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Roman fleet was named in ancient Rome as clasis. Its main centres were in Ravenna and Misenum, and smaller ones in some coastal provinces and on the Rhine and Danube. Seamen were recruited from the lowest sections of Roman society, even from slaves. From the time of Claudius, only freedmen and inhabitants of coastal provinces could serve in the fleet. As commanders (praefecti classis) under Octavian Augustus still served the freedmen – later the equites
Development of the Roman sea fleet
In the early days of its existence, royal Rome maintained the organizational structure of the city-state, fighting mainly with its land-based neighbours to seize hegemony in the Apennine Peninsula. Even when the republic’s sphere of influence reached the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the matters of the defence of the sea borders were treated marginally, because the only opponent who could not undermine Roman power were pirates who occasionally ravaged coastal cities. To defend against them, small squadrons were formed, which were basically fleets of Greek colonies scattered in great numbers in southern Italy.
These Greeks had ships, they had experienced crews and commanders, for whom the secrets of navigation were no stranger to them, and as a sea nation they had already established their sailing traditions. The crews of these ships were free men who undertook service for a considerable earnings of 183 drachmas per year.
The recruitment of rowers with a chance of a solid salary offered, on the one hand, the possibility of life stabilization for the plebeian community, which, due to their low social status, could not count on a career in the army, and on the other hand guaranteed them a job.
The very development of the Roman fleet was very lagging behind other Mediterranean countries. At a time when the young Republic fought for hegemony on the peninsula, sea battles were rare, but if they were fought, they were of a modest nature. During the conflict with the city of Antium, the Romans threw into battle a fleet of only six ships, while in 348 BCE the Senate ordered war with the Greek colonists living in southern Italy, it was limited only to a demonstrative occupation of the coast on which the Greeks could land. These delays, however, resulted from the bad organization of the navy and the lack of practice and appropriate patterns. Already during the First Punic War, the commanders of the republican navies began to develop their own tactical assumptions, which were partly an adaptation of Greek military thought, and partly the result of their own reflections, as well as technical inventions.
It is worth noting, however, that the first symptoms of the Romans’ interest in the sea fleet appeared at the end of the 4th century BCE because in 310 BCE Rome created a special college overseeing the construction of the duoviri navales fleet. Still, Rome was mainly focused on land wars.
This situation changed with the increasing possessiveness of Rome. When the country began to conquer the more and more extensive areas of the peninsula, it became necessary to have a permanent, regular navy. Some of their own ships were built from state funds, the main base of which was the capital’s river port and the colony at the mouth of the Tiber, Ostia. However, these forces were too small, so the obligation was introduced to provide ships with crews by allied Italian states in the event of a war threat, thus creating a system of coastal allied sea cities (socii navales). Of course, those charged with the duty of serving in the navy were paid wages. They also participated in the distribution of general war profits, but all the amounts allocated to them were lower than the payments to the citizens of the republic who performed a similar service.
Deep changes in the structure and power of the Roman navy took place after 264 BCE when there was an open conflict, the so-called First Punic War, in which Rome’s first enemy was the overseas state, i.e. Carthage. In order to achieve a balance with the enemy with a huge fleet, the Romans, as in the next two Punic wars, had to build up a powerful fleet and call a huge number of people to the oar. They then copied a standard Carthaginian ship, a five-row gallery. There are assumptions that Roman units, at least in the initial period of the Punic Wars, were significantly structurally very similar to Carthaginian units, which of course does not mean that the Romans and later rigidly adhered to the prototype.