Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers. I'm Murray

Dan, the assistant editor of ancient warfare and this is Jasper Ortage, who is the editor. We are

doing this new series of brief, brief, I say brief, we'll try and be brief, answers to your

ancient warfare questions. We're going to try and answer them in five minutes, so we'll see how we go.

Last time, Yasper asked me a question, so it's my turn to ask Jasper one of the questions that's come in,

which is, did ancient navies use slave rowers? Shall it be very brief, Murray? No. Whoa, success.

Hey, we it within five minutes

but I've seen

I've seen every movie that's ever been made

and they all have slave role

exactly well there are probably

very few there I think there are

very few exceptions and

the fact that everybody thinks this

is due to Ben Hur

we've all seen the fate of the And the fact that everybody thinks this is due to Ben Hur.

We've all seen the fate of the rowers in Ben Hur.

When the ram comes crashing through the side of the hull and all the rowers panic and have to sit there,

shackle to their rowing banks while the water pours in and they slowly drown.

And it's very sad and evocative.

And we can hardly blame the author of Benhar, who published the book in 1880, I think.

Because at that time, pretty much everyone thought that the Romans certainly

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