![]() ![]() Yet, Carthage’s superior seamanship and numbers - over 300 ships - could not be easily outmatched. In a mere 60 days, Rome built its first significant navy, consisting of 100 large quinqueremes and 20 smaller triremes. Using a shipwrecked enemy’s boat as a template, in 260 BCE, the Romans embarked on a large building program. According to the historian Polybius, who left us a detailed account of the war, the Carthaginian misfortune turned into a stroke of luck for the Republic. And so, the First Punic War began.Īt the onset of the war, Rome had a vastly inferior naval force and lacked seaborne combat experience. ![]() When its possessions on Sicily were threatened by a rising power from Italy - the Roman Republic - Carthage dispatched its mighty fleet to deal with the nuisance. This powerful state on the coast of North Africa established colonies in Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily. At the time, Carthage was the dominant naval power in the Western Mediterranean. The story of the Roman navy began in the third century BCE, during one of the bloodiest and most costly conflicts that took place in the Mediterranean Sea. The Dawn of the Roman Navy Map showing the Roman and Carthaginian territory on the eve of the First Punic War, with Sicily as a contested island in the Western Mediterranean, via Britannica ![]()
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