Assault Hexeres, Swordsmen

Description

As centuries passed, naval tactics and needs changed across the Mediterranean. There was a move towards larger ships, partly as an expression of national or dynastic power: the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt were particularly fond of large ships to show their wealth and influence in a physical way. These 'polyremes', a term meaning many oared, were not suitable for ramming work in battle. In practice many of them had no more oars than smaller ships; what they had were more rowers per oar than smaller ships. A Roman hexareme or Greek hexeres would have a couple of banks of oars with three men per oar, and appear to be an over-sized version of a smaller ship. Even so, thanks to being tremendously heavy and strongly constructed, they were slow moving, and hardly capable of the quick turns needed to take advantage of enemy mistakes. Instead the large ships made use of their wide decks and plentiful carrying capacities and became fighting platforms for infantry and artillery. Boarding or long-range bombardment were the methods to be used to defeat the enemy; naval warfare had come full circle in terms of fighting methods, even if ships had grown significantly.

Although some historians use Aethiopia to refer to all of the sub-Saharan regions of Africa, it was commonly used in reference to regions in the south of Egypt that became the Kingdom of Kush. The skilled swordsmen from this area followed a long tradition of elite troops from the south that begun under the Egyptian and Nubian dynasties. Although they went into battle wearing only simple cloth armour, the Aethiopians did employ Greek thureos-like shields. These sported a central handgrip, and offered greater protection than the hide-bound wicker or wooden shields of the sub-Saharan tribes. They also used a form of khopesh-like sword that would eventually evolve into the shotel used by the later warriors of Aksum. This had a forward curving, sickle-like blade designed to reach around an opponent’s shield, either to hook it away or pierce his vital organs.