In a 2009 book, Michael Pitassi narrated a history of the Roman navy, tracing Roman naval activity from 753 b.c. to the early fifth century a.d. In this new book P. attempts the task of writing a parallel, chronological history of the Roman warship. The concept of the work is novel, although at times the book falls short in the execution of its aims.

The book is divided into two parts. Part One consists of three chapters: ‘Sources’, ‘Interpreting the Sources’, and ‘Ship's Fittings’. Part Two contains a chronological discussion of different types of Roman warship, divided into broad periods. This structure introduces some unusual features: for instance, ship's fittings are discussed in Part One rather than in reference to specific examples of the ships on which they were used in the chronologically organized Part Two. This structure also means that triremes (having been in use by the Romans from the fourth century b.c.) are re-discussed in successive chapters of Part Two.

The book provides a general overview of different types of Roman warship; however, it displays some noticeable discrepancies in methodology. In particular, the discussion of ancient source material — literary, archaeological and pictorial alike — is inconsistent. Thus in ch. 1, under the subheading of ‘The Iconography’, depictions of Roman warships in ‘statuary, mosaics, coins and wall paintings’ are collectively described as all suffering, ‘to varying degrees, from a discernible lack of accuracy, being impressionistic or stylised’ (4). In ch. 2, under the same subheading, it is asserted that ‘it is not unreasonable to make the assumption that, [sic] those artists and craftsmen of old more or less knew what they were doing in representing warships’ and that ‘it is proposed that prime reliance should be placed on the “hard evidence” of contemporary pictorial representation’ (20). In this reader's view P. wrongly conflates different sources of evidence: our interpretation of a fresco in a private dwelling, the design of a coin die, or the execution of a sculpture intended for public viewing, is not only affected by issues of different media, but of differing limitations on the detail, sets of symbols, purposes and audiences for which the depiction was intended. Similarly, P. asserts in reference to ancient literary sources that ‘it must be borne in mind that after some two thousand years, original copies have long gone and what survives is the result of successive copies [sic] with all the consequent possibilities for errors and mistranslations to have corrupted the original text’ (17). Such a line of argument is tantamount to dismissing the validity of almost all ancient literary material on the basis that it has, by necessity, been reproduced. Archaeological evidence is surveyed in ch. 1 (10–14), but throughout much of the remainder of the work, the discussion depends primarily upon depictions of Roman vessels and the diagrams which P. has extrapolated from them. Conspicuously, finds of Roman ships or their contemporaries are little used: there is little discussion of those found at Nemi (needlessly destroyed in 1944 but preserved in documentation), those discovered in 1981/82 during the construction of the Mainz Hilton, or the Punic vessel discovered off the coast of Marsala in Sicily, to name but a few well-known examples. In reference to ancient naval terminology, it is argued that ‘translation and transliteration of terms relating to ancient warships is an area littered with academic argument, but one which, without “hard” evidence — that is to say the real thing or more definitive discoveries, at least — remains largely speculative’ (17).

The book's distinctive feature is presented in Part Two, which is organized as a chronological account of the development of Roman warships. The chapters in Part Two are arranged according to five general periods, with the text in each chapter sub-divided according to the type of ship being discussed. The result is a sequence of case studies of general vessel types or of specific examples. Previous works on the Roman navy and Roman naval history have frequently debated the mechanics of Roman warships and here P. offers distinctive interpretations on a number of common problems. P.'s references to modern scholarship, however, are often vague and footnotes consistently omit page numbers. Conspicuous omissions are Thiel's two important works on the Republican navy and Christa Steinby's recent The Roman Republican Navy (2007).