New inventory of Roman navy

[richsc]

Not my review! But still

H-Net Review | Pitassi, ‘Roman Warships’
by David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist

Michael Pitassi. Roman Warships. Woodbridge Boydell & Brewer,
2011. 191 pp. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-84383-610-0.

Reviewed by Alyssa Tavernia
Published on H-War (September, 2013)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

Michael Pitassi's _Roman Warships_ provides a detailed overview of
the evolution and development of Roman warships spanning the life
cycle of Rome's empire. Through painstaking research of all available
artifacts, literature, and iconography, Pitassi pieces together a
structural and operational time line of the warships that Rome used
to service its vast territories over the centuries.

The book is divided into two main sections which create a clear
separation between Pitassi's general structural explanation of the
ancient ships in part 1 and the time line of ship types in part 2.
Part 1 of the text covers the interpretation of the sources and an
explanation of the ship fittings. The very first chapter, titled
"Sources," is an apologetic introduction to the extreme challenges
facing the author, given the lack of physical wrecks or further
detailed evidence that may have perhaps bridged the gap between
conjecture and solid facts. The reader is immediately aware that
Pitassi will be navigating through contemporary authors' vague
descriptions, stylized artwork, frescos, coinage, and disproportioned
reliefs and sculptures to find the framework for his overall
interpretation of these warships and their functions.

It is clear from Pitassi's available visual evidence that the remains
of Pompeii and Herculaneum play an important role in providing key
visual models of contemporary warships Rome employed. While stylized
at best, and suffering from each artist's interpretation, surviving
wall paintings and frescos nevertheless become very important
snapshots of the various sized warships of the era. No detail or lack
thereof goes unnoticed in these visual representations, and whenever
possible, contemporary sources such as Polybius, Livy, Tactitus, and
Pliny are used to strengthen conclusions derived from less than ideal
artifacts.

The balance of part 1 goes into great detail to describe the ship
fittings, and Pitassi makes every effort to explain each section of a
Roman warship in fascinating detail. Whether the reader is a scholar
of ancient navies or an undergraduate, this section will shed light
on the anatomy of the Roman warship, with form and function explained
and illustrated through technical drawings and color plates. Pitassi
does not overexplain or linger on areas that need only a short
explanation, such as anchors and awnings.

Part 2 dives headlong into the actual time line of the ships
themselves. Pitassi begins his account at 394 BC, where the first
recorded account of a Roman warship is described. A step-by-step
journey through Rome's time line gives the reader a historical
context in which vessels are meticulously placed in their time
period, based on his research and physical evidence. Drawings and
models are referenced in this section to add a further dimension to
the overall interpretation of what these Roman vessels may have
looked like and why. Functionality is clearly the basis of Pitassi's
analysis and formulations of design.

While Pitassi's warship time line deals almost exclusively with
maritime functions of each type of vessel during the Roman period, a
closer look at Roman military vessels integrated with Rome's overall
military operations might have expanded the reader's understanding
and awareness of the importance of these ships and the overall naval
branch of this ancient superpower. However, one only has to look to
Pitassi's previous book, _The Navies of Rome_, for this expanded
history.

While the book details warships from every imaginable fitting and
dimension, it is void of much in the way of connecting the ships to
its crew, in terms of an operational structure on board or social
levels on land. On the other hand, the outcome of Pitassi's narrow
focus is his ability to successfully communicate the ebb and flow of
the evolution of these ships, which run a parallel course with Roman
expansion as well as its decline. No detail of any size ship has been
left out of consideration during this analysis.

_Roman Warships_ is a well-supported, focused sourcebook which
presents the overview, dissection, and chronology of Roman vessels in
the service of their military throughout the span of the republican
and imperial eras. This is not a purely scientific, deeply technical
reference book, but instead has been written in a way that is
comprehendible to a range of historians and students alike, with
little or no maritime knowledge required. It is an ideal introduction
to the overall collective history of the Roman warship.

Citation: Alyssa Tavernia. Review of Pitassi, Michael, _Roman
Warships_. H-War, H-Net Reviews. September, 2013.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=37746

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.

David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist | September 28, 2013 at 10:10 am | Categories: Reviews | URL: http://wp.me/poaX4-8tZ
Comment See all comments
Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions.

Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser:
http://rogueclassicism.com/2013/09/28/h-...-warships/
Thanks for flying with WordPress.com