. Military power was overwhelmingly focused on land forces, but the Roman economy and civil life was almost entirely ocean based. You can't pull one apart from the other.
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Sep 24, 2023 01:33
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Roman maritime power is the origin of at-least one major world religion. Galilean fish out Roman cement in. That’s the economics driving the politics.
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Sep 24, 2023 01:52
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Hold on, you're telling me a fish made these aquaducts to wash away my sin?
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Sep 24, 2023 02:07
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This discussion requires a definition of "Maritime empire" to go anywhere. Maybe "Maritime empire" should apply to multi-ethnic states where a major portion of the continued economy, administrative apparatus, and military infrastructure depend on sea power. Rome, yes, for the reasons above. It's the centre of their world. Mongols, probably not. The maritime aspects of the Mongol empire were peripheral to their overland conquests. The near-eastern empires such as the Persians or the Parthians didn't significantly rely on sea trade compared to river or overland trade. The Russian empire is noteworthy because it shot itself in the foot because of its explicit and misguided aspirations to become a Maritime empire, even in the age of railroads.
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Sep 24, 2023 02:16
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Grand Fromage posted:I don't think the distinction makes sense for the Romans. Military power was overwhelmingly focused on land forces, but the Roman economy and civil life was almost entirely ocean based. You can't pull one apart from the other. Right, but being dependent on ocean travel for your economy not to poo poo the bed describes a tremendous amount of countries and doesn't seem useful as a way to define the term. We could go with scale, but that has another host of issues. I'm also not sure I agree with the concept that civil life or economy was primarily ocean based, though I can see it going both ways. Rome had waaay more people farming wheat then it had fishing or trading overseas, and this was likely the case throughout its history, even before the extensive sea trading. That to me points to at least civil life not being primarily ocean based. Might be a chicken and the egg argument though, because I'm sure someone is going to point out you need boats to move the product efficiently, and I'm going to point out you actually need a product to be moved. CommonShore posted:This discussion requires a definition of "Maritime empire" to go anywhere. I don't really have an issue with the above proposed definition, though given that the Achaemenid Empire controlled basically the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and access to much of the Red sea, Black sea, Caspian sea, Aral sea, and basically the entire persian gulf it seems really odd to not consider them a maritime empire. Anyways yall can tell me to shut up if you want. Im just having fun arguing about it. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Sep 24, 2023 |
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Sep 24, 2023 02:21
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This all seems somewhat academic. Who invented the term, and do they talk about whether it applies to Rome?
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Sep 24, 2023 03:36
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Bongo Bill posted:This all seems somewhat academic. It's rarefied and academic even by the standards of academe. In fact it borders on useless because the ultimate answer can only be "depends on your definition".
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Sep 24, 2023 06:03
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I think it really is a confusing topic because it's pretty much a culture and aesthetics argument clashing with a material one. Greece has a lot of iconography about boat adventures that Rome didn't, but that might just be because Rome took for granted that to have a Mediterranean empire you're gonna need a lot of boats. Though we don't hear a lot about Roman culture besides what's seen as ripping off other cultures, possibly inaccurately. The Aeneid is called state-sponsored fanfiction, but that's probably true of most old legends, and hell, it's true of Hamlet and Macbeth. The idea of legions and navy being entirely different applications also seems rather dumb, as I'm pretty sure a lot of that conquest involved landing those legions on the beach to march up and conquer cities and territory inland.
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Sep 24, 2023 06:58
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The romans absolutely used military force to keep the sea lanes of communication open. Granted they didn’t have capital ships out on the water guarding things because they didn’t need them after they conquered the entirety of the med. Their military power was definitely in the ground troops, but they could get them from Rome to anywhere in the empire pretty quick thanks to their domination of the sea. I think that fits in with Admiral Mahan’s definition of sea power even if it is limited to one sea.
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Sep 24, 2023 15:17
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Discussions like this are tricky because they delve into the concepts of self-perception and national identity that are often at cross-purposes with reality. The modern United States doesn’t necessarily think of itself as being a maritime society - at least not the way that a classic sea power like UK does - but at the same time 70 percent of all American goods are transported by waterways and naval military strength has played a dominant role in every American conflict.
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Sep 24, 2023 16:16
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Mr. Nice! posted:I think that fits in with Admiral Mahan’s definition of sea power even if it is limited to one sea. The Punic wars has a section in which he argues yes sea power was decisive but not solely decisive : At a very conspicuous and momentous period of the world's history, Sea Power had a strategic bearing and weight which [14]has received scant recognition. There cannot now be had the full knowledge necessary for tracing in detail its influence upon the issue of the second Punic War; but the indications which remain are sufficient to warrant the assertion that it was a determining factor. An accurate judgment upon this point cannot be formed by mastering only such facts of the particular contest as have been clearly transmitted, for as usual the naval transactions have been slightingly passed over; there is needed also familiarity with the details of general naval history in order to draw, from slight indications, correct inferences based upon a knowledge of what has been possible at periods whose history is well known. The control of the sea, however real, does not imply that an enemy's single ships or small squadrons cannot steal out of port, cannot cross more or less frequented tracts of ocean, make harassing descents upon unprotected points of a long coast-line, enter blockaded harbors. On the contrary, history has shown that such evasions are always possible, to some extent, to the weaker party, however great the inequality of naval strength. It is not therefore inconsistent with the general control of the sea, or of a decisive part of it, by the Roman fleets, that the Carthaginian admiral Bomilcar in the fourth year of the war, after the stunning defeat of Cannæ, landed four thousand men and a body of elephants in south Italy; nor that in the seventh year, flying from the Roman fleet off Syracuse, he again appeared at Tarentum, then in Hannibal's hands; nor that Hannibal sent despatch vessels to Carthage; nor even that, at last, he withdrew in safety to Africa with his wasted army. None of these things prove that the government in Carthage could, if it wished, have sent Hannibal the constant support which, as a matter of fact, he did not receive; but they do tend to create a natural impression that such help could have been given. Therefore the statement, that the Roman preponderance at sea had a decisive effect upon the course of the war, needs to be made good by an examination of ascertained facts. Thus the kind and degree of its influence may be fairly estimated. At the beginning of the war, Mommsen says, Rome controlled the seas. To whatever cause, or combination of causes, it be attributed, this essentially non-maritime state had in the first Punic War established over its sea-faring rival a naval supremacy, which still lasted. In the second war there was no naval battle of importance,—a circumstance which in itself, and still more in connection with other well-ascertained facts, indicates a superiority analogous to that which at other epochs has been marked by the same feature. As Hannibal left no memoirs, the motives are unknown which determined him to the perilous and almost ruinous march through Gaul and across the Alps. It is certain, however, that his fleet on the coast of Spain was not strong enough to contend with that of Rome. Had it been, he might still have followed the road he actually did, for reasons that weighed with him; but had he gone by the sea, he would not have lost thirty-three thousand out of the sixty thousand veteran soldiers with whom he started. While Hannibal was making this dangerous march, the Romans were sending to Spain, under the two elder Scipios, one part of their fleet, carrying a consular army. This made the voyage without serious loss, and the army established itself successfully north of the Ebro, on Hannibal's line of communications. At the same time another squadron, with an army commanded by the other consul, was sent to Sicily. The two together numbered two hundred and twenty ships. On its station each met and defeated a Carthaginian squadron with an ease which may be inferred from the slight mention made of the actions, and which indicates the actual superiority of the Roman fleet. After the second year the war assumed the following shape: Hannibal, having entered Italy by the north, after a series of successes had passed southward around Rome and fixed himself in southern Italy, living off the country,—a condition which tended to alienate the people, and was especially precarious when in contact with the mighty political and military system of control which Rome had there [16]established. It was therefore from the first urgently necessary that he should establish, between himself and some reliable base, that stream of supplies and reinforcements which in terms of modern war is called "communications." There were three friendly regions which might, each or all, serve as such a base,—Carthage itself, Macedonia, and Spain. With the first two, communication could be had only by sea. From Spain, where his firmest support was found, he could be reached by both land and sea, unless an enemy barred the passage; but the sea route was the shorter and easier. In the first years of the war, Rome, by her sea power, controlled absolutely the basin between Italy, Sicily, and Spain, known as the Tyrrhenian and Sardinian Seas. The sea-coast from the Ebro to the Tiber was mostly friendly to her. In the fourth year, after the battle of Cannæ, Syracuse forsook the Roman alliance, the revolt spread through Sicily, and Macedonia also entered into an offensive league with Hannibal. These changes extended the necessary operations of the Roman fleet, and taxed its strength. What disposition was made of it, and how did it thereafter influence the struggle? The indications are clear that Rome at no time ceased to control the Tyrrhenian Sea, for her squadrons passed unmolested from Italy to Spain. On the Spanish coast also she had full sway till the younger Scipio saw fit to lay up the fleet. In the Adriatic, a squadron and naval station were established at Brindisi to check Macedonia, which performed their task so well that not a soldier of the phalanxes ever set foot in Italy. "The want of a war fleet," says Mommsen, "paralyzed Philip in all his movements." Here the effect of Sea Power is not even a matter of inference. In Sicily, the struggle centred about Syracuse. The fleets of Carthage and Rome met there, but the superiority evidently lay with the latter; for though the Carthaginians at times succeeded in throwing supplies into the city, they avoided meeting the Roman fleet in battle. With Lilybæum, Palermo, and Messina in its hands, the latter was well based in the north coast of the island. Access by the south was [17]left open to the Carthaginians, and they were thus able to maintain the insurrection. Putting these facts together, it is a reasonable inference, and supported by the whole tenor of the history, that the Roman sea power controlled the sea north of a line drawn from Tarragona in Spain to Lilybæum (the modern Marsala), at the west end of Sicily, thence round by the north side of the island through the straits of Messina down to Syracuse, and from there to Brindisi in the Adriatic. This control lasted, unshaken, throughout the war. It did not exclude maritime raids, large or small, such as have been spoken of; but it did forbid the sustained and secure communications of which Hannibal was in deadly need. On the other hand, it seems equally plain that for the first ten years of the war the Roman fleet was not strong enough for sustained operations in the sea between Sicily and Carthage, nor indeed much to the south of the line indicated. When Hannibal started, he assigned such ships as he had to maintaining the communications between Spain and Africa, which the Romans did not then attempt to disturb. The Roman sea power, therefore, threw Macedonia wholly out of the war. It did not keep Carthage from maintaining a useful and most harassing diversion in Sicily; but it did prevent her sending troops, when they would have been most useful, to her great general in Italy. How was it as to Spain? Spain was the region upon which the father of Hannibal and Hannibal himself had based their intended invasion of Italy. For eighteen years before this began they had occupied the country, extending and consolidating their power, both political and military, with rare sagacity. They had raised, and trained in local wars, a large and now veteran army. Upon his own departure, Hannibal intrusted the government to his younger brother, Hasdrubal, who preserved toward him to the end a loyalty and devotion which he had no reason to hope from the faction-cursed mother-city in Africa. At the time of his starting, the Carthaginian power in [18]Spain was secured from Cadiz to the river Ebro. The region between this river and the Pyrenees was inhabited by tribes friendly to the Romans, but unable, in the absence of the latter, to oppose a successful resistance to Hannibal. He put them down, leaving eleven thousand soldiers under Hanno to keep military possession of the country, lest the Romans should establish themselves there, and thus disturb his communications with his base. Cnæus Scipio, however, arrived on the spot by sea the same year with twenty thousand men, defeated Hanno, and occupied both the coast and interior north of the Ebro. The Romans thus held ground by which they entirely closed the road between Hannibal and reinforcements from Hasdrubal, and whence they could attack the Carthaginian power in Spain; while their own communications with Italy, being by water, were secured by their naval supremacy. They made a naval base at Tarragona, confronting that of Hasdrubal at Cartagena, and then invaded the Carthaginian dominions. The war in Spain went on under the elder Scipios, seemingly a side issue, with varying fortune for seven years; at the end of which time Hasdrubal inflicted upon them a crushing defeat, the two brothers were killed, and the Carthaginians nearly succeeded in breaking through to the Pyrenees with reinforcements for Hannibal. The attempt, however, was checked for the moment; and before it could be renewed, the fall of Capua released twelve thousand veteran Romans, who were sent to Spain under Claudius Nero, a man of exceptional ability, to whom was due later the most decisive military movement made by any Roman general during the Second Punic War. This seasonable reinforcement, which again assured the shaken grip on Hasdrubal's line of march, came by sea,—a way which, though most rapid and easy, was closed to the Carthaginians by the Roman navy. Two years later the younger Publius Scipio, celebrated afterward as Africanus, received the command in Spain, and captured Cartagena by a combined military and naval attack; [19]after which he took the most extraordinary step of breaking up his fleet and transferring the seamen to the army. Not contented to act merely as the "containing"[6] force against Hasdrubal by closing the passes of the Pyrenees, Scipio pushed forward into southern Spain, and fought a severe but indecisive battle on the Guadalquivir; after which Hasdrubal slipped away from him, hurried north, crossed the Pyrenees at their extreme west, and pressed on to Italy, where Hannibal's position was daily growing weaker, the natural waste of his army not being replaced. The war had lasted ten years, when Hasdrubal, having met little loss on the way, entered Italy at the north. The troops he brought, could they be safely united with those under the command of the unrivalled Hannibal, might give a decisive turn to the war, for Rome herself was nearly exhausted; the iron links which bound her own colonies and the allied States to her were strained to the utmost, and some had already snapped. But the military position of the two brothers was also perilous in the extreme. One being at the river Metaurus, the other in Apulia, two hundred miles apart, each was confronted by a superior enemy, and both these Roman armies were between their separated opponents. This false situation, as well as the long delay of Hasdrubal's coming, was due to the Roman control of the sea, which throughout the war limited the mutual support of the Carthaginian brothers to the route through Gaul. At the very time that Hasdrubal was making his long and dangerous circuit by land, Scipio had sent eleven thousand men from Spain by sea to reinforce the army opposed to him. The upshot was that messengers from Hasdrubal to Hannibal, having to pass over so wide a belt of hostile country, fell into the hands of Claudius Nero, commanding the southern Roman army, who thus learned the route which Hasdrubal intended to take. Nero correctly appreciated the situation, and, escaping the vigilance [20]of Hannibal, made a rapid march with eight thousand of his best troops to join the forces in the north. The junction being effected, the two consuls fell upon Hasdrubal in overwhelming numbers and destroyed his army; the Carthaginian leader himself falling in the battle. Hannibal's first news of the disaster was by the head of his brother being thrown into his camp. He is said to have exclaimed that Rome would now be mistress of the world; and the battle of Metaurus is generally accepted as decisive of the struggle between the two States. The military situation which finally resulted in the battle of the Metaurus and the triumph of Rome may be summed up as follows: To overthrow Rome it was necessary to attack her in Italy at the heart of her power, and shatter the strongly linked confederacy of which she was the head. This was the objective. To reach it, the Carthaginians needed a solid base of operations and a secure line of communications. The former was established in Spain by the genius of the great Barca family; the latter was never achieved. There were two lines possible,—the one direct by sea, the other circuitous through Gaul. The first was blocked by the Roman sea power, the second imperilled and finally intercepted through the occupation of northern Spain by the Roman army. This occupation was made possible through the control of the sea, which the Carthaginians never endangered. With respect to Hannibal and his base, therefore, Rome occupied two central positions, Rome itself and northern Spain, joined by an easy interior line of communications, the sea; by which mutual support was continually given. Had the Mediterranean been a level desert of land, in which the Romans held strong mountain ranges in Corsica and Sardinia, fortified posts at Tarragona, Lilybæum, and Messina, the Italian coast-line nearly to Genoa, and allied fortresses in Marseilles and other points; had they also possessed an armed force capable by its character of traversing that desert at will, but in which their opponents were very inferior and therefore compelled to a great circuit in order to concentrate their [21]troops, the military situation would have been at once recognized, and no words would have been too strong to express the value and effect of that peculiar force. It would have been perceived, also, that the enemy's force of the same kind might, however inferior in strength, make an inroad, or raid, upon the territory thus held, might burn a village or waste a few miles of borderland, might even cut off a convoy at times, without, in a military sense, endangering the communications. Such predatory operations have been carried on in all ages by the weaker maritime belligerent, but they by no means warrant the inference, irreconcilable with the known facts, "that neither Rome nor Carthage could be said to have undisputed mastery of the sea," because "Roman fleets sometimes visited the coasts of Africa, and Carthaginian fleets in the same way appeared off the coast of Italy." In the case under consideration, the navy played the part of such a force upon the supposed desert; but as it acts on an element strange to most writers, as its members have been from time immemorial a strange race apart, without prophets of their own, neither themselves nor their calling understood, its immense determining influence upon the history of that era, and consequently upon the history of the world, has been overlooked. If the preceding argument is sound, it is as defective to omit sea power from the list of principal factors in the result, as it would be absurd to claim for it an exclusive influence.
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Sep 24, 2023 16:58
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I bet you ask an Iowegian and a Hawaiian if The US is a Maritime Country you'd get a different answer. Same if you ask a Roman from Caeserea and one from Paris.
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Sep 24, 2023 17:04
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Bar Ran Dun posted:The Punic wars has a section in which he argues yes sea power was decisive but not solely decisive : Thanks for this excerpt. We've got the proof right here - Rome's control of the sea was dominant even as far back as the second Punic war. Kaal posted:Discussions like this are tricky because they delve into the concepts of self-perception and national identity that are often at cross-purposes with reality. The modern United States doesn’t necessarily think of itself as being a maritime society - at least not the way that a classic sea power like UK does - but at the same time 70 percent of all American goods are transported by waterways and naval military strength has played a dominant role in every American conflict. The people in charge absolutely realize that the USA is a maritime nation. It's one of the guiding principles of our military strategy and the reason that we have ships/bases worldwide. The average american may not, but the military and the government sure as hell do.
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Sep 24, 2023 17:51
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Gaius Marius posted:I bet you ask an Iowegian and a Hawaiian if The US is a Maritime Country you'd get a different answer. Same if you ask a Roman from Caeserea and one from Paris. They grow corn in Iowa my man. What has to happen to sell commodity corn? Trains, river barges, and ships. Farmers know how that works because their livelihood depends on it. They certainly will be familiar with Cargill and Louis Dreyfus.
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Sep 24, 2023 17:58
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Mr. Nice! posted:The people in charge absolutely realize that the USA is a maritime nation. It's one of the guiding principles of our military strategy and the reason that we have ships/bases worldwide. The average american may not, but the military and the government sure as hell do. Kinda the exact inverse of Grand Fromage's argument. The US kinda heavily handicapped its civilian maritime aspect because it's illegal for most ships to go directly from US port to US port. It's weird and dumb.
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Sep 24, 2023 17:58
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