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

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

"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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

Oversimplified bought me here

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.

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.

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 . . .

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.

One of the best war channels in the world

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.

I can imagine the Greeks at the time on the island of Sicily, like "what the f*ck is going on here?" XD

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

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!

Just shows how awesome the Romans were when they had to build a fleet from scratch and then took on the naval power of their time and won!

Admiral Akbar would've seen it coming

Absolutely the gold standard video on the Battle of Ecnomus! 1. Gave context to the event why it happened and how large it was compared to other large naval battles. 2. Incredible visual effort into animation to show the event, great explanation of the tactics of the battle. 3. Good follow up of the aftermath. All told absolute gold star effort.

Loving these ancient naval combat videos, I truly had no idea about the scale of ancient warder before this video! Keep up the good work!

I love how they decided to nickname the rear line the "Triarii" *giggles*

"Huh! They fell in our trap! Wait... Oh, shit!" Morale being - if you manage to get a lion in a trap you dug out, make sure you yourself are not still sitting in the same trap.

That was execellent thank you. I love the visualization of it all with the clips from games and the cool maps, battle comparison etc. We need more of this stuff for the antiquity/hellenistic/punic wars... such an amazing period of history to discover and explore Well done Invicta

I really found it ironic that Carthage, the huge naval power, was smashed by seemingly cavemen saying "We build boat!" then when they are smashed they are like "We build thing that lets us board!" then, when it comes to strategy Rome is all like "CHARGE!!!!" and is outmaneuvered, then they win because "We fight on land, your boat is land, we fight there."

Insanely good visual design choices. I really like it Oakly go on pls :) you and Heirof carhage are 100 percent my fave ytbers

These videos got my sub! Using TW to explain tactics and historical battles is such a phenomenal idea, I LOVE these!

KZfaq at its best. Clear, concise and entertaining. I subbed. Thank you.

Very informative. you deserve success for these polished videos

Thanks to Rome total war 2, we can finally see and relive these massive battles. Seeingbggem on history channels and youtube channels alike. Excellent video sir.

One of the most professional and well researched historical videos I've ever seen. Nice

I appreciate the effort it took you to animate this. Well done.

these are amazing.....you need to get more recognition for this, but unfortunately many people have no interest in history these days

Naval Battles on this scale are always impressive and terrifying.

Blown away by the effort that has gone into this, it made me immediately subscribe! Keep up the good work!

What an epic, giant, amazing sea battle...that I had never heard of! Good grief! Stellar presentation!

I watched this video the same day I'd taken ecstacy, a few days ago. One of the best things I've done in my entire life. Keep up the good work work bro.

If your name, even if it's your middle name, is "Manlius," that's gonna define your entire life.

Excellent video, well done, thanks.

AMAZING content, thank you

So, what happened to the horses? Am I the only one that is curious about the abandoned transports?

The 1st & 2nd Punic wars are the best wars of antiquity many battles alot of action cunning strategy many consipiracies politics many other states like syracuse the iberians the celts the numidians the greeks the macedonians the Illyrians were involved it's like an antiquity world war it's still make me wonder why there is no movie or serie about it it would be fucking epic as the scenarists can add some fictional mini stories to it that go hand to hand with the actual historical facts

Thanks for sharing your videos!

This video is just the best one out there for this battle. Thanks

Epic! Man, you are a creative production-machine.

Dam this is awesome I can't wait for more stuff.

You're really good in doing historical videos man. I appreciate your work.

years later, this is still one of the best historical battles on youtube

congrats great video!

dayum. since my childhood i had been interested in wars, tactics and strategies. perfect channel for me. thanks for the videoss mate. 👍👍

This was one of the best examples of sea battle that I've ever seen. Superior work.

Awesome video! Thanks!

You should become a professional doco maker, this was superb ! Just goes to prove that the greedy merchants who controlled Carthage should have spent more on Tech to give them the edge in naval battles.

welp, off to play rome total war

Bravo . ! A very comprehensive documentary . I am saving it to watch again .

Wow, just found this channel! So glad I did, great content!

Ah, the ancient version of bumper cars

This is so interesting to combine TW Rome 2 with actual detailed historical battles, so much more meaningful than watching purely gameplay battles

So glad that I subbed. Great work!

Great quality video, thanks

I remember reading about 3 entire Roman Fleet with almost 100,000 men got wiped out because of a massive storm and they just kept raising fleet after fleet after fleet.

Carthaginian left flank mistake was that, when they were behind the lines instead of going after horse transport ships at shore they should have attacked consular fleets from behind. That would give then full victory.

Your videos are incredible. Thank you very much for making them :-)

Really really good video man, keep it up!

This video led me to believe that Flanking was a typical Carthaginian strategy, rather than an innovation.

I'm going to mention that hamlicar is Hannibal's father

Thank you so much for this video! I'm writing a research paper on the impact of the corvus on the battle of Ecnomus and this was a really great summary of the battle that helps me visualize the writings of Polybius.

Great video. Thanks for putting the effort, it payed off. Liked & subscribed.

Your channel remembers me of the history channel from the early 2000s. Just pure fascination for history and it's secrets

That 4th Division along the shore saved it Should have sent punic ships to attack the roman 1st 2nd divisions in the rear

Excellent presentation. Thanks.

Excellent video. Thanks. I was unaware of this battle.

A different massive battle! Nice!

Amazing how they could coordinate such a precise tactics on the sea with that large numbers

Epic vid Invicta!

EXCELLENT production congratulations !!!

Kinda feel bad for the Carthaginian navy tho. They were so close on winning

The best historic educational channel there is. By far. I unfollowed History Channel because they cannot compare to you. At least, not presently.

Extremely well made and narrated - KUDO !! Posting to my Twitter.

thank you Invicta, very cool!

It must suck to be at the tip of the triangle lol

This vid:*Largest naval battle in history* Mr Beast: interesting

I love history, I am really enjoying the video. Thank you

This was a excellent video

you know its too bad Rome II doesn't have Corvus ships...or even the Deceres

That was the great secret of the Romans. Apart from their great discipline, they were able to adapt to the needs of any circumastance!

This is simply immaculate content. I thrive on devouring such knowledge . I thank you for your sublime work and respectfully demand more.

Great info!! Thanks!!

You totally avoid to mention the importance of sea warfare knowledge the Sicilian Greeks shared with Romans!! No state could amass a fleet and coordinate it so soon and successfully without help from experience sailors

i clicked on this thinking it was a video game and i got slapped with knowledge.

Excellent content! Liked and subscribed 👍

Fantastic video !!!!!!!! More more more

13:36 "Begun, the clone wars has"

Why do I not know more of this battle? I have read so much roman history but have only heard passing mentions of this battle.

First video I've seen on this channel. Love it! 👍👍 Also, I love that you link sources for us super-nerds! 😄

this is just amazing :) subbed