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

by John R. Hale

  The war was by no means over. Persians were famed for their persistence, even after suffering disastrous setbacks. To guard against a return of the armada from Asia, the Spartans announced that the Greek fleet would assemble at Aegina under the admiralship of the Spartan king Leotychidas. The decision to pass over Athens and Salamis as naval bases was another blow to Athenian prestige. In any case, Athens could not commit as many triremes as before. Eight thousand citizens of the hoplite class would follow Aristides in the campaign against the Persian army that Xerxes left behind, thus depleting the pool of Athenian rowers. Xanthippus joined the allies at Aegina with only 140 triremes. Even so the Athenians were still contributing the majority of ships and crews.

  The summer days passed, and no Persian fleet appeared. The Greeks might have remained at Aegina indefinitely if a ship had not arrived from the island of Chios with an appeal for aid. The Chians were still subjects of the Great King and had risked their lives on this secret mission to Greece. They assured Leotychidas that the cities and islands of Ionia were eager for liberty. The arrival of the allied fleet of 250 ships in the eastern Aegean would be enough to spark the rebellion. Reluctantly the Spartan king left Aegina and advanced as far as Delos, but he refused to go farther. The coast of Asia lay only one hundred miles farther east, but to a land-bound Spartan it seemed “as far away as the Pillars of Heracles.”

  At Delos a fresh appeal came from the Ionians of Samos. They reported that the Persian armada was at that moment stationed in their harbor, a prize ripe for the picking. The chance to eliminate Persian sea power once and for all was too tempting to resist. Leotychidas ordered the fleet forward. At his approach the Persian admirals, still traumatized by memories of Salamis, abandoned Samos for a safer haven on the mainland of Asia Minor. At Samos the Athenians and other Greeks equipped their ships with wooden gangways for boarding enemy ships. Then they cruised east in search of the enemy. They did not have to search long.

  Half a day’s row beyond Samos the lookouts spotted their quarry on a beach below the rugged heights of Mount Mycale. One look at the Persian camp convinced the Greeks that there would be no battle at sea that day. The Persians had hauled their fleet ashore and constructed a stockade of stones, timber, and pointed stakes around the precious ships. But the Greeks had come too far to give up without a fight. Leotychidas’ flagship steered for a landing place beyond the stockade. As they rowed past the fortified camp, the Spartan herald shouted a message to the Ionians still in Xerxes’ service, urging them to join in the fight for freedom.

  The Greek rowers backed the triremes onto the beach, and the fighting men leaped onto the sand. With about ten marines on each ship, the Greeks could field an army of more than two thousand hoplites. Arrayed eight deep in the traditional phalanx, their line stretched along a front about three hundred yards in length: too long to fit on the flat land between the mountain and the sea. Honor required the Spartans to hold the right wing, though this placement forced them off the beach altogether and onto the rough and rocky base of the mountain. The center, held by Peloponnesian allies from Corinth, Sicyon, and Troezen, stood on level ground, while the Athenians under Xanthippus were assigned the left wing near the water’s edge. The Athenians were cheered by the presence in their ranks of an athletic champion named Hermolycus, a notable celebrity. He had been crowned for victories at the Panhellenic Games in the pankration or kick-boxing event, and to march beside such a hero from the world of sports came close to walking in the aura of a divine hero.

  It was late afternoon by the time Leotychidas gave the order to attack. So began an extraordinary naval battle, with both fleets on shore and the Greek rowers watching from their triremes as if from a grandstand. To keep the Greek phalanx as far as possible from their ships, the Persians sallied out from the stockade and marshaled their archers and light-armed troops behind a wall of close-set wicker shields. As the Greeks advanced, the Spartans on the right wing were gradually separated from the rest of the line, swallowed up by a ravine, and lost to sight. Meanwhile the forward motion had brought the other Greeks within range of Persian arrows. As zealous for Athenian preeminence as Themistocles had ever been, Xanthippus decided to go on with or without the Spartans. After telling the men to pass the word down the line, he led a charge that broke through the enemy shields and carried the Greeks to the stockade. At first the Persians resisted, but their lack of defensive armor put them at a disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat. Abandoning the battle line, they turned and fled inside the stockade.

  But the Greeks were at their heels. Led by Xanthippus and his Athenians, they burst into the camp and attacked the disorganized pockets of resistance. Now the Persians fought alone: the Ionians and other subject peoples had begun to aid the enemy. It was the long-lost Greek right wing that delivered the final blow. Having struggled over the uneven ground, the Spartans finally worked their way around to the slope above the beached ships, then came pouring over the landward side of the stockade. Many Persians were killed; the rest surrendered or escaped over the passes to Sardis. There they had the unenviable task of reporting the catastrophe to Xerxes himself.

  That evening the triumphant Greeks awarded the prize for valor to the Athenian contingent and the individual prize to Hermolycus the pancratiast. The Peloponnesians of the center were recognized next, but the Spartans not at all. The larger issue was the fate of the Persian ships. The Greeks did not have enough crews to man them all, yet it was imperative to keep them out of enemy hands. So after stripping the captured triremes of their money chests and other valuables, the Greeks lit a titanic victory bonfire. Timber and pitch flared like torches until the fire consumed even the stockade. The glow against the dark side of Mount Mycale that night was a beacon of victory and liberty for the Greeks of Asia.

  Within a few days messengers arrived from Greece to report that the allied army had won a decisive victory over Xerxes’ grand army on the plains near Plataea. The great invasion was over: Greece was free. As news spread, envoys from the Greeks in Asia descended on Leotychidas to seek admission to the alliance led by Sparta. If granted, these requests would have embroiled Sparta in overseas wars for years to come, for the Great King would certainly not give up his rich satrapy of Ionia without a bitter fight. Leotychidas therefore made a counterproposal: the Ionians should abandon their cities in or near Asia and immigrate over the sea to their original homeland. The port cities of traitorous Greeks who had surrendered to Xerxes could be cleared out and handed over to the Ionians. Xanthippus and the Athenians opposed the proposal. They stated that Ionia had been colonized long ago from Athens and that no one should rob the Ionians of the cities that they had founded in those far-off days. At their demand, the Greeks of Samos, Lesbos, Chios, and other islands were all sworn into the alliance.

  Though late in the season, the Greek fleet, now reinforced by Ionians, set out from Samos on a final mission. Despite the onset of contrary winds they voyaged northward to break Xerxes’ bridges. They were too late—storms had already swept the pontoons away. Local informants told Leotychidas that the big cables now lay in Sestos, a city on the European shore of the Hellespont. The high walls of Sestos were also sheltering all of the Persians left in the area. Unwilling to storm the place, Leotychidas declared that the fleet would return to Greece.

  Xanthippus and the Athenians parted company with the admiral. Supported by contingents of the new Ionian allies, they remained at the Hellespont after the departure of the Spartans and Peloponnesians. Lacking siege equipment, they settled down to starve the defenders into submission. At last the desperate Persians slipped over the walls by night and escaped into the countryside. Some fell into the hands of Thracian tribesmen, who sacrificed the Persian commander to one of their gods. The Athenians caught most of the rest near a beach called Aegospotami (“Goat Rivers”), about twelve miles from Sestos. Among the prisoners was a Persian governor who had desecrated a Greek sanctuary by having sex with his concubines on sacred ground. Though the Persian offered a kin
g’s ransom of three hundred silver talents for himself and his son, Xanthippus had him crucified as if he had been a pirate. As the Athenians voyaged homeward, they carried in the holds of their triremes the immense bridge cables that had for a short time yoked Europe to Asia.

  The Athens to which they returned was scarcely recognizable. The Persians had destroyed everything except the houses where their officers were billeted, so the city had to be reconstructed from the ground up. In this vast undertaking Themistocles moved once more to the forefront of Athenian life. The Spartans discouraged the Athenians from rebuilding their city wall on the grounds that it might serve as a Persian stronghold if Xerxes came back. Themistocles had to use all his cunning to distract the Spartans while the entire population of Athens rushed to complete the job. After the victory at Plataea the Greeks had sworn not to rebuild the temples burned by Xerxes: their scorched ruins would forever bear witness to Persian sacrilege. There was no ban, however, on raising new temples. Themistocles dedicated a new sanctuary in the Piraeus and built a temple to Artemis, truly the goddess of best counsel, near his own house in Athens. On the banks of the Ilissus River the Athenians raised their new temple to the god they had not previously worshipped: Boreas the North Wind, destroyer of Persian ships. In these and other holy places they hung the cables from Xerxes’ bridges as offerings of gratitude to the gods.

  With the city in ruins, Themistocles tried to persuade his fellow citizens to abandon the old site around the Acropolis and rebuild Athens directly on the coast. He failed, but the Assembly did vote to finish constructing a fortified port at the Piraeus, a project that had lain dormant for more than a decade. They also voted to build twenty new triremes each year and offer incentives to attract skilled craftsmen from other cities to immigrate to Athens. All of these initiatives originated with Themistocles.

  When the time came to launch the triremes for the second campaigning season after Salamis, the Athenians allotted command of their squadron to Aristides the Just. Four years earlier he had been ostracized after opposing Themistocles’ proposal to build a fleet with the silver from Laurium. Now, like most of his countrymen, Aristides embraced the idea that Athens’ future lay with the sea. He had won glory in the fighting on Psyttaleia island at Salamis and at the battle of Plataea the previous summer. The Spartans assigned the admiralship of the allied fleet to Pausanias, supreme commander at Plataea, who was acting as regent for Leonidas’ young son. Pausanias was a tactician of genius and a dangerous megalomaniac, though that did not become clear till later.

  Expanding the range of naval activity, Pausanias first led the fleet to Cyprus and then, having stirred up a rebellion against the Persians throughout the island, cruised around the entire western end of Asia Minor to Byzantium, a Greek colony lying at the gateway to the Black Sea. After capturing Byzantium, the Spartan admiral became increasingly tyrannical and inaccessible even to his own allies. Eventually some of the allied contingents mutinied. The Ionians begged the Athenians to take over the leadership of the fleet. Such an act would ratify the informal arrangement of the previous autumn, when Xanthippus had led a united Athenian and Ionian fleet at Sestos. In addition to sharing a common ancestry, the Ionians put more trust in the Athenians to protect them from reconquest by Persia. Athenians were energetic and adventurous; Spartans (with the exception of the volatile Pausanias, of course) tended to be stolid and earthbound. The universal respect inspired by Aristides also played a part in their decision.

  When the government in Sparta sent a new admiral to Byzantium to replace Pausanias, the Ionians refused to take orders from him. The die was cast. The frustrated admiral went home to Sparta, and the Peloponnesian triremes also abandoned the expedition. Aristides remained behind with the fleet of Athenians and Ionians to lay the foundations of a new world order in which Athenians would lead a league of their own.

  The Ionians proposed that they and the Athenians form a new naval alliance patterned after the Spartan-led alliance that had won the war against Xerxes. The Spartans had convened their councils at the Isthmus; the Athenians and Ionians would meet on the island of Delos, in the heart of the Aegean. Within the alliance Athens would play the role of hegemon (literally “the one who goes in front”) or leader. Athenian generals would command the allied fleet, and Athens would take the lead in all decisions, with the council of allies serving in an advisory capacity. Their mission was simple: perpetual war against the barbarian. The new Athenian alliance would exact revenge on the Persians for all the injuries that they had done to the Greeks.

  Because this new alliance was dedicated to naval warfare, it needed something that Sparta’s alliance had never required: regular contributions of money and ships. The huge crews of rowers would have to be paid; new triremes would have to be built and old ones repaired. A standing fleet was far more costly than an army to maintain, and it remained a heavy financial burden even when the ships were in port.

  To ensure that each ally shouldered a fair share of the burden, the Athenians proposed a system much like the annual tribute of the Persian Empire. Each city or island would be assessed a yearly contribution based on its resources and would pay either in cash or in kind (that is, by sending triremes) as Athens determined. Aristides himself was to make the assessments. Contributions of silver would be sent each spring to Delos, and entrusted to ten Athenian citizens bearing the grandiloquent title of Hel lenotamiai or “treasurers of the Greeks.” The proper name of the new alliance was The Athenians and Their Allies. Later historians dubbed it the Delian League.

  Aristides made an initial assessment of tribute that yielded 460 silver talents each year. The amount would grow as more Greeks joined the alliance. The Athenians decreed that those with large fleets, such as the islanders of Samos, Lesbos, Chios, Naxos, and Thasos, would contribute quotas of ships. Other allies possessed only small and antiquated galleys; they paid in silver from the start. When all were in accord, the representatives on Delos swore oaths of allegiance to the new Athenian alliance on behalf of their cities. Then they ceremonially cast iron bars into the sea. This act symbolized their intention that the oaths would endure until the iron rose again. It was a heady moment. Gazing east from Delos, they must have thought the Persian Empire looked big enough to sustain an eternity of pillage and plunder.

  To lead the new allied expeditionary force, the Athenian Assembly appointed none of the successful naval commanders of the previous three years—Themistocles, Xanthippus, Aristides—but Cimon, a newcomer to the generalship. It was he who had rallied the city’s young horsemen to the naval effort before Salamis. Cimon was a tall, athletic man with a crop of curly hair and a genial, gregarious manner. His father was Miltiades, his mother a Thracian princess. Part of his youth had been spent in his family’s fiefdom on the northern shore of the Hellespont, watching the rich argosies sailing downstream from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

  Now just thirty-one years old, Cimon launched the new alliance on its first campaign. The most pressing target seemed to be Eion, a walled city on European soil that was still in Persian hands. Eion lay on the Strymon River in Thrace, the native land of Cimon’s mother, and commanded access to the Thracian gold fields. Cimon’s allied forces disembarked and defeated the enemy in a battle outside the city; but then the surviving Persians defied the Greeks from behind Eion’s strong fortifications. Cimon promptly imitated the Persians’ own penchant for engineering feats. He turned the course of the Strymon so that the river flowed against the city’s walls. As they were made of mud brick, the walls began to melt. In despair, the Persian commander committed suicide, and Cimon was able to take the town. Those who had collaborated with the Persians were sold into slavery, and the proceeds were divided among the cities and islands of the alliance. Cimon turned the collaborators’ rich farmlands over to Athenian settlers.

  This dramatic success brought the first campaigning season of the new alliance to an end. The grateful Athenians set up a war memorial at the main entrance of the Agora. Its inscr
ibed verses compared Cimon and his troops to the Athenians who fought in the Trojan War, “masters of warlike arts and leaders of valiant men.” Pleased with their choice of general, the Assembly continued to send Cimon out to lead allied expeditions for fifteen seasons. As his tally of victories mounted, so too did membership in the alliance, which eventually reached a total of about 150 cities and islands.

  Cimon’s most popular exploit involved him in a quest for sacred relics: the bones of the hero Theseus. The Athenian navy had established itself as a force in the world: it was time to endow it with a patron hero and a creation myth. Theseus—voyager, liberator, slayer of monsters—seemed the right hero. In his youth Theseus had entered the Labyrinth at Knossos and killed the Minotaur, a fearsome beast that was half-man, half-bull. By this daring exploit he had freed Athens from its bondage to King Minos of Crete, who had demanded a regular tribute of Athenian youths and maidens to feed the Minotaur. During his long life Theseus took part in so many other quests and adventures that the phrase “Not without Theseus!” became proverbial. He was supposed to have died on the island of Scyros, but no one knew his burial place.

  Several years after the founding of the Delian League, the Delphic Oracle announced that the Athenians must retrieve Theseus’ bones and worship him as a divine hero. Cimon undertook the mission. After a long search on Skyros, he happened to see an eagle tearing at a mound of earth. Recognizing the omen, Cimon ordered his men to dig. They uncovered a sarcophagus containing a sword, a spear, and the skeleton of a very big man. With elaborate ceremony Cimon conveyed the bones back to the Piraeus in his flagship. The Athenians welcomed the relics with parades and sacrificial offerings and laid the bones to rest in a sanctuary in Athens devoted to Theseus’ cult. An annual festival by the sea commemorated the date when Theseus was supposed to have begun his epic voyage, just as a second festival in the autumn celebrated his return. Each year the steersmen of Athens held a festival in honor of the man from Salamis who had piloted Theseus’ galley to Crete and back.