Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.

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.

You know your brain is full when you step on a tack and, right after “ouch,” your first thought is that this must be what Philo meant in his Poliorketika when he recommended planting nail-studded doors in the sand and shallow ground to stop a beach landings.

The things you find when watching random
YouTube videos. 😅

Haha! I saw it in a random YouTube video…not something I’d recommend.

Whoever made this graphic hates ancient warships….

Overall great news!! 😁

It is one of those problems where the more closely you look, the less settled it feels. Not to mention we lack any archaeological naval rams or securely identified warship remains from this period, and we cannot even be certain that the rams used at Syracuse were of the three-bladed design.

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’ve never written for @bretdevereaux.bsky.social and I don’t run a competing blog. I think Bret does an excellent job covering nearly every aspect of ancient warfare, including naval warfare stuff!

For naval warfare technology, I usually recommend The Athenian Trireme by J. S. Morrison and others, along with The Age of Titans by W. M. Murray. Both can get fairly technical at times, but they are excellent resources, especially if you prefer to dip into the chapters that interest you most.

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.

Looks like a great line up! Wish I could zoom in to yours and the spartan navy panel.

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

Ahhh yes! I do love the snake one too 🐍.

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!

Honorable mentions:

6. Having your ship disabled, towed to shore, and then everyone executed.

7. Being killed in the flames after a fire pot breaks and spreads burning pitch across the deck.

3. Accidentally dragged off the deck by a swinging enemy anchor during ramming.

4. Thrown onto an enemy ship’s deck after ramming impact then stabbed.

5. Surviving the battle, then drowning when your escaping skiff capsizes.

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

Thank you! Added it to my front facing warship depiction folder (…that is a thing….😅). Maybe one day I’ll get around to doing a paper on those depictions.

@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.

Oh these look awesome! Thanks for sharing. I’ll have to find them? Beazley archive? I love the attempt to show a front facing warship…always so odd for both the Greeks and Romans. Cool find 😎

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.

Toward a Uniform Terminology for Three-Bladed Waterline Rams The discovery of the Athlit ram in 1980 and its analysis by J. Richard Steffy (1991) established the first systematic nomenclature for three-bladed waterline rams. Subsequent studies of similar ram...

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.

One of my favorites is during the naval engagement around Massilia (49 BCE), we’re told Caesar’s men were so disadvantaged at sea they didn’t even know the names for different pieces of ship equipment…only to overcome that deficiency by just slaughtering everyone in a 1 vs 2 boarding action.