Civitas Classis

History

There was a small port and harbor for commercial trade. The city of Ravenna, north of the harbor, was founded in the late 3rd or early 2nd century BC.

Sometime between 35 and 12 BC, Octavian (later known as emperor Augustus) established Ravenna's harbor as one of the home ports for his new Roman navy. South of the harbor, the area was occupied mainly by cemeteries, but by the 2nd century AD a town, known in Latin as Classis, had grown up.

Augustus may have chosen this site because of its strategic position. The area in which Augustus wanted to construct Classe was in a lagoon. It was impregnable from land and surrounded by marshes. The base was artificially constructed in this lagoon. Unlike the ports of Portus or Ostia, Classe did not feature a hexagonal basin. Instead the base installations were built on stilts. Once those were in place the port was made of large oak beams. By the 1st century CE the builders had incorporated ceramic fragments. By the 2nd century, it was redone with bricks. Augustus designed the port for military purposes only. The town had only one weakness, access to fresh water. This obstacle was overcome by the Emperor Trajan who built a 35 km (22 mi) long aqueduct to Ravenna, that might also have supplied Classe. After the fleet was built, the population of the soldiers and their families living there grew slowly but steadily. For the next three hundred years, Classe would be one of Rome's most important naval bases, the home of the eastern Mediterranean fleet. According to Jordanes, Cassius Dio put the size of the fleet at two hundred and fifty ships.

Before Augustus's establishment of the fleet, there is no evidence of any habitation in the area that became Classe. As of today, archeologists have only found remains of cemeteries from this time period. It is unknown if these cemeteries were pagan or Christian. However, they were most likely pagan because archeologists do not find evidence of a population returning until the 2nd century. This coincides with the rise of Christianity in Classe. …

Classe fleet

Classe could hold a fleet of two hundred and fifty ships and could accommodate arsenals, magazines and barracks. The fleet consisted of triremes, quadriremes and liburnians (light vessels). These ships were named after gods, goddesses and rivers. The fleet employed ax makers, carpenters, doctors, flag bearers, horn players, officers, oarsmen, pilots, repair personnel, rhythm keepers for oarsmen, scribes, sailors, and weapons masters. There were as many as ten thousand men connected to the fleet in some way. The fleet was used primarily to keep the peace in the Mediterranean. The fleet's main focuses were the Adriatic Sea and Aegean Sea, though it patrolled the waters of the Mediterranean as far away as Spain. In 24 the fleet was used to put down a slave revolt in Brundisium. When the fleet was not being used for military purposes, it was used to protect merchant ships from pirates. Although little evidence exists, recent scholarly consensus rejects the assumption that there were no pirates in the Mediterranean during the early Empire, preferring to credit the fleet at Classe with their suppression. Tombstones from sailors of the fleet have been unearthed there. By 69 the Classe fleet had five thousand ships. By 324 the western “Augustan navy” was gone. This was most likely because the western half of the empire was preoccupied with civil war. Emperor Constantine was engaged in fighting civil wars with his fellow tetrarch emperors Maxentius and Licinius for sole control of the empire. The empire did not have the means or resources to have a navy at Classe. For further information, there is a detailed article on the Roman navy.

The eastern part of the Roman Empire understood how important Classe was as a military port. Scholars are unclear as to when the transition between the western focused navy and the eastern focused navy took place; estimates are between 324 and 383. This new eastern navy was a permanent fleet in Classe. The fleet was used to control the Aegean Sea and the eastern part of the Mediterranean. Later it was used to help reclaim the lost Roman territory in the west, such as Italy. However, between 383 and 450 the standing fleet disappeared.