The Classis Ravennas ("Fleet of
Ravenna"), later awarded the honorifics praetoria and Pia Vindex, was the second most senior fleet of the imperial
Roman Navy after the Classis Misenensis.
History
Ravenna had been used for ship construction and as a naval port at least since the
Roman civil wars, but the permanent classis Ravennas was established by
Caesar Augustus in 27 BC . It was commanded by a praefectus classis, drawn from the highest ranks of the
equestrian class, those with a net worth more than 200,000
sesterces, and its mission was to control the
Adriatic Sea and perhaps the eastern part of the
Mediterranean Sea. As the honorific praetoria, awarded by
Vespasian for its support during the
civil war of AD 69,[1] suggests, together with the classis Misenensis, it formed the naval counterpart of the
Praetorian Guard, a permanent naval force at the emperor's direct disposal.
Its home port of
Classis (modern Classe), which was named after the fleet, was built under Augustus, and included a canal, the Fossa Augusta, which united the port with the lagoons of the interior, as well as with the river
Po to the north.[2][3] Naval arsenals and docks stretched along the Fossa, in a complex that reached 22 km in length. According to a passage by
Cassius Dio, related by
Jordanes, the harbour could accommodate 250 ships.[4]
The classis Ravennas recruited its crews mostly from the East, especially from
Egypt.[1] Since Rome did not face any naval threat in the Mediterranean, the bulk of the fleet's crews was idle. Some of the sailors were based in
Rome itself, initially housed in the barracks of the Praetorian Guard, but later given their own barracks, the Castra Ravennatium across the
Tiber.[5] There they were used to stage mock naval battles (naumachiae), and operated the mechanism that deployed the canvas canopy of the
Colosseum.[6] In 70, Emperor
Vespasian also levied the
legio II Adiutrix from the marines of classis Ravennas.
In the
civil war of 192-193, the fleet supported
Septimius Severus, and, together with the classes Misenensis, it participated in the campaign against
Pescennius Niger, transporting his legions to the East.[7] The fleet remained active in the East for the next few decades, where the emergence of the Persian
Sassanid Empire posed a new threat that required frequent reinforcements to be ferried.[8]
^Eck and
Margaret Roxan, "Two New Military Diplomas", in Römische Inschriften – Neufunde, Neulesungen und Neuinterpretationen, Festschrift für Hans Lieb, hg. R. Frei-Stolba Basel: M.A. Speidel, 1995), pp. 55-97