Dr. Eve MacDonald

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1,045 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 13 Sep

Dr. Eve MacDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.

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The Ancients · The First Punic War · 13 Sep 2026 podcast

And the Corvus means crow.

And it's like a boarding bridge.

So the Romans have taken

Carthaginian standardized ships, we think, and added these bridges in which they can grapple onto the enemy ships and then they can have their marines cross over and fight more in in into kind of land battles.

Turning a sea

This is all part of the narrative of the first Punic War that the historians focus on.

There are some pretty difficult questions to be answered about this, but nonetheless, the Corvus is always focused on is one of the key moments.

where the Carthaginians don't seem to know what to do and they don't really adapt very well and they lose the Battle of Mili quite uh significantly.

A number of ships are lost and, you know, these ships are filled with soldiers and they're

up until, you know, this the first Punic War, ramming was the way in which naval battles were won or lost.

So the Carthaginians were excellent at that.

They were super skilled with their um

rowers and they could maneuver their boats really well.

And so they would often have the advantage in a naval battle because of this.

But this corvus then allowed the Romans to kind of take um the advantage away from the Carthaginians.

So they seem surprised by the Roman adaptation and and they lose that battle.

Well, they are exactly.

And you know, the loss of Agrigento on the south coast gives them uh access then to a port on the south coast, and from there

The Romans decide that, well, what we should really do now is head to Africa.

And we we go back to this idea that the Romans have the Syracusans on side because in the at the end of the fourth century, there had been a Syracusan invasion of Africa under their tyrant Agathocles.

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