THE SCENE: While the Roman army was second to none, the Romans were never fully comfortable with naval combat. The passage below demonstrates how Julius Caesar tried to press this advantage by turning naval battles into land battles (at sea).
THE TEXT: He decided, therefore, that he must wait for his fleet to be assembled and brought up. Directly it hove in sight, some two hundred and twenty enemy ships, perfectly equipped and ready for immediate action, sailed out of harbor and took up stations facing it. Neither its commander Brutus nor the military tribunes and centurions in charge of the individual ships could decide what to do or what tactics to adopt. They knew that no injury could inflicted on the enemy by ramming, and when they tried erecting turrets they found that they were still overtopped by the foreigner’s lofty sterns and were too low to make their missiles carry properly, while the enemy’s fell with great force. One device, however, that our men had prepared proved very useful – pointed hooks fixed to the end of long poles, not unlike the grappling-hooks used in sieges. With these the halyards were grasped and pulled taut, and then snapped by rowing hard away. This of course brought the yards down, and since the Gallic ships depended wholly on their sails and rigging, when stripped of these they were at once immobilized. After that it was a soldier’s battle, in which the Romans easily proved superior, especially as it was fought under the eyes of Caesar and the whole army, so that any act of special bravery was bound to be noticed.
– The Conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar, 1st Century BC
