Global Scale Modeller

This diorama was made in April 2012. It shows a battle between a Roman and a Carthaginian Trireme during the sea battle at Mylae in 260 B.C. The trireme kits and most of the figures are from Zvezda (superb stuff!)
As this scene plays in the First Punic War i had do make some conversions especially on the Roman figures to make them historical accurate. My goal for this diorama was to depict the Roman sea battle tactic as accurate as possible. I don´t want to go too much into detail here as it would be kind of boring i think.

HamilkarBarkas wrote:This diorama was made in April 2012. It shows a battle between a Roman and a Carthaginian Trireme during the sea battle at Mylae in 260 B.C. The trireme kits and most of the figures are from Zvezda (superb stuff!)
As this scene plays in the First Punic War i had do make some conversions especially on the Roman figures to make them historical accurate. My goal for this diorama was to depict the Roman sea battle tactic as accurate as possible. I don´t want to go too much into detail here as it would be kind of boring i think.

Love it Micheal great work I would be interested if you went into detail about it.

Some work there, must have taken a while too!

Thank you very much
It took a while to build this diorama indeed, about one month. The hardest part was to plan the whole thing and to get the right materials in time.

Alright, so i will go a bit into detail about the Roman sea battle tactics and how i tried to replicate that.

First of all you will notice that both ships have no mast with sails on them. In battle the mast was removed and either stored on shore or on the ship, because the balance point would be pretty bad with the mast mounted on the ship. These battles were mainly won by ramming enemy ships and damaging them enough to either sink them or demobilize them, so a high balance point would be an disadvantage. Instead of the sails the ships used the power of the oars to make quick ramming manoeuvres.
Before hitting the enemy ship with the ram the oars would be shortened and pulled inside to avoid damages on them.

The Romans however did not follow this common tactic, instead they mounted boarding bridges called "corvus" (raven) on their ships. Sea battles where not the best disciplin of the Romans so they rather took advantage of their superior infantry. In order to make a sea battle a land battle they had do board the enemy ships with the bridges, which was a great tactic as the Carthaginians where not prepared for this and therefore had not that many soldiers on their ships. Instead of destroying the ships they could be captured and reused against their former owners.
The "corvus" was used in the First Punic War only, we don´t hear of it again in the centuries later, most likely because it is responsible for one of the greatest disasters in Roman history. Two Roman fleets where completely lost during storms in 255 B.C. and 249 B.C. with almost 100.000 dead seamen. The boarding bridge made the ships extremely top heavy, so the balance point was very bad and the ships capisized easily in rough weather conditions.

Another thing i wanted to depict accurate in my diorama was the cruel group combat in a confined area, a lot of shoving and hacking is going on.

The Romans from Zvezda are perfect for a scene in the Second Punic War, but not so good for the First Punic War as the equipment changed a bit.
In the beginning of the First Punic War the Romans still fought in the classical Greek "phalanx" formation, big overlapping shields and spears formed as a spiked shield wall. When the Romans faced the Iberian merceneries of the Carthaginians the first time they were very impressed by their useage of the short sword as a fast stabbing weapon. The weapons of the fallend Iberians where looted an the Romans adopted the whole system for their own troops (thats why the Roman Gladius sword is actually called "gladius hispaniensis" - spanish sword). I could not convert all Roman figures into hoplites who fought in phalanx formation so i made the assumption that some soldiers fought in the old style and some in the new style. This war was the time of transition from the phalanx to the legionary with the short sword so i think thats quite plausible after all.

I´m sorry for this rather long reply but thats pretty much everything i can tell you about this whole topic right now, i hope it was nevertheless interesting for you.

HamilkarBarkas wrote:Thank you very much
It took a while to build this diorama indeed, about one month. The hardest part was to plan the whole thing and to get the right materials in time.

Alright, so i will go a bit into detail about the Roman sea battle tactics and how i tried to replicate that.

First of all you will notice that both ships have no mast with sails on them. In battle the mast was removed and either stored on shore or on the ship, because the balance point would be pretty bad with the mast mounted on the ship. These battles were mainly won by ramming enemy ships and damaging them enough to either sink them or demobilize them, so a high balance point would be an disadvantage. Instead of the sails the ships used the power of the oars to make quick ramming manoeuvres.
Before hitting the enemy ship with the ram the oars would be shortened and pulled inside to avoid damages on them.

The Romans however did not follow this common tactic, instead they mounted boarding bridges called "corvus" (raven) on their ships. Sea battles where not the best disciplin of the Romans so they rather took advantage of their superior infantry. In order to make a sea battle a land battle they had do board the enemy ships with the bridges, which was a great tactic as the Carthaginians where not prepared for this and therefore had not that many soldiers on their ships. Instead of destroying the ships they could be captured and reused against their former owners.
The "corvus" was used in the First Punic War only, we don´t hear of it again in the centuries later, most likely because it is responsible for one of the greatest disasters in Roman history. Two Roman fleets where completely lost during storms in 255 B.C. and 249 B.C. with almost 100.000 dead seamen. The boarding bridge made the ships extremely top heavy, so the balance point was very bad and the ships capisized easily in rough weather conditions.

Another thing i wanted to depict accurate in my diorama was the cruel group combat in a confined area, a lot of shoving and hacking is going on.

The Romans from Zvezda are perfect for a scene in the Second Punic War, but not so good for the First Punic War as the equipment changed a bit.
In the beginning of the First Punic War the Romans still fought in the classical Greek "phalanx" formation, big overlapping shields and spears formed as a spiked shield wall. When the Romans faced the Iberian merceneries of the Carthaginians the first time they were very impressed by their useage of the short sword as a fast stabbing weapon. The weapons of the fallend Iberians where looted an the Romans adopted the whole system for their own troops (thats why the Roman Gladius sword is actually called "gladius hispaniensis" - spanish sword). I could not convert all Roman figures into hoplites who fought in phalanx formation so i made the assumption that some soldiers fought in the old style and some in the new style. This war was the time of transition from the phalanx to the legionary with the short sword so i think thats quite plausible after all.

I´m sorry for this rather long reply but thats pretty much everything i can tell you about this whole topic right now, i hope it was nevertheless interesting for you.

Excellent Micheal, I enjoyed reading that thanks for taking the time to post it

Superb diorama Interesting read to , more of that please

Oh my, that is stunning. Thanks for the historical info. Really nice water effect as well.

Really nice water effect as well.

I made a tutorial about the water effect, check out this video and activate the English subtitles:

[youtube]BdukeazAXlQ[/youtube]

Because it seems like you all like this diorama a lot i decided to upload some extra pictures for you.

I do remember this diorama!! also Michael, I went ahead and fix the link to your video so that it could be watched here in the post.

I went ahead and fix the link to your video so that it could be watched here in the post.

I thought the subtitle function was not available here, but it seems to work now! Thats why i just posted the link in the first place. Thank you Luis

Here is also a video of the diorama, enjoy

[youtube]8KEbfA3vK5Y[/youtube]

Epic stuff!! Brilliant.

Piece of History Man...I like this ..and 1:72 scale - for me Perfect

That is superb. I enjoyed every pic there.

On the history front, I believe that the Carthaginians used a prototype form of pseudo-mass production when building their superior ships. They would pre-fabricate each piece separately and then number them individually so that less skilled workers could then slap them together on the waterfront by simply matching the numbers on the pieces. This way they could build many ships quickly to exploit their naval advantage over the land-lubbing Romans. As I recall, one of these ships was unluckily wrecked on the Italian coast and the Romans got hold of their little system and replicated it to make their own decent ships. I forget if this was the First or Second Punic war though.

The Romans were rotten sailors, really haha. But very good imitators and engineers.

stunning dio my friend

such a cool subject


great work !!!!!!!!


Shane