Ancient Greek and Roman warships were equipped with bronze rams to smash and sink enemy vessels – and a team of archaeologists has just recreated one. They plan to test the weapon on replica warships to assess how effective the rams were during naval battles.
“This research can help us understand the evolution of major warships, from the fleets of Alexander the Great’s successors to the vessels that secured Rome’s naval dominance,” says at Dalian University of Technology in China, who is leading the group of researchers.
Bronze rams on warships were a staple of ancient naval warfare. Divers and underwater archaeologists have uncovered 32 such rams thus far, some of which show signs of having been blown apart in head-on collisions.
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Most of these rams were discovered off the west coast of Sicily amid wreckage from the Battle of the Aegates, a “decisive” conflict between Rome and Carthage in 241 BCE, during the , explains DeCasien.
“This collection offers unparalleled insights into [ancient] naval combat, revealing details about warship construction, battle tactics and ram production,” he adds.
Punic-era rams were relatively small, weighing around 160 kg. Later rams may have weighed up to 2000 kg, as illustrated by a monument built by Augustus, the first Roman emperor, then known as Octavian, to commemorate his naval victory against Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE. While the rams adorning the monument have been lost, the fittings suggest they were colossal.
Archaeologists are unsure exactly how ancient naval rams were made, but DeCasien and his colleagues, based at Texas A&M University,  think they have puzzled it out. Once they had crafted a wooden replica of a Roman warship’s bow, they layered beeswax onto the surface and sculpted it into the shape of the ram. They then removed this beeswax ram and, using an ancient technique known as the direct lost-wax method, cast it in bronze. The finished bronze ram could then be slotted onto the faux warship bow, a little like sliding a metal thimble onto a finger.
The final product was a successful reconstruction that matches the rams uncovered near Sicily. “Each ram was uniquely crafted to fit a specific warship’s bow,” says DeCasien. “Artisans achieved this by hand-sculpting beeswax models directly onto ship timbers.”
With a sufficient supply of materials, the Romans could produce rams like this every two to four days using three or four skilled labourers, explains DeCasien.
“The Romans built nearly 1000 warships during the First Punic War,” says at the University at Albany in New York state. Even just equipping 100 warships with rams might have required almost a tonne of beeswax, he says. “[It’s] quite incredible to ponder the thousands of hives and millions of bees needed to launch a war fleet against the Carthaginians.”
As well as testing the ram in action, DeCasien hopes to recreate the behemoth rams that once adorned Augustus’s monument.
Journal of Archaeological Science
