I must admit, right up front, that to discuss a game titled Chicken of the Sea offers an almost irresistible opportunity for this writer to use the phrase "Sorry, Charlie!" somewhere in the article. Let it stand as a testament to the playability of this game that I did not fall to temptation!

There is actually a first-hand account of the First Punic War (264-241 BCE) provided by the work of Polybius, an historian born about200 BCE and dying sometime after 118 BCE. He wrote a 40-volume History of Rome's conquest and domination of the Ancient World during the third and second centuries. The scope of his work was extended to include a fairly favorable assessment of Roman supremacy. Sadly, onlythe firstfive books of the History, plus excerpts and fragments from later works, remain.

Polybius was a citizen of Megalopolis. This city was founded originally as a defensive fortification against Sparta. In 170 BCE, Polybius served as a cavalry commander in the Achaean League; but after the collapse of Macedon and the takeover of Greece by the Romans, he was deported to Rome along with other "Political suspects" and was detained there on no specific charge.

This detention, however, seems to have been viewed by Polybius as an opportunity rather than an insurmountable problem. He somehow managed to become an intimate member of influential literary and political circles and was a personal friend of many of the men who figure prominently in his later History.

After using his contacts to get out from under the jurisdiction of the Roman courts, he traveled widely, wrote a book on tactics, and a history of the war in Numantia waged by the Romans. Unfortunately, these books, as well as 35 books of the History, have been lost, but what remains is the testimony of one who was in close contact with those at the highest levels of Roman military and political life in his day.

The First Punic War - Punicus is Latin for Carthaginian - was provoked by a bothersome group called the Mamertines. They were based in Messina, a city on the island of Sicily. They appealed to the Carthaginians for help against Hiero II, the Greek king of Syracuse, another Sicilian city further south. Once the Carthaginians rid the Marnertines of Hiero's threat, the Marnertines decided that they didn't want the Carthaginians either. They appealed to Rome for help. From the Roman point of view, the opportunity to remove the Carthaginians from across the narrow straits was too good to pass up, and Rome interceded in 264 BCE.

On land, the Roman general Regulus was defeated by the brilliant Spartan mercenary Xanthippus, but the sea fight was a different story. Rome built a fleet with which she defeated the Carthaginians. This newlyachieved command of the sea enabled Rome to win the war despite the fact that Roman ships were repeatedly destroyed in storms. In 241 BCE, Carthagiman commander Harrillcar Barca surrendered his command of Sicily.

The amazing thing about Roman sea power was that Rome saw herself as a land empire, with the navy playing a secondary role to the mighty Roman army. It was because Roman possessions encircled the Mediterranean Sea that a navy was necessary to patrol mare nostrum. The First Punic War was critical to the development of Roman sea power.

There is much disagreement as to where Rome learned to build their quinqueremes, but it is known that by the time of the First Punic War, Rome had a fleet of approximately 160 vessels, versus the 130- ship Carthaginian fleet. Both sides were limited in their building programs by the available number of rowers.

Words like "bireme" and "trireme" are usually taken to mean war ships with two (bi-) or three (tri-) banks of oars, superimposed one above the other. At the end of the Peloponnesian Wars, both quadriremes and quinqueremes came into general use, but unless these ancient shipbuilders were building floating skyscrapers, it is impossible to imagine that these titles referred to types of ships with superimposed banks of oars.

Archeological evidence shows that rowing benches for one triplet of rowers in a trireme were staggered fore-and-aft as well as in the cross-section, so that opposite numbers in the upper tiers did not sit directly over the heads of those below. This would be an impossible pattern to maintain in a quinquereme without creating an unwieldy and top-heavy hull.

Modern scholars, therefore, have concluded that a quinquereme was a galley that seated five rowers to an oar, or shared two or three oars among five rowers. With less archeological evidence available to prove their point, historians have relied on the analogy of Renaissance Venetian galleys to arrive at this conclusion. Another answer to the puzzle may not be found in archeology at all, but in grammar. The Greek word trieres, usually translated into the Latin trireme, also means "triply-furnished," alluding to the number of rowers per oar. It would follow that quadrireme and quinquereme might also be mistranslations. Whatever is decided, it must be admitted that these newer galleys were bigger, heavier boats rowed by more men and larger oars.

One way of defeating an opponent at sea was the use of the ramming technique. On both Greek and Roman galleys the forward tip of the keel was heavily armored and built up to a point just above the water line. The bowwas constructedjust behind the ram, and protruding from the bow, on a level with the rowing decks, were three armored prongs.

If an attacking galley rammed its opponent below the water line, these prongs came into contact with the upper part of the enemy's ship and inflicted serious damage. They could also be used to protect the attacking galley's bow and used with devastating effect on the enemy's oars or steering paddles.

In fact, the frontal ramming of an enemy vessel was often preceded by a preliminary attack on the oars and steering paddles. This maneuver, called a diekplus (Greek) by the Carthaginians, consisted of swinging around to the back of the enemy ship while shearing off as many oars as possible. Then the attacking galley circled back and rammed the helplessly crippled vessel broadside. Defensively, a diekplus-style attack could be frustrated by the adoption of close formations.

Another ramming method consisted of a broadside attack on a vessel floundering, drifting, or not under control by its commander. To take advantage of a choppy sea or unfortunate winds, the attacker needed to be well in control and unaffected himself by the elements. Success in this case depended on superior seamanship and on a vessel made to withstand the sea better than that of his opponent's.

The attitude of Rome toward her navy was that only her Imperial soldiers could do the actual hand-to-hand fighting. The boats were seen merely as a method of transporting the Roman army.

Toward this end, the corvus (Latin) or "raven" was invented. Polybius gives a complex description of the corvus, including measurements, in his History; but, simply put, it was a pivoting gangway, mounted in the prow of the quinquereme, that had a hooked "beak" or iron grapple at its other end. This beak, when lowered to a horizontal position, spiked and held the enemy's deck. A group of Roman legionnaires then crossed the gangway and boarded the opposing vessel.

To this innovation the Punic fleet proved extremely vulnerable, and it was the corvus, according to Polybius, that enabled the Romans to win their victories at Mylae and Aegusa, off Sicily's north and west coasts, respectively.

Now to the Game

Now to the game - Chicken of the Sea is only concerned with the sea battles of the First Punic War, those between the Romans and the Carthaginians. The statement "of providing, within the chosen parameters of fun and simplicity, a superficial look at how those ... sea battles were fought" is completely accurate, as is the object of the game - to sink the other SOB's galleys before he does the same to yours!

The game plays with generally accepted rules of sea warfare, including using a turn to rotate one's galley within a hex. Many of the realities of this era of naval combat are taken into account. For example, Rule 6.23 represents superior Carthaginian maneuverability, lighter ships, and better crews, or at least crews trained to do more than row their respective armies around.

Two of the strongest points of the game are the Ramming and Shearing plays. Ramming and Shearing are two of the three basic tactical concepts used in galley battles. The rules get almost everything correct-shearing must be done along the side of the opposing galley while ramming must take place broadside. Enough variables are built into the mathematics of these moves to successfully simulate an attack, an attempt to avoid, and a counterattack by either the original attacker or its intended victim.

Boarding is the other basic tactical galley warfare concept. Unfortunately, the weakest point of the game is the designer's decision to abandon the use of the corvus in this simulation. The Romans had good reasons for their use of this device. Not only did it accommodate the Roman philosophical attitude concerning their legionnaires, it helped to counter the advantage of Carthagiman naval superiority. If the Roman army could board a vessel, it could be counted on to secure that vessel for its own purposes. I think that a little bit of mathematical manipulation could easily remedy this oversight. I found nothing in my research to indicate that the Romans abandoned the corvus mechanism for either this specific fleet or for the Battle of Drepanum. In fact, I found just the opposite, including the accounts of Polybius. Besides, the corvus is an interesting bit of Roman history, and one of the purposes of these games Is to learn something about what might really have happened.

Chicken of the Sea

Fowl Auspices During the Punic War
The Roman Quinquereme
Battle of Ecnomus