The Dromōn and the Byzantine navy

Summary

ABSTRACT. The Byzantine warship called the dromōn is mentioned for the first time in the 6^th century. Its equipment and the use of ‘Greek fire’ ensured its superiority for five centuries over the Russians and, in part, the Muslim fleets, if and when backed up by land troops. The dromon disappeared in the 12^th century due to its inferiority with respect to Latin ‘bireme’ galleys.

RÉSUMÉ. Le navire de guerre byzantin, appelé dromōn, est cité pour la première fois au VI^e siècle. Son équipement et l'usage du feu grégeois assurent pendant cinq siècles la supériorité maritime de Byzance, face aux Russes (Rôs) et en partie face aux flottes musulmanes, à condition d'être appuyé par des troupes terrestres. Le dromon disparaît au XII^e siècle, en raison de son infériorité face aux galères birêmes latines.

The earliest firm evidence for a new kind of warship known as a dromōn in the early Byzantine empire comes in the sixth century. Marcellinus Comes wrote that in 508 Anastasios I sent two comites to ravage the shores of Ostrogothic Italy with 100 armed ships and as many dromōnes. The first mention involving more than just the name itself, however, is in Prokopios of Caesarea's History of the Wars, written in the 550s and referring to Belisarios's expedition to North Africa in 533. Prokopios wrote that the fleet's dromōnes were capable of great speed:

And they also had long ships [warships] prepared as for sea-fighting, to the number of ninety-two, and they were single-banked ships covered by decks [orophas] in order that the men rowing them might if possible not be exposed to the bolts of the enemy. Such ships are called dromōnes by those of the present time, for they are able to attain a great speed. In these sailed two thousand men of Byzantium, who were all rowers as well as fighting men [auteretai], for there was not a single superfluous man among them/in them.

The word itself was derived from dromos, a race, and the drom-aō, meaning ‘run’. But exactly what superior ‘speed’ these ships had compared to their predecessors, Roman liburnae, whether speed in battle, overall speed, or even ‘manoeuvrability’, and why, is unknown.