Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
by
Dana S. Adler,
BA(Hons), Dip Arch, MA.
Trajan’s Navy on Trajan’s Column
Acknowledgements:
My most grateful thanks to the Librarians and Library Assistants at the Library
of the Institute of Classical Studies, currently located in Senate House, Malet Street,
London, England. They are extremely helpful and can always find that one much
needed book, even when it has been replaced on the wrong shelf!
Introduction:
In 1967 a paper on Trajan’s Column, written by the British archaeologist, Sir
Ian Richmond, was published. After his death, the information was turned into a
small book and published as: “Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column”.
As the Romans considered their fleets to be part of the Army’s auxiliary
support units, along with the light infantry and the cavalry, it might be expected that
the book would contain some information about the ships used in Trajan’s Dacian
expedition, but it was not there, largely due to the lack of archaeological information
on the Roman navy at that time.
For anyone interested in the reliefs on Trajan’s Column, Trajan’s conquest of
Dacia, or the clothing, armour and equipment of Trajan’s Army, I would
unhesitatingly recommend the Lepper & Frere book called simply, “Trajan’s
Column” (published in 1988).
This paper, however, was written to even up the balance and to show that
without Trajan’s navy, its support functions as well as its transport of men, supplies
and the cavalry’s horses, the outcome of Trajan’s campaign might have been very
different.
Trajan’s Column stands in Rome, but there are also three sets of casts, one in
Rome, one in Germany and the third in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In
the late 19th century, a German scholar, Corad Cichorius, photographed the whole
sert of casts and published them, along with 2 volumes of commentary, between
1896 and 1900. Courtesy of the Library of the Institute of Classical Studies,
London, I was fortunate enough to be able to obtain photographs of the original
plates Cichorius made in the late 19th century.
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The Ships on Trajan’s Column:
find out exactly what it does display about Trajan’s Navy. After all, to invade
The first scene on the column is of boats, small boats moored on the River
outside a town (Cichorius’ Plates 2 and 3). Barrels wait on shore, whilst several
small vessels are in the process of being loaded (although the other small boat has
been cut from this frame), apparently from a wharf just outside the walls. These
particular boats are very small, with a canted bow and a relatively low stern.
After them come two slightly larger vessels, one of which carries bundles,
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Past these two boats, the god of the River, (“Old Father Danube”) rises from
the water to watch the soldiers crossing his river (Plates 10 and 11).
harbour. In the harbour, warships are moored and so are a number of smaller
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boats carrying a variety of cargo, including a horse transport, whilst others carry
bundles. perhaps armour and weapons, perhaps food and water. (Plates 80 to 83)
The next group shows a barge, a small warship with someone in the bows
apparently about to tie the vessel to a mooring, the horse transport, then above it, a
roofed rowed vessel, and finally, in the next register two larger warships. All the
ships are larger than the barges, whilst the two warships have two banks of oars
each.
Both vessels have a mast for an artemon, the small foresail used to assist
steering and, in addition, the lower vessel has what appears to be a rope passing
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from the rowers benches to around the bows. This may be an example of a
hogging truss, a cable used in the past, to run along the whole length of a long
vessel, to keep it in horizontal alignment and so, to stop it sagging at the centre of
the vessel.
An extra large helmsman stands in the stern of one of the smaller vessels,
his hand on the steering oar, whilst the sailors appear to be paddling with their
oars resting on the top of the bulwark. Finally, another barge appears to be
unloading (Plates 84 to 87). In this frame, the difference between the dress of the
Next, there is a small scene showing a boat being loaded over what seems to
and a more or less normal sized person is at the helm, holding the steering oar.
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The next scene shows 2 small warships, the smaller vessel has a bank of six
The stern of the six-oar ship is hidden by a town building and erosion, but
the ten-oar ship has the usual volute stern and stern cabin. The six-oar vessel is
much smaller, has one and a second, much eroded, sailor depicted, a small ram
The ten oared vessel hides much of the smaller ship, but a great deal more is
visible on this vessel. She has three crew shown, perhaps rowers, but maybe
stevedores. The man facing the stern may be the helmsman, but careful inspection
The middle man appears to be lifting something hidden below the level of
the bulwarks, whilst the third man is working on the sheets which set the artemon.
This ship has a beaked ram and a small forecastle and a space for boarding just
when unstepped, suggesting that this type of vessel simply did not carry a
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mainmast, only an artemon, the small foresail which projected forwards over the
forecastle.
The main scene shows 3 large warships which appear to be manned and
photographed, it had to be cut into two – and the cut goes almost directly through
photographs of the two sets of frames showing the stern and the bows of the three
vessels. It is not a good match and the differing tints of Cichorius’ original make
it somewhat difficult to picture all three vessels properly, but it does give some
Each ship has an extra large personage at the helm, the middle ship
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The lowest ship of the three has an eye painted on her bows, a small beaked
ram, a forecastle, no artemon, two banks of oars, with seven oars shown in total
(but only six rowers) and a steering oar which has nobody holding it, for the extra
large person (dressed only in a tunic) on this ship has his hand outspread and
appears to be orating.
Behind him three Legionary standards are set before the usual stern cabin
and volute sternpost. (Plates 208 to 213 - The bow of the upper ship appears on a
separate frame).
The middle ship is the largest of the group. She carries a sea-goat carved on
her bows (and therefore may have been named Capricornus, or something
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Unlike all the other ships, she is a trireme, with three banks of oars, seven of
which can be seen - more are obscured by the rowers in the ship below. There is a
more than usually ornate stern cabin, behind which is a small standard, apparently
attached to the stern-post, whose volute flares over Trajan’s shoulder, carrying
what looks like a lantern. The next frame, which displays the bows of the upper
two ships, shows that she also has an artemon, which has been brailed up.
The third, uppermost, ship is intriguing. Her stern is clearly visible above
the heads of the Sea Goat’s rowers. The usual volute sternpost curves over an
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ornately decorated stern cabin, whilst in front of it, the extra large person on this
ship is clearly the helmsman, for he actually has the steering oar in one hand,
This ship carries no design painted on her bows, although she does have a
particularly fearsome looking ram. She also has a large and ornate forecastle, with
three small arches shown, as if, perhaps, she is shipping archers, or some kind of
artillery.
She does not have an artemon, which may be due to artistic convention,
since she is facing a large crowd of important persons on a town wall and the
artemon, if set, would hide some of the people. However, she does have an
unstepped mainmast, with the mainsail carefully brailed around it and quite
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There is also space just after the forecastle where a gangplank could be
placed, which is not quite so evident in the Sea Goat, although it is there.
Although there appears to be enough space along the hull for a third bank of oars,
A slightly later frame (no: 226, below) shows the ornate bow of another
bireme, close up against a bridge over which important personages are passing. In
This ship is decorated with an eye at her bow, but she is much more ornate than
the vessel with an eye on her bow shown with Trajan. She has an arched
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forecastle, with a decorated bow below it. The railing through which the upper
level of oars are rowed, is clearly visible, however, there is no sign of any rowers.
The oar-ports for the lower level are not shown The mast is stepped and the
forward crutch is shown, with, apparently, the mainsail wrapped around the mast
There are actually three types of ship shown on Trajan’s column, there
being only one representative of the third class, a large sailing ship with a single
The Landsmen:
The Column’s sculptors were remarkably consistent in the way in which
they represented the various parties concerned in the conquest of Dacia. Both
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The Dacians themselves are shown mainly as long haired, bearded
barbarians, while their cavalry wear conical helmets and scale armour, with their
horses equally well armoured. Some carry oval shields and/or sickle shaped short
swords.
The Roman auxiliary infantry are shown with their calf-length breeches and
very short tunics, one group of cavalry is equipped in a very similar manner,
whilst others have much smaller, round shields and hair in a style which looks
almost like dreadlocks (these may be the Equitates Afrorum, who appear on a
number of burial memorials). Then there are the specialist archers with their
segmented armour round their waists and over their shoulders, whilst the officers
wear military tunics overlaid with breast- and back-plates and cloaks. They are
The men on the ships generally wear tunics, but with the sleeves gathered
Helmsmen wear tunics and sometimes cloaks. Rowers were never depicted in
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In their book on Cichorius’ photographs of the Column, Lepper and Frere
241 – 244, who are wearing military caligae boots, with the classiarii, acutely
pointing out that their unusual hexagonal shields: “... must bespeak a special corps
and (they) bore marine symbols (tridents and starfish)”. (Lepper & Frere 1988, p
142).
The picture below was made by joining photographs of Frame 240 to the
next series of frames, to show the odd hexagonal shields stacked near the tunic-
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The Small Boats:
The very small boats, without oars or sails may well be barges, either pulled
along the river bank by men or oxen, or poled through the water by their crews.
Considering that the river in question is the Danube (fast flowing, with nasty cross
currents), poling is unlikely, although this river, like the Thames, may have been
Cichorius’ plates 355 and 356 do show two soldiers in legion uniforms working
Conclusions:
Therefore, it seems that the main class of vessel shown on the column are
the warships. There are 4 smaller and 7 (or possibly, 8) larger vessels, one of
which is a trireme and clearly the flagship, since Trajan himself is shown at the
helm.
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All the warships show the top bank of rowers with their heads and shoulders
above the bulwarks, so that they are in the “Liburnian”, open, aphract style, rather
than cataphract style of the decked-in Greek triremes. (“Liburnians” were a type
of fast, open decked bireme, much favoured by pirates, which were introduced
into the Roman fleets by the Emperor Augustus, after they helped him win at the
battle of Actium).
The Roman warships all have the same cross hatched railing through which
the top row of oars were placed and rowed, whilst none of them carry the
outrigger oar box, through which the top row of oars were rowed on the older
All the warships pictured have a beaked ram, some larger, some smaller
(suggesting that, perhaps, in the smaller vessels, the keelboards were drawn
forward, as in the Mainz “A” type vessel, to mimic a ram); all have a forecastle,
Some vessels are shown with an artemon, some are not; some are shown
with an unstepped mainmast set on fore-and-aft crutches, some are not. None are
shown with a mainmast stepped or a mainsail set. All have a volute stern-post,
some slightly more decorative than others and all have some kind of small stern
that, with space at a premium and with the need to sculpt a balanced picture, the
artists have chosen to show some ships with a mainmast stowed and other ships
F. Renatus Vegetius, the late 4th/early 5th century Imperial bureaucrat whose
book on military organisation somehow survived though the centuries, says about
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the Army: “Plains are held by the cavalry, seas and rivers by the navy, hills, cities,
different types of vessel. The smallest could be the Pictae scout ships which are
described by Vegetius (Part 4, Ch 37), as having 20 oars per side and being
painted a blue-green colour, used for scouting and ambush. Being river craft, they
would not necessarily need a mainmast, although having a sail would certainly
Vegetius also gives details of two other types of warship, the big
Liburnians and the smaller Naves Lusoriae (Vegetius, Part 2, Ch 1 and Part 4, Ch
37). Whether these latter vessels are the same as the scouting pictae, or whether
there are actually three types of ship is unclear, as he never describes the Lusoriae
in any detail. It should be noted, however, that not one of the burial memorials
Although there are other illustrations of ships, both war and merchant
mosaics, although there are several sculptures of galleys extant, however, many of
paintings may reflect vessels from the time of Caesar and Cleopatra.
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Bibliography:
Rome, 1982).
U.P, 2001).
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