12
Vegetius’ naval appendix and the Battle of the Hellespont (324 CE)¹

Craig H. Caldwell

Vegetius devotes the final section of his late antique Epitome of Military Science (Epitoma Rei Militaris) to Roman naval warfare, including the nomenclature of warships, shipbuilding techniques, navigation, and tactics. While other parts of the Epitome have inspired debates over the author’s antiquarianism or the ‘barbarisation’ of the Roman army, Vegetius’ consideration of ships has generally remained on an analytical island, only occasionally relevant to a historian of the late Roman navy.² Fresh attention to Epitome 4.31–46 can connect a neglected part of this military manual with late antique military history, specifically the naval engagement between the rival emperors Constantine and Licinius in 324. That battle itself has often ‘lacked present-day interest’, but deciphering its influence upon Vegetius can reveal an underappreciated aspect of the Epitome: analysis of recent events.³ Reconstructing the Battle of the Hellespont provides critical context for Vegetius’ discussion of the navy, and the author emerges as a historian of his own time at the intersection of actual events with his military manual.⁴

I

To begin, one should consider the nature of Vegetius’ work. It falls within a genre of military manuals intended to teach audiences of emperors and civilian elites.⁵ The question of the Epitome’s probable addressee will arise at the conclusion of the chapter, but Vegetius clearly intends to advance an imperial agenda, and his methods reinforced his status as an authority on military matters. Encyclopaedism and antiquarianism distinguish the style of the Epitome. To craft an encyclopaedic work, Vegetius broadens the definition of ‘precepts of naval warfare’ to include shipbuilding and navigation in order to present a complete view of his subject. This expansive scope regarding the elements of sea power mirrors his attitude toward war on land, where he includes recruitment and choosing of battlefields along with typical attention to types of soldiers and tactics. His comprehensive erudition emphasises the usefulness of the work: the Epitome offers the hope of continuing Roman military success to the emperor who follows its instructions.⁶ Vegetius’ discussion of these two additional subjects avoids the repetition that characterises most of the Epitome, indicating the wealth of available source material, which included Varro’s ‘naval books’ that are now lost.⁷ Shipbuilding and matters of winds and currents are also important clues regarding the recent history examined in the following. Vegetius’ persuasiveness also depended upon his ability to ground his principles in the victorious Roman past, and thus his naval advice resurrects terminology from centuries earlier.⁸ This antiquarian tendency is generally late antique rather than unique to Vegetius; Zosimus shares the Epitome’s distant memory of giant warships and the origins of the liburnian type.⁹ Diverging from Zosimus’ references to the clashes of ships in the Punic Wars, Vegetius invokes Actium on two separate occasions: to introduce the liburnian, what he calls the standard imperial warship after Augustus (4.33); and to impress his readers with the size of warships in the past (4.37).10

The late fourth century was apparently awash in the kind of technical vocabulary of naval warfare that Vegetius presents at the end of his Epitome; it even appears in hagiography. For instance, Jerome begins his Life of Malchus with a description of naval training that would not be out of place in a military manual:

Those who intend to fight in a naval battle first in a harbour and on a quiet sea ply the rudders, pull up the oars, prepare the iron hands and hooks, and accustom the marines lined up on deck with halting step and uncertain footing to stand firm, so that they may not fear in a real context what they have learned in a mock battle.¹¹

Jerome might not have read Vegetius as he wrote this introduction to his saint’s life in 391 or 392, but his choice of words indicates the diffusion of naval concepts among educated civilians.¹² One reason advanced for Vegetius’ own precepts regarding warships is the rise of Vandalic naval power in the fifth century, but interest in sea battles clearly predates the Vandals or even the naval expeditions of the general Gildo in 398 or the naval battle fought by the Gothic commander Gainas in 400.13 The overlooked context for Vegetius’ advice regarding ships was what Chester Starr called ‘the only real sea battle in the history of the Roman Empire’, the clash between the fleets of Constantine and Licinius in 324.¹⁴

II

Some initial remarks about the name and date of the battle of the Hellespont are necessary. The current scholarly consensus favours two separate naval battles in 324: one off the coast of Elaius (near the modern village of Seddülbahir in Turkey) and another near Callipolis (now Gallipoli or Gelibolu), more than 30 nautical miles up the straits.¹⁵ The historical problem here is that the two battles appear in two different ancient sources, as discussed later, and the way that these two accounts can be combined to produce a single narrative is not self-evident. Yet, the sources agree that the focus of the campaign was the control of the channel between Europe and Asia, specifically the Hellespont, now called the Dardanelles or Çanakkale Boğazı. In the interest of accuracy, in recognition of the discrete clashes of fleets within the battle, and following the ancient understanding of the objective of the opposing navies, this chapter refers to these related engagements as the ‘Battle of the Hellespont’.¹⁶ Concerning the date of this battle, the terminus post quem should be July 3, which several chronicles record as the date of the Battle of Adrianople, which prompted the naval campaign. The Battle of the Hellespont must also have occurred prior to the Battle of Chalcedon or Chrysopolis, which all but ended the civil war on September 18.¹⁷ Since the terminus ante quem includes an amphibious invasion of Asia Minor by tens of thousands of soldiers and the associated logistical requirements for that event, we may safely assign the naval campaign that cleared the straits for Constantine to July or August of 324.

The fact that the Battle of the Hellespont occurred is not controversial. Vague references to one or more naval engagements during the civil war are relatively common, but specific details are rare. This comment by the historian Socrates of Constantinople in the early fifth century is typical: ‘Not long afterwards [the rival emperors] took up arms against each other as declared enemies. And after several engagements both by sea and land, Licinius was at last utterly defeated’.¹⁸ If one wants more particulars than that, one has to turn to two very different ancient accounts. The first source is an anonymous history usually called the Origo Constantini, or the Origin of Constantine, which seems to have been written around the time of that emperor’s death in 337. The Origo focuses on political and military details, and because relatively few years separated it from the events it describes, historians have come to trust its accuracy.19 Since the Origo preserves the complex chronology of the early fourth century in ways that one can confirm from contemporary sources, but that later authors began to confuse, one may presume that those details unique to the Origo are reliable. The second source, the New History of Zosimus, differs from the Origo in date, style, and precision. Writing around the year 500, Zosimus presented the decline of the Roman Empire as a fait accompli of its Christianisation, which began with the emperor Constantine. Since Licinius was a defender of traditional religion, he is a more sympathetic figure and a more capable opponent in Zosimus than in the accounts of the Christian historians. Furthermore, for the part of his history that is germane to this discussion, Zosimus seems to have copied from or rephrased the Histories of Eunapius of Sardis, a fourth-century philosopher noted for his hostility to the new imperial religion of Christianity.²⁰ The advantage of Zosimus’ dependence upon Eunapius, whose work has only survived in fragments, is that this earlier history considered events within a century of the battle, and a native of Asia Minor composed it relatively near to the Hellespont. Eunapius and Zosimus had a different religious vantage point into the early fourth century, and they thus collected evidence that their Christian counterparts passed over. But Zosimus never completed the final revision of his work, and the draft transmitted to us includes factual and chronological mistakes that were probably less apparent in the sixth century than they would have been at the time of the events. Readers of Zosimus also discover that he and his source Eunapius were not annalists who reported events in strict order according to years; their histories were content with regnal dating, placing events such as the Battle of the Hellespont within a particular emperor’s reign.²¹ One special nightmare for the modern reader of Zosimus is his frequent repetition of specific people or places, and so discerning an actual recurring event from careless scribal ‘doubling’ requires careful historical judgment.²²

Narrative accounts of the naval aspect of the civil war between Constantine and Licinius are not new. Almost every modern biography of Constantine mentions the clash of navies in 324, though Constantine’s first biographer, the bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, elided the details of the Battle of the Hellespont in favour of Constantine’s miraculous victories on land against Licinius ‘the God-hater’ (θεομισής).23 Edward Gibbon provided a detailed description over two centuries ago in his famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and more recent books recount the battle within larger narratives of the evolution or decline of ancient navies.²⁴ But scholars have either tended to blend ancient sources without critical attention to their authors’ perspectives, or they have ignored the geographic setting for the battle. The last scholar to tackle both challenges was Edwin Pears, who discussed the battle in detail in a 1909 article with the evocative title ‘The Campaign against Paganism A. D. 324’. One can improve on Pears with close attention to both the Origin of Constantine (Origo Imperatoris Constantini) and Zosimus’ New History, and one may also set aside the struggle between religions that captivated Pears as ‘one of the epoch-making events of history’ as no longer the overriding historiographical concern, allowing us to examine the battle as a subject in itself.²⁵

Turning to the basic outline of events in the Origin of Constantine, of which one can be reasonably confident for the reasons mentioned earlier, Constantine began this phase of the civil war in 324 by mounting parallel invasions of Licinius’ domain by both land and sea. As Constantine set out eastward across the Balkans with his army, he dispatched his son Crispus, whom he had named Caesar, or junior emperor, to command ‘a huge fleet to take Asia’.26 Licinius opposed this threat with his own fleet under Amandus, who commanded a comparable force stationed in the Hellespont. According to the Origin, Crispus sailed up the strait to face Amandus at Callipolis (modern Gallipoli), where the Constantinian fleet overwhelmed the Licinian ships, destroying and capturing all of them. Amandus himself only escaped ‘with help from those who had stayed on shore’.27

In contrast to the Origin of Constantine, Zosimus describes two naval engagements in his New History. One battle occurred at the mouth of the Hellespont near Elaius, where Crispus deployed a smaller number of ships that outmanoeuvred the larger fleet of Amandus (here called Abantus) in the narrow confines of the strait. In the second encounter, a sudden shift of winds wrecked almost the entire remainder of the Licinian fleet on the Asian shore of the Hellespont. As in the Origin of Constantine, Amandus escaped with a remnant of his original force. To harmonise these narratives, some historians have cast the second battle in Zosimus as identical to the decisive engagement at Callipolis in the Origo, though Zosimus actually claims that catastrophe befell Amandus’ ships near the base of the Constantinian fleet at Elaius.²⁸ Yet, Zosimus does hint that the choke-point at Callipolis was important following the destruction of the Licinian navy, for he says Licinius sent part of his army to Lampsacus (near modern Lapseki), across the Hellespont from Callipolis, to block a possible invasion of Asia.²⁹ Both sources agree that once Constantine and Crispus had control of the sea, they used transports to cross the Bosphorus and force Licinius to make a final stand in Asia Minor.

One can draw several conclusions about the characteristics of the battle. First, the entire series of engagements revolved around the objectives and requirements of the two armies. The catalyst for the Battle of the Hellespont was Licinius’ defeat at the Battle of Adrianople. His retreat to Byzantium, to which Constantine then laid siege, placed a premium on control of the passage between Europe and Asia. As the Origin of Constantine says, Licinius ‘felt secure to seaward’, and he could stymie Constantine’s advance so long as Amandus’ ships protected his route of supply and communications.³⁰ Zosimus writes that Licinius had ‘hurried through Thrace to reach his fleet’, which indicates its importance in bringing food and equipment to continue the fight.³¹ The unusual promotion to co-emperor of Licinius’ magister officiorum Martinianus is another indication of the interdependence of ships and armies.³² Licinius already had a deputy emperor or Caesar, his young son Licinius II, and coinage reveals that Martinianus was actually named as Augustus, or senior co-emperor. The Origin of Constantine dismisses this delegation of power as ‘foolishness’ (vanitas), but Zosimus can help navigate around the Origin’s scorn.³³ His history includes two relevant details: Licinius sent part of his army and navy away from Byzantium to Asia due to overcrowding during the siege, and Martinianus’ task was to defend Lampsacus and prevent a Constantinian army from crossing the Hellespont there.³⁴ After his initial naval defeat, Licinius did not fear that Crispus might emulate Alexander the Great by marching inland from a landing at Abydos, so Constantine’s rival chose instead to block the strait further north. Based on where Licinius’ mints produced coins in honour of Martinianus, one may conclude that he led an army along the shore of the Propontis (now the Sea of Marmara) from the capital Nicomedia (now İzmit) through Cyzicus (near modern Erdek).³⁵ If one follows the Origin of Constantine’s chronology of events, it is possible that Martinianus’ reinforcements constituted ‘those on shore’ who enabled Amandus’ escape from the destruction of his fleet near Callipolis. Amandus might also have intended to join forces with Martinianus and gain the safety of a shoreline protected by a friendly army, but the wind surprised him while his ships were too close to shore.³⁶ Even the victorious ships ended up being incidental to Constantine, who needed to procure ‘galleys and swift-sailing skiffs’ of shallower draft to make his amphibious invasion across the Bosphorus.³⁷ Unlike the battles of Salamis and Actium, where the fleets themselves were the focus, at the Hellespont the navies were somewhere between the cavalry and the baggage train of the opposing armies. Or – to put it another way – Licinius named Martinianus as his co-emperor to command an army that he could not afford to lose as it guarded the Hellespont; he did not make his admiral Amandus into a second Agrippa, who had been the indispensable general and admiral of the emperor Augustus.

III

An initial objection to the relevance of the Battle of the Hellespont to the Epitome is that the clash of fleets was a regression from an earlier golden age of the Roman navy.³⁸ The Battle of Actium, at least as Vegetius remembers it, set a high bar for the size of the opposing warships and the decisive deployment of a new type of ship. Insofar as the Constantinian and Licinian ships set out to fight each other rather than simply to transport soldiers or to blockade a city, their collision merits Starr’s description of it as the Roman imperial naval battle. But in keeping with the uneven comparison of Martinianus with Agrippa, the Battle of the Hellespont did not directly involve the two principal leaders, nor did it decide the civil war as Actium did.³⁹ Setting Vegetius’ naval precepts alongside important elements of the battle in 324 reveals how he attempts to derive general principles from the most recent naval engagement. The Epitome therefore intends to improve the current state of Roman military affairs, so it uses the context of the Hellespont as an inspiration for restoration and reform. Taken with Vegetius’ references to military practices and individuals from the distant past, the Epitome emerges as a unique text that blends ancient (from the perspective of a Roman in the late fourth or early fifth century) and ‘modern’ or near-contemporary history to provide a comprehensive overview of Roman warfare.⁴⁰

Beyond tactics, Vegetius’ inclusion of supplemental information such as shipbuilding (4.34–37) and navigation (4.38–43) derive from the realities of relatively recent naval warfare. Crispus constructed his entire fleet in the new military harbour at Thessalonica, so his efforts formed the background to the Epitome’s advice on choosing trees for cutting and not constructing ships hastily with green wood. Naturally, Vegetius describes winds and currents as essential parts of the naval battlefield. With the general advice that ‘he is rarely shipwrecked who makes a thorough study of the winds’ (4.38) and ‘he who is going to fight a naval battle ought to find out the characteristics of the sea and locality before any encounter’ (4.42), the Epitome draws conclusions from the treacherous ‘battlefield’ of the Hellespont. Here the winds and the currents take the place of the high ground that Vegetius praises as a ‘large part of a victory’ on land (3.13).

As with topography on land, naval geography was fundamental to what transpired in 324. From a military standpoint, the Hellespont comprises three major bottlenecks: the southern entrance near Elaius, a middle-zone between Madytus and Abydos, and the northern entrance between Callipolis and Lampsacus. Not coincidentally, the ancient sources place the two engagements of the Battle of the Hellespont at the outer chokepoints of the strait. The width of the channel is not the only tactical consideration here: the current in the Hellespont demanded the attention of every ship’s captain. In general, the southwesterly current of roughly one-and-a-half knots near Elaius should have favoured Amandus’ attack, but it may have pushed his ships too precipitously against Crispus’ line. Conversely, it may have been as simple as Zosimus writes, ‘the place was narrow and not suited to a vast number’, and like the Persians at Salamis or the Ottoman warships in the Battle of Elli in 1912, the Licinian fleet could not bring its numbers to bear quickly enough to avoid defeat.⁴¹ Following that engagement, the Constantinian ships spent the night at Elaius, while Amandus retreated to the harbour at Rhoiteion.⁴² In general, the advantage of a landing and launching point on the Asian side is a reduced current, but not in this portion of the Hellespont, where the current is stronger.⁴³ The Licinian ships had to row out through the current to face their enemy again. While Zosimus has Amandus hesitate to attack, it is not unreasonable that his fleet actually withdrew up the strait when it became clear that Crispus had been reinforced by additional ships. Amandus’ ships were carrying or escorting thousands of Licinian soldiers who could still impede the Constantinian advance from a position further up the Hellespont.

Crispus’ inability to force a second engagement was a result of the geography of the strait, and Vegetius’s remark about how ‘the force of a tide is not overcome by the force of oars’ is relevant here (4.42). Toward the ancient cities of Madytus, Abydos, and Sestus, in what is now called ‘the Narrows’ of the Dardanelles, the current is the strongest of any point in the Hellespont, and it runs at the same speed across the channel.⁴⁴ (The maximum current of four knots equals the steady cruising speed of the reconstructed trireme Olympias, so this part of the journey up the strait would have favoured the faster Licinian ships, even as it required the effort of the oarsmen against the current).⁴⁵ Sails would not have been helpful, as Zosimus tells us that Amandus sailed out into a strong north wind.⁴⁶ Vegetius notes that ‘even the wind yields to [the current] on occasion’ (4.42). This breeze was the etesians (called the meltem in Turkish), the strong, dry Aegean winds that blow for the better part of the year, mostly from the northeast in the Hellespont.⁴⁷ The sudden shift of winds that befell the Licinian fleet was unusual; in the nineteenth century, the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty advised sailors that southwest and southeast winds are rarely encountered during the sailing season from March until September.⁴⁸ Strictly speaking, a southerly wind should have assisted Amandus in evading Crispus, and it should have been very difficult for the Licinian ships to be driven aground on the Asian side. Again, in general the Asian side is shallower but less suddenly shoaly. One place that this disaster could have occurred is the channel toward Sestus and Abydos (the Narrows), but if Amandus was able to sail toward Callipolis, he may well have been blown onto what is now the beach of Lapseki, near the ancient harbour of Lampsacus. The critical problem was the surprise. The strait here is nearly two miles wide, but Amandus may have stayed close to the Asian side for protection from a northeastern wind along with a reduced current. The abrupt shift in the wind, following hours of rowing against the current of the Hellespont to escape Crispus’ ships, overwhelmed Amandus’ oarsmen and completed the Constantinian victory. ‘If enemy sailors are weary from lengthy rowing, if pressed by head-winds, if the tide is flowing against the ships’ beaks’, the Epitome advises an immediate attack against them, though the wind actually gained Crispus’ victory before he could press the advantage (4.45). The obvious lesson from the demise of the Licinian fleet is summed up by Vegetius: ‘it is advantageous for your fleet always to use the deep, open water, while the enemy’s is pushed inshore’ (4.46). This precept is not unique, as Polybius had drawn the same conclusion from the defeat of a Roman navy off the coast of Sicily in the First Punic War, but Vegetius combines this general instruction with the principles of sailing.⁴⁹ The Epitome asserts that battles take place on calm seas, but it notes the many catastrophic perils of the setting and the need for knowledge to avoid them. Instead of depending upon the nature of the battlefield for a decision, however, Vegetius preferred that the navy be reformed and improved so that ships determine their own fates with their mounted weapons, which never occurred in the Battle of the Hellespont.

IV

The naval portion of the Epitome may further help us to answer the contentious question of its date – one of the most discussed topics with respect to Vegetius’ treatise. One scholarly approach links its position at the end of the work to its sudden and immediate relevance, and thus to the rise of Vandal naval power in the fifth century.⁵⁰ That argument fails to account for the typical position of naval precepts after siege tactics, however, in Aeneas Tacticus (now lost) and Philo of Byzantium, for instance.⁵¹ A better terminus ante quem could be the naval expeditions of Gildo in 398 followed by Heraclianus’ invasion of Italy by sea in 413. Vegetius offers no advice on transporting armies by sea as a prerequisite for warfare on land, though it had proven decisive in the civil wars of Julius Caesar, Septimius Severus, and Constantine.52 As naval affairs came to revolve around delivering armies at the close of the fourth century, the Epitome either ignores this trend in favour of decisive naval battles, or more likely took shape prior to the dominance of naval transport. Vegetius expected that his addressee the ‘invincible emperor’ (4.31, imperatore invicte) would fight any future naval battles in the manner of Actium rather than the prelude to Pharsalus. Constantine’s response to his son’s victory at the Hellespont is relevant here, too: he regressed from the Epitome’s model of Augustus and only gained the surrender of his enemy Licinius by building a new fleet of transports. For a fourth century that had seen a lesser civil war at sea, Vegetius thus offered a programme to restore the Roman naval prowess through which iam dudum pacato mari ~ ‘the sea has long been pacified’ (4.31).

At least a century after Vegetius, Peter the Patrician remembered the civil war of the summer of 324 and made the defeated Licinius recite Homer: ‘Old man, for certain it is that young warriors distress you, and your strength has been destroyed, and dire senility pursues you’ (Iliad 8.102–103).53 The ‘momentous achievements of Crispus, Constantine’s son’, including the victory at the Hellespont, were still noteworthy for Peter, and Vegetius’ naval appendix also reflects the importance of that battle.⁵⁴ Since the Epitome contains antiquarian elements deployed with an encyclopaedic purpose, it has frustrated historians who have sought to contextualise it. It omits mention of military events that modern textbooks cannot ignore, such as the catastrophic Battle of Adrianople in 378. Focusing on a specialised section of the text, however, shows a current that is less apparent in the ‘sea’ of the larger work: Vegetius wrote in the decades following a major naval battle, the first of its kind in centuries, and his advice on naval matters prepares his imperial addressee to be like Crispus.

Notes

1 All passages from Vegetius follow the Oxford Text of Reeve (2004), with translations from Milner (1993). All dates are CE unless otherwise indicated. In writing this chapter I must acknowledge my debt to my student Christian Moncelle, who served as an insightful interlocutor on Vegetian matters. His Undergraduate Research Assistantship with me in 2014 was supported by the Office of Student Research at Appalachian State University.

2 Lammert (1940); Emanuele (1974); Baatz and Bockius (1997); and Charles (2007).

3 Rodgers (1939) 6, blaming ‘scanty accounts’ of the campaign for its obscurity.

4 An exception to the conclusion of Chapter 2 that a layman’s work on military affairs is mostly irrelevant to recent events, since this chapter argues that exploring the relationship between a historical battle and a specific section of a military treatise can inform our approach to the latter.

5 Whately (2015) 253–255. On civilian readers of military manuals (including Vegetius), see Chapter 3.

6 Formisano (2013) 209 and Formisano (2017).

7 Epitome 4.41, along with a reference to Vergil, Georgics, especially to 1.351–460. Milner (1996) xxvii notes the lack of repetitions.

8 On the selective editing of military treatises for Roman imperial audiences to omit or abbreviate naval theory and practice, see Murray (2012) 284–285. Vegetius depends upon a Roman past preserved in Latin rather than descriptions of Hellenistic navies in Greek.

9 Zosimus 5.20.4.

10 See Charles (2005a) on the evolution of the term ‘liburnian’. Similarly to Vegetius, Zosimus 5.20.4 cites a missing passage from Polybius describing the huge ‘sixes’ used in the Roman and Carthaginian navies.

11 Life of Malchus, trans. Gray (2015) 79, with commentary at 96–102: qui navali praelio dimicaturi sunt, ante in portu et in tranquillo mari flectunt gubernacula, remos trahunt, ferreas manus, et uncos praeparant, dispositumque per tabulata militem, pendente gradu, et labente vestigio stare firmiter assuescunt, ut quod in simulacro pugnae didicerint, in vero certamine non pertimiscant.

12 Gray (2015) 40–41.

13 See Charles (2007) 174–180 on the proposed connection between Vegetius and the Vandals, criticised by Wheeler (2008). On naval affairs at the close of the fourth century, see Charles (2005b).

14 Starr (1989) 112 contra Rankov (1995) 78, who consider Actium to be the last of the great naval battles.

15 Lenski (2012) 76.

16 As does Sarantis (2013) 199.

17 Adrianople in the Codex-Calendar of 354: Salzman (1990) 141; Chalcedon in the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Burgess (1993) 236.

18 Socrates, Church History 1.4 (translation is by Zenos (1890)).

19 See the introduction in Lieu and Montserrat (1996) 39–43, and the critical edition and commentary of König (1987).

20 Photius, Library 98.

21 Ridley (1972) 289.

22 Ridley (1972) 290. On doublets, see Kraus (1998).

23 Eusebius, Life of Constantine 2.17–18.

24 Pitassi (2009) 292–293, but with the battle misdated to 323. See also Courtois (1939); Kienast (1966); Reddé (1986) 331–369; Hocker (1995); and Aiello (2002).

25 Pears (1909) 16. Against the idea of a religious war: Cameron (2011), but note the prominent opposition of Ratti (2012). The reality of the ideological struggle between Constantine and ‘pagan’ Rome was championed by Alfö ldi (1948) and now Odahl (2010) 177–182, who calls this stage of the civil war ‘the eastern crusade’.

26 Origin of Constantine 23.

27 Origin of Constantine 26.

28 Lenski (2012) 76.

29 Zosimus 2.25.2.

30 Origin of Constantine 25.

31 Zosimus 2.22.7, trans. Ridley (1982): ἤλαυνεν διὰ τῆς Θρᾴκης, ὡς ἂν τὸ ναυτικὸν καταλάβοι.

32 Jones, Martindale, and Morris (1971) 563, s.v. ‘Martinianus 2.’

33 Origin of Constantine 25.

34 Zosimus 2.25.2.

35 Bruun (1966) 69, n.3.

36 Origin of Constantine 26.

37 Zosimus 2.26.1.

38 Emanuele (1974) 90.

39 Although Lazenby (1987) contends that ancient naval battles were seldom if ever strategically significant, the importance of morale in civil wars could define exceptions.

40 From the distant past, Vegetius invokes Hannibal (1.28) and war elephants (3.24). According to the Epitome, Hannibal exploited the Romans’ lack of continuing military preparation following the First Punic War, so the Romans should preserve esoteric knowledge such as how to defeat elephants in battle. The naval precepts in 4.31–46 comprise a similar font of specialised knowledge from centuries earlier, principally from Actium.

41 Zosimus 2.23.3, trans. Ridley (1982): οἷα τοῦ τόπου διὰ τὴν στενότητα πλήθει νεῶν οὐκ ὄντος ἐπιτηδείου.

42 Zosimus 2.23.4.

43 Hydrographic Office (1877) 38.

44 Hydrographic Office (1877) 37. This same current frustrated the British minesweepers in the Gallipoli campaign with devastating consequences for the Allied battleships that attempted to force the Straits in 1915.

45 Rankov (2012).

46 Zosimus 2.24.1.

47 Lionello (2012).

48 Hydrographic Office (1877) 39.

49 See Polybius 1.51 on the Battle of Drepana in 249 BCE, with commentary at Walbank (1957) 113–114. The infamous incident of P. Claudius Pulcher and the sacred chickens prior to this engagement occurs neither in Polybius nor Vegetius.

50 Charles (2007) 180.

51 Wheeler (2008). On Aeneas Tacticus, see Lammert (1940); on Philo, see Chapter 5.

52 See, for example, Caesar, Civil War 3 (on Caesar); Herodian 3.2 (on Septimius); Zosimus 2.26 (on Constantine).

53 Fragment 209 in Banchich (2015) 143; cf. Sozomen, Church History 1.7.

54 Fragment 209 in Banchich (2015) 143.

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