The largest bronze fragment recovered near the rostral wall of the Actian Victory Monument. Among the few surviving relics of the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), it may have originated from one of the massive warships that served in the fleets of Antony and Cleopatra.

Originally published online in December 2025, this article is now available in print in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. For fellow enthusiasts of naval rams 🌊 🐏

Grad school story: I had a professor who graded exams competitively against the class. It initially seemed like an interesting approach, but I eventually came to hate it.

I am always skeptical of Plutarch’s treatment of Actium. He dismisses what would have been a fairly conventional opening exchange of ramming attacks and then immediately adopts the victor’s preferred framing of the battle: Agrippa’s agile fleet defeating Antony’s massive but ineffective warships.

I really wonder what the ram cakes looked like….semi-related cake a colleague made for me a few years ago!

There are only three times Athenaeus uses the Greek word embolos in reference to a naval ram: 1. The seven rams of the tessarakonteres (which, in my opinion, is as ridiculous as the ship itself).

Herodotus is a particularly interesting author for studying ancient naval rams and ramming warfare. He is one of the few surviving authors to preserve evidence for more than one ram design.

Messing with the numbers again: the 5 “ten”-sized rams produced for the Battle of Actium in 31 consumed an amount of bronze equal to roughly 33% of all the bronze used by a 200-ship Roman fleet at the Battle of the Egadi Islands in 241. If we can trust our reconstructions…which is always a big if. 😅

⚓ HUGE thanks to @sdecasien.bsky.social for raging with me that Rome was a NAVAL power, not just a land empire! 🏛️🌊 We explored Roman sea control, naval warfare, and the archaeology proving Rome’s maritime might. Coming 22nd Jun www.patreon.com/historyrage #HistoryRage #AncientRome #NavalHistory

This is great! Also, how to support an academic: - read their papers - cite their articles and books - tell your friends and students about their work - include their work in your reading lists and syllabi - ask your library to buy their books - tell them you liked their work or that it was helpful

Someone over on X confidently claimed that certain ships never existed because we haven’t found any wrecks, and “every fleet in history has shipwrecks.” Well… welcome to antiquity, I guess. By that standard, we can go ahead and erase most ancient navies from existence.

“For when a ship was overtaken by several triremes and struck from all sides by their bronze rams, as the water rushed in, it would be swallowed by the sea with all its crew.” - Diod. Sic. 13.16.3

Paperback of my book on the Polis is now out. Link in next post.

You have to give serious credit to Octavian and Marcus Agrippa’s naval forces at the Battle of Actium for not panicking when they saw the size and scale of the ships Mark Antony and Cleopatra brought. Visit the Actian Victory Monument and you understand it immediately.

I love the Olympias trireme, but it still bothers me that they used the Athlit ram design. Even the publication admits the mismatch. Still, it was an ambitious experimental project and some compromises were inevitable. Maybe time for a quinquereme build next with an Egadi ram?

Naval blockades in antiquity rarely seem to be carried out solely by naval forces; most have some form of land-based pressure. The closest case I can think of is the Siege of Tyre, though even there the mole proved decisive. Can anyone think of a successful example carried out by naval forces alone?

We can only guess what happened to the Punic ships after the Battle of the Egadi Islands (241 BCE). Sources vary wildly on how many were destroyed, captured, or recovered. Some were likely reused, others stripped, plenty just lost. What’s striking is the silence on the rams.

Out of all the Punic Wars, the First is the best because… lots of warships… and lots of rams…

Philo Mechanicus would love this thread…he was a sucker for naval blockade talking points.

My sister’s new article in Science!!! Congrats 🎉 @coevolvinglab.bsky.social Sex effects on gene expression across the human cerebral cortex at cell type resolution | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Got a chance between teaching classes to explore the historic shipyard where China’s first aircraft carrier (the Liaoning) was commissioned. The story behind it is honestly wild. This place once produced a significant number of Chinese naval vessels (also the Shandong aircraft carrier).

“If you should chance to have a naval force that is slightly inferior to that of the enemy, take on your fighting decks your best and most experienced soldiers. Order them neither to climb out, nor to board any enemy ship, but to use the bronze ram.” – Philo Polior. D.103 [104.9].

In my intro to Digital Humanities class, I present one core idea: every project should be guided by human judgment from start to finish. I think many students came in expecting to learn how AI or certain programs could do all their work for them.

“If you should chance to have a naval force that is slightly inferior to that of the enemy, take on your fighting decks your best and most experienced soldiers. Order them neither to climb out, nor to board any enemy ship, but to use the bronze ram.” – Philo Polior. D.103 [104.9].

Warships with rams are everywhere in antiquity! Here’s another one I didn’t include in my article on naval ram portrayals (DeCasien, 2025). A small bone "appliqué", mentioned by Casanovas et al. (2021), shows a warship prow with a ram, likely part of a Punic decorative lectus.

“For when a ship was overtaken by several triremes and struck from all sides by their bronze rams, as the water rushed in, it would be swallowed by the sea with all its crew.” - Diod. Sic. 13.16.3

A new likely Hellenistic sling bullet has been excavated at Hippos (pleiades.stoa.org/places/678185) near the Sea of Galilee. It has a unique inscription: ΜΑΘΟΥ Learn (your lesson!) Sling bullets were truly the bumper stickers of the ancient world. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Thanks to the Anthropuzzled podcast for having me on to talk about nautical archaeology! Episode comes out in July!

According to the ancient historian Eutropius (Brev. 2.27), today marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Egadi Islands, fought on March 10, 241 BCE. I have the privilege of working on the battle site itself, where excavations have recovered a remarkable range of material!

One thing I enjoy about ancient history is the distance. It gives people room to explore big questions without the weight that often comes with more recent history, while still offering lessons that apply just as much today.

Given the current academic job market, the old adage “publish or perish” increasingly feels like “publish and perish anyway.” I’m glad to have a temporary position, but it still makes the future feel uncertain.

One thing I really love in Greek and Latin poetry is how naval rams are often referred to simply as bronze rather than by technical terms like rostrum or embolos. The ships don’t just ram each other—they cut through the sea with bronze, they clash in bronze, or their prows bear teeth of bronze.

Whoever made this graphic hates ancient warships….

Still working on the same paper about the Syracusan trireme modifications of 413 BCE, and my interpretation keeps shifting every time I go back to the sources. The evidence is so compressed and assumes so much background knowledge that each reread seems to suggest a different reconstruction.

I have the proofs in hand to review, but unfortunately the release isn’t scheduled until 2027! Slowly but surely getting all my ram ideas onto paper and out into the world. Honestly, I’ll take any excuse to talk about ancient naval warfare.

Tried the AI caricature trend. Asked it to draw me and my job. Not sure whether to laugh or file a complaint.

"Half his body was under water, & half above it; & this was carried all over the sea — a piteous sight — fastened in death upon the ship's ram. Both fleets now increased their speed, & the rowers' faces, as they sped on, were spattered with a bloody dew from the splashing oars." - Sil. Pun. 14.480

Been tagging all naval battles, coastal actions, ship engagements, and smaller maritime operations in this copy of Caesar. Also finding little nuggets of solid seafaring detail, but as with Caesar, it all gets overshadowed by everything else going on. I think it’s time to get back to Thucydides!

After reading a lot about ancient naval warfare, I’m convinced fighting at sea was one of the worst ways to die in antiquity. The five that stand out most: 1. Beaten to death with an oar while trying to swim away. 2. Falling overboard and getting crushed between two ships as they rammed.

I had the whole Chinese Maritime Museum to myself, stood in a hall full of Chinese ship models and said, “look at all this junk.” Linguistically correct. Academically questionable.

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in graduate school! -Thucydides -Ancient Navies -History of Shipbuilding Technology -Pre-classical Seafaring -War and Society Honorable mention: Roman Epigraphy

@sdecasien.bsky.social Max Tucker on my Discord server found these Apulian depictions of warships on Apulian vases. Thought you'd like to take a look.

Love this coin! It is hard to tell, but that naval ram is definitely there. Poor Asander looks like he took the naval ram head on…! RPC I, 1845.

Our new paper is out. It is always a privilege to work with Dr. Murray. Even more so to share a paper on a topic we both probably spend way too much time thinking about. Hopefully this is the first of many!

A cool example of ancient Chinese naval warfare iconography! Museum info: Bronze pot with patterns of water and land battle and warship. The Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period (771-221 BCE). Housed in the China Maritime Museum.

Option A: sail or row around. Option B: “…he held the naturally formed mole that lay in the way, which had almost made the town into an island, and he hauled four biremes into the inner harbor, pushing them along with crowbars, with rollers placed underneath.” -Caes. BCiv. 3.40.2-3.

I love reading Caesar and seeing just the blatant bias toward deck fighting and personal valor over crew organization and ship maneuvers. Like: “Sure, they sheared some oars… but HOLD ON, this one marine threw a grappling hook, yanked the enemy ship over, and started killing people.”

Incredible shot of the Hellenic Navy's new frigate Kimon being welcomed yesterday by the trireme Olympias and the armoured cruiser Averof (photo by Nick Dendris)

“At Terracina, the praetor M. Claudius perished in flames when his ship was struck by lightning.” - Julius Obsequens, Prodigiorum liber, 24. When asking AI 🤖 for an image of this event we get this hilarious scene:

“ἀλλὰ θέαν μόνην ἐκείνη παρέσχε…”- Plut. Demetr. 43.4.