Battle of Ecnomus (256 BC) - Largest Naval Battle in History

It's like playing bumper cars with a quarter million men trying to kill each other.

"The colossal effort shown by the Romans proved their willingness to pour everything they had into the fight". That's Rome's military history in short, stubborn persistence in the face of overwhelming odds and disastrous defeats. Hannibal trashed them all around Rome and they just kept raising more legions to fight him.

Carthage: I have a navy Rome: We have a ramp

There was estimated to be 250,000,000 people alive when this battle took place. that means 0.116 percent of the world's population was engaged in this battle. there were 2.3 billion people alive during world war 2. The battle of leyte gulf had roughly 0.0086 percent of the world's population involved in the battle. Worded another way, for roughly every 850 human beings on the entire earth, 1 was fighting in the seas at the battle of Ecnomus. In the battle of Leyte Gulf, for every 11,500 human being on earth, 1 was fighting in the seas. Using this logic, the battle of Ecnomus was 13.5 times larger than the largest naval battle of the largest war in history by % of humans involved. Crazy, right?

Cool stuff. I just love how the Romans' response to Carthaginian naval superiority is basically just going "fuck you guys, we're on land now".

It has been a real pleasure to research and produce the documentary series on the Roman Navy. This video is a culmination of that exploration into the little covered world of ancient naval combat which I hope has been equally as enlightening and entertaining. It is also worth mentioning that the battle maps I created for this video individually shows the 680 vessels from both sides. Though this was painstaking to do, it was worth it to convey the insane scale of this encounter at sea. I'd also like to point out that I tried using new effects in this video. I will continue to try new styles and adapt my presentations in the future and greatly appreciate any and all feedback. Thank you all for your support and help thus far. Its a true joy to have an audience for this passion of mine : )

Romans: The Carthaginians had us in the first half, not gonna lie.

One thing I learned from studying ancient history is never give up. There has been so many times when seemingly everything is being lost and the odds are insurmountable, but they manage to pull off the most amazing victory’s or saves. It’s amazing.

all rome will be amazed at such a victory. THE DAY IS OURS

who in their right mind would downvote this. This is better than history channel in its prime.

I just realized that ancient warfare is A LOT MORE intriguing then medieval warfare.

Strictly considering the naval engagements on sea, the First Punic War started and continued very bad for the Republic of Rome. This was the only time in history when Rome lost an entire fleet during a battle: to the last ship, to the last boat and to the last sailor, including the admiral. The Roman vessels were slow and clumsy, the Romans not having acquired yet the skills and finesse needed to build “world class” ships. All nations being limited to the muscle power of their oarsmen, the one that could create ships with better hydrodynamic form had them faster and more maneuverable. This was mastered by the Carthaginians, who “copied to perfection” and made bigger an invention of the ancient Greeks, the “quinquereme”, a very fast ship with 5 vertically overlapped rows of oars. However, in those days when everything was going from bad to worse for the Roman Navy, one day wild luck struck out of the blue. . . Out of the blue sea, more correctly. A Carthaginian ship got marooned on a sea shore controlled by Rome. Very soon the Romans discovered that rather than capturing just one single ship, they captured a blue print in motion . . . The genius of the Carthaginians applied also in the mass production of ships. Specialized big workshops from the capital built the more complicated components, then sent them all over their empire, to be completed with simple parts and assembled by the carpenters from the smaller ports under their control. Each wood board was coded on extremities with letters and numbers, for easy match and assembly. Like a Lego already marked for no-brainer building, or like the Ikea furniture, but 2300 years earlier. Because the planks were marked for matching, any low-skilled team of ship builders was able to assemble a “world class” ship. Any low-skilled team of ship builders. . . Including the Romans. Their craftsmen figured out the meaning of the letters and numbers present all over the interior of the ship, dismantled it, copied absolutely every part and assembled it again. The secret of Carthage’s “quinquereme” was broken. Rome jumped into a desperate frenzy of ship building. 220 ships were built in 45 days. They used fresh cut green wood, that would crack and make the ships unusable after 6 months, but that was all the time needed to turn the tide. What happened after that is actually the story of this video . . .

One day I hope there will be an animus type machine where you can go back in time and watch these epic battles from a distance lol

Fun fact: the locals that upset the status quo were a group of mercenaries, who literally got bored and decided to assault the city of Messana.

Forgot to mention that the Roman sailed with troops in full armor kit unlike the carthagenians this meant that the romans had a serious advantage with hand to hand combat/ boarding. Also that for the romans ending up in the water was a death sentence unlike their opponent. Also that if the romans boarded one ship they had +1 to their fleet and -1 to the enemy (the guys at the oars where mostly slaves so they would not fight back against a new boss) But any victory from the carthagenian side meant just -1 to the Roman fleet (as they sink the opponent not board it) So that's a big difference too.

4 years ago, you couldn't have used Rome 2 to film this lol. The boats would have sailed sideways.

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The Battle of Ecnomus in 256 BC is one of the most interesting naval battles in history, in my opinion. It demonstrated that Roman ingenuity in creating the corvus was enough to mitigate and even completely undermine Carthage's superior naval strength. This battle was definitely a turning point in the First Punic War. Roman victory at Ecnomus meant that they could invade the Carthaginian home territory in North Africa. Although that invasion was ultimately a failure, as you said, the fact that Rome could invade North Africa and threaten Carthage itself meant that Carthage would have to reconsider fighting a war against Rome. This did not prevent the other Punic Wars from happening, of course. All I'm saying is that Ecnomus set the standard for how Rome would win wars against Carthage in the Second and Third Punic Wars. Rome won the Second Punic War by invading North Africa and forcing an engagement with Hannibal at Zama, one that did not favor Hannibal and one that he ultimately lost. The Third Punic War was won by Rome when Rome invaded North Africa and attacked the city of Carthage, destroying it and claiming permanent victory against their long-time rival. Sorry that I rambled on about history and didn't even address the video yet. I found the video a wonderful mix of informative and entertaining, with good animation, excellent commentary, and accurate information. This is a minor point, I suppose, but I love that you list your sources at the end of the video. It makes me feel like the content is being produced by a professional who understands how to properly cite sources. Well done. Thank you for doing such a great job with this battle.

Oversimplified bought me here

What I find most impressive about these battles in antiquity is not just the numbers in absolute terms, but what that meant in relation to world population. 290.000 people present at Ecnomus is already a lot. But when considering that there were only just below 150 Million people living on the planet at that point in history then it is an unfathomable high amount. That means an unbelievable 0.5 % of the entire worlds population was present at that battle. Image that!