Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2009 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © John R. Hale, 2009

All rights reserved

 

Diagrams by Sam Manning; ancient images on p. 41 by Sam Manning after John S. Morrison and R. T. Williams,
Greek Oared Ships, 900 -322 B.C.,
Arch. 50 (A), Clas. 1 (B), and Geom. 43 (C); diagram on p. 257 by Sam Manning based on an image by B. Klejn-Christensen

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hale, John R., 1951-
Lords of the sea : the epic story of the Athenian navy and the birth of democracy / by John R. Hale
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-1-101-05085-9

1. Athens (Greece)—History, Naval. 2. Democracy—Greece—Athens—History—To 1500.
I. Title.
V37.H355 2009
359.00938—dc22 2009001796

 

 

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THOMAS FARRIS HALE

 

 

 

—Pericles to the Athenians

PREFACE

THE ATHENIAN NAVY FIRST FLOATED INTO MY CONSCIOUSNESS on a winter afternoon in 1969, when I encountered Donald Kagan walking down College Street in New Haven. Across the snowbound expanse of the Yale campus his prizefighter’s stance and rolling gait were instantly recognizable. I knew him well as the formidable professor of my Introduction to Greek History course but had never worked up the courage to speak to him. On the first day of class Kagan had marshaled the front row of students into an improvised phalanx of Greek warriors, with notebooks for shields and pens for spears, to demonstrate military maneuvers. Though like me a new arrival, Kagan already ranked as a colossus among the faculty. I tacked across the icy sidewalk to let him pass, but he stopped, asked my name, and inquired what I was doing at Yale. I stammered a few words about majoring in archaeology and rowing for the freshman crew. Kagan lit up at once. “Ha! A rower. Now you can explain something to me. In autumn 429, after Phormio beat the Peloponnesians in the gulf, they sent their crews overland to launch a sneak attack on the Piraeus. Thucydides says each rower carried his own oar and cushion. But why on earth should they need cushions? They certainly didn’t have very far to row.”

We talked for an hour of ships and oars and naval heroes, oblivious to the cold. I fished up a recollection of rowing pads that had been used by nineteenth-century American rowers so that they could work their legs during the stroke. Kagan enlarged upon the tactical genius of the little-known Athenian commander Phormio. He went on to speak of the many unexplored issues that obscured the story of the mighty navy of Athens, bulwark of liberty and engine of democracy. As the great man got under way again, he told me that I should investigate Athenian history from the vantage point of a rower’s bench. It was an assignment, I found, for life.

Over the next four years I delved into the evidence for ancient rowing techniques, hoping to explain the phenomenal speed of ten knots over a full day of rowing that was attested for Athenian triremes. I also became immersed in Phormio’s extraordinary career, and his string of naval victories against seemingly impossible odds. As a counterpoint to these marine interests, during my last semester the students of the Yale Drama School produced an extravaganza in the swimming pool of the Payne Whitney Gymnasium: an updated version of Aristophanes’
Frogs.
The ancient original featured many comments on the Athenian navy, some satirical, some patriotic. Most were cut in this new version, with songs by Sondheim and a cast that included the young Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver. But the high point of the comedy was still the chorus of noisy Frogs, now played by the Yale swimming team, who shouted the old rowing chant
Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax!
as the god Dionysus rowed a little boat across the River Styx. Those were heady days.

At Cambridge in England, during doctoral research into the evolution of the Viking longship, I was drawn deeper into the world of the Athenian navy by a meeting with John Morrison. At that time his classic
Greek Oared Ships
was my bible. Morrison had been diverted from his early studies of Plato when he learned that nobody could explain various naval terms that punctuated the philosopher’s dialogues. Ultimately he produced the first working model of an Athenian trireme with its complex three-tiered array of rowers. Morrison’s reconstruction achieved nationwide notoriety when it was cited in the longest-running correspondence ever to appear in the letters column of
The Times.
The subject of the hot debate was the maximum speed of an ancient trireme.

Enthusiastic backers decided to build a section of a trireme in Morrison’s garden. I had the good fortune to be among the Cambridge rowers who cycled out to Great Shelford and pulled an oar in this trial model. We dipped our blades into a plastic swimming pool set up next to the hull. There I also met John Coates, a royal naval architect who was devoting his retirement to the trireme project. Eventually the Greek navy made the vision a reality by constructing a full-scale replica according to Morrison’s theories and Coates’s plans. It was a happy day when, years later, I clambered aboard the trireme
Olympias
in dry dock near Athens, sat down on one of its 170 rowers’ thwarts, and gazed across the shining bay to Salamis.