Why has so much of Rome's naval and maritime capability been forgotten?
Short answerElliott points to the traditional scholarly and popular emphasis on the Roman legionary, which overshadowed naval evidence and maritime strategy.
NotesThe Punic Wars demonstrate how much the land narrative can obscure: Roman success at sea forced Hannibal onto the long overland route toward Italy. Rome learned naval warfare from Carthage and then defeated it in its strongest domain. Yet familiar images of imperial legionaries came to dominate scholarship and public memory, leaving maritime institutions comparatively neglected. Elliott also cautions that the western empire fell through many accumulated failures rather than one simple cause, with the loss of fleet capacity only one of those damaging cuts.