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Reposted by Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.

History Rage Podcast @historyrage.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

🚨 THIS WEEK🚨 🏛️⚓ Rome wasn't built by legions alone. @sdecasien.bsky.social reveals why naval power was essential to Roman success across the Mediterranean. 🌊 🎧 Listen now: pod.fo/e/60c28c #HistoryRage #AncientRome #RomanNavy #HistoryPodcast ⚔️

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

If they exist, I’ll find them! Three-bladed waterline rams and ancient warship-inspired monuments at Union Station in DC. Though these are some pretty odd ones…

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Finally got to visit my sister’s workplace at the NIH! The work they’re doing there is incredibly important, and it was really cool to see some of it firsthand. A great reminder of why effective and continued government funding for research matters so much.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Happy to share my latest article, “Revisiting the Isis Sgraffito: Evidence for a Cimmerian Bosporus Naval Ram Design,” now published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

Revisiting the Isis Sgraffito: Evidence for a Cimmerian Bosporus Naval Ram Design

Published in International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (Ahead of Print, 2026)

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Rainy day….working in the office on the Syracusan trireme modifications of 413 BCE. I’ll finish this paper (eventually), but today I’m really missing Actium. All this bad weather has me thinking about those rainy/cloudy days spent scanning the monument.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Excited to see my chapter, “Odysseus’ Naval Ram?”, published in Iconography of War in the Ancient Mediterranean World! Many thanks to the editors, Julio C. Ruiz and Marta Nicolás-Muelas. It’s great to see a conference group come together and turn our papers into a published volume!

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

It looks like William Murray and I are moving forward with a monograph on the 27 ancient naval rams discovered at the Battle of the Egadi Islands (241 BCE), to be published by Texas A&M University Press. We’re excited to be working with our colleagues in Europe and the USA on this project!

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale! Impressive 👀.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The Yale Sterling Library is just too amazing…and so far, the staff has found every single obscure article or book I’ve requested.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

A little piece of military history. Signed by some of the lecturers, including Paul Kennedy and Donald Kagan. Pretty interesting!

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Already spotting ancient warships in Yale’s architecture! This one is at the entrance to Sterling Memorial Library. Phoenician ship inspired? Straight from the Kouyunjik relief?

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Chapps @chapps.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

There’s a similar dinos at the Getty Villa (92.AE.88) with a battle on top of the rim, and four warships on the inside of the rim. The ships would have appeared to float on the mixed water and wine when the vessel was full. Greek, Athens, 520-510 BCE, Circle of Antimenes Painter.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

A fragmentary stele depicting an ancient warship with a three-bladed waterline ram at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, # 1987.297. Nice to finally see this one in person!

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Four years ago today! Nearly 100°F, not a cloud in the sky, and I spent the day searching all over Ostia for this stone ram. Of course, it turned out to be tucked away in a back corner. This was during the AAR Classical Summer School, and it was definitely worth the hunt.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Proof day! 🏺⚔️🌊 Just received the proofs for my upcoming chapter on Odysseus and the Sirens. It explores how ancient artists adapted the myth to reflect the naval warfare of their time, helping us understand the development of bronze warship rams. Almost perfect timing for Nolan’s The Odyssey!

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Yay! Just accepted in IJNA! ⚔️ 🌊 I argue that Murray (2001/2002) was right that the ram is small and likely belongs to a trireme, but that its design is better understood through the Cimmerian Bosporus rather than the Ptolemaic or wider Mediterranean world.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

What’s your favorite day in the field doing archaeology? Mine goes back to the Egadi Islands survey work for RPM Nautical. It was my first time out there and planning/picking the underwater targets for the day. I went with this small shadow on the sonar, well away from the main cluster of rams.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

This week in naval rams in popular culture! First: Rick and Morty goes with a kind of three-bladed waterline ram on a single level galley, reads Egyptian/Levant inspired in overall shape and iconography, but pushed hard into sci-fi exaggeration. No ramming though! 6/10.

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Reposted by Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.

History Rage Podcast @historyrage.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

🚨 THIS WEEK TO PATREON AND APPLE 🚨 ⚓ Rome started as a regional power and became a maritime powerhouse. Dr Stephen DeCasien explains how that transformation happened. 🎧 Listen now: www.patreon.com/hist... #HistoryRage #RomanNavy #AncientRome #HistoryPodcast 🌊

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Reposted by Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.

History Rage Podcast @historyrage.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

🚨 NEXT WEEK FOR SUBSCRIBERS🚨 Think ancient Rome was just about legions on land? 🏛️❌ @sdecasien.bsky.social is here to prove Rome was a massive naval powerhouse! 🌊⚓ From epic shipwrecks to brutal bronze rams, get ready to shatter the ultimate landlubber myth. #History #AncientRome

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The largest bronze fragment recovered near the rostral wall of the Actian Victory Monument. Among the few surviving relics of the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), it may have originated from one of the massive warships that served in the fleets of Antony and Cleopatra.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Originally published online in December 2025, this article is now available in print in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. For fellow enthusiasts of naval rams 🌊 🐏

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Grad school story: I had a professor who graded exams competitively against the class. It initially seemed like an interesting approach, but I eventually came to hate it.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

I am always skeptical of Plutarch’s treatment of Actium. He dismisses what would have been a fairly conventional opening exchange of ramming attacks and then immediately adopts the victor’s preferred framing of the battle: Agrippa’s agile fleet defeating Antony’s massive but ineffective warships.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I really wonder what the ram cakes looked like….semi-related cake a colleague made for me a few years ago!

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

There are only three times Athenaeus uses the Greek word embolos in reference to a naval ram: 1. The seven rams of the tessarakonteres (which, in my opinion, is as ridiculous as the ship itself).

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Herodotus is a particularly interesting author for studying ancient naval rams and ramming warfare. He is one of the few surviving authors to preserve evidence for more than one ram design.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Messing with the numbers again: the 5 “ten”-sized rams produced for the Battle of Actium in 31 consumed an amount of bronze equal to roughly 33% of all the bronze used by a 200-ship Roman fleet at the Battle of the Egadi Islands in 241. If we can trust our reconstructions…which is always a big if. 😅

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Reposted by Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.

History Rage Podcast @historyrage.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

⚓ HUGE thanks to @sdecasien.bsky.social for raging with me that Rome was a NAVAL power, not just a land empire! 🏛️🌊 We explored Roman sea control, naval warfare, and the archaeology proving Rome’s maritime might. Coming 22nd Jun www.patreon.com/historyrage #HistoryRage #AncientRome #NavalHistory

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Reposted by Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.

Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

This is great! Also, how to support an academic: - read their papers - cite their articles and books - tell your friends and students about their work - include their work in your reading lists and syllabi - ask your library to buy their books - tell them you liked their work or that it was helpful

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Someone over on X confidently claimed that certain ships never existed because we haven’t found any wrecks, and “every fleet in history has shipwrecks.” Well… welcome to antiquity, I guess. By that standard, we can go ahead and erase most ancient navies from existence.

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Reposted by Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.

Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

“For when a ship was overtaken by several triremes and struck from all sides by their bronze rams, as the water rushed in, it would be swallowed by the sea with all its crew.” - Diod. Sic. 13.16.3

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Reposted by Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.

John Ma 🇺🇦 @nakhthor.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Paperback of my book on the Polis is now out. Link in next post.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

You have to give serious credit to Octavian and Marcus Agrippa’s naval forces at the Battle of Actium for not panicking when they saw the size and scale of the ships Mark Antony and Cleopatra brought. Visit the Actian Victory Monument and you understand it immediately.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I love the Olympias trireme, but it still bothers me that they used the Athlit ram design. Even the publication admits the mismatch. Still, it was an ambitious experimental project and some compromises were inevitable. Maybe time for a quinquereme build next with an Egadi ram?

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Naval blockades in antiquity rarely seem to be carried out solely by naval forces; most have some form of land-based pressure. The closest case I can think of is the Siege of Tyre, though even there the mole proved decisive. Can anyone think of a successful example carried out by naval forces alone?

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

We can only guess what happened to the Punic ships after the Battle of the Egadi Islands (241 BCE). Sources vary wildly on how many were destroyed, captured, or recovered. Some were likely reused, others stripped, plenty just lost. What’s striking is the silence on the rams.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Out of all the Punic Wars, the First is the best because… lots of warships… and lots of rams…

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Philo Mechanicus would love this thread…he was a sucker for naval blockade talking points.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Got a chance between teaching classes to explore the historic shipyard where China’s first aircraft carrier (the Liaoning) was commissioned. The story behind it is honestly wild. This place once produced a significant number of Chinese naval vessels (also the Shandong aircraft carrier).

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

“If you should chance to have a naval force that is slightly inferior to that of the enemy, take on your fighting decks your best and most experienced soldiers. Order them neither to climb out, nor to board any enemy ship, but to use the bronze ram.” – Philo Polior. D.103 [104.9].

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

In my intro to Digital Humanities class, I present one core idea: every project should be guided by human judgment from start to finish. I think many students came in expecting to learn how AI or certain programs could do all their work for them.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Warships with rams are everywhere in antiquity! Here’s another one I didn’t include in my article on naval ram portrayals (DeCasien, 2025). A small bone "appliqué", mentioned by Casanovas et al. (2021), shows a warship prow with a ram, likely part of a Punic decorative lectus.

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Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D. @sdecasien.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

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Sarah E. Bond @sarahebond.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

A new likely Hellenistic sling bullet has been excavated at Hippos (pleiades.stoa.org/places/678185) near the Sea of Galilee. It has a unique inscription: ΜΑΘΟΥ Learn (your lesson!) Sling bullets were truly the bumper stickers of the ancient world. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Inscribed sling bullet (B19655) found at Hippos with the inscription ΜΑΘΟΥ, meaning "Learn your lesson!" Credit: Eisenberg et al. 2026

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