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

by John R. Hale

  Alarms and excursions might come and go, but at Athens the theater was eternal. The eighty-year-old Sophocles had been appointed to a new board of councilors, so his younger colleague Euripides came to the fore. Retreating to an isolated cave on the island of Salamis, Euripides undertook to write tragedies for a people whose lives were now steeped in real tragedy. Thousands of citizens had lost loved ones in Sicily. The entire city was still in a state of trauma from the horrors of the disaster. At this time of deep grief, any tale of bloodshed or divine punishment would have seemed unendurable. In the past, Euripides had produced plays like The Trojan Women that savagely rebuked Athenian arrogance and inhumanity, but he was now a changed man. His new plays were meant not to cut but to heal.

  Instead of harping on death, sorrow, and retribution, Euripides invented a different type of tragedy: the romance. His themes were deliverance, redemption, and reunion. The new plays featured the stock mythological characters and situations of Attic tragedy, but they ended happily. Gods and heroes rescued the innocent from great perils, and loved ones believed dead were discovered alive and well. In his romances Euripides fashioned a theater of escape, but on a higher plane than mere physical escapism and diversion. The new plays were metaphors for renewal, purification, and fresh beginnings.

  The sea dominated Euripides’ romantic tragedies, both as a setting and as a force of nature. His protagonists now always faced dangers at sea, but their trials concluded with daring and joyful rescues. In Iphigenia Among the Taurians the young Orestes, son of King Agamemnon, crossed the Black Sea and rescued his long-lost sister Iphigenia from savage local tribesmen. At the end the actor playing Athena was hoisted up by the crane and hovered over the stage as a deus ex machina. The goddess assured the audience that Poseidon would smooth the waves, while fair winds wafted the wan derers safely to the shores of Attica. Wish fulfillment could go no further. Euripides put his most hopeful and consoling line into the mouth of Iphigenia, a woman stranded upon a foreign shore who had given up hope of rescue: “The sea can wash away all human ills.”

  Soon after the festival of Dionysus, the sea became the theater for an epic conflict that most ancient chroniclers called the Ionian War, though Thucydides regarded it as the final eight-year phase of his great Peloponnesian War. Continuous naval actions and amphibious assaults raged up and down the coasts of Asia Minor from Halicarnassus to Byzantium and embroiled the islands of Rhodes, Samos, Chios, and Lesbos as well. For the Athenians, survival depended upon holding on to Ionia and the Hellespont. For the Spartans, these eastern seaways held the key to defeating a city that was still impregnable at home, thanks to its Long Walls. The Athenians established their principal naval base on the loyal island of Samos, while the Spartan fleet used the harbor at Ephesus on the Asiatic mainland.

  Among the first commanders to cross from Greece to Ionia was Alcibiades. He had pressing personal reasons for making a speedy exit from Sparta. Eros with his thunderbolt had struck again. As sexually irrepressible as ever, Alcibiades had taken advantage of King Agis’ absence with the Spartan army in Attica to seduce his wife, Timonassa. Now he had every reason to believe that the child she was bearing was his own. It would be best for him to get away before the secret became known. After stirring up a revolt against Athens on the island of Chios, he continued eastward to Asia.

  Since neither the Spartans nor the Athenians had enough money to pay their crews, the Great King and his satraps became once again an important force in Greek affairs. In exchange for Persian gold sufficient to engineer the defeat of the Athenian navy, the Spartans were even willing to restore the Greek cities of Asia to Persian rule—an extraordinary offer from men who claimed to be fighting for Greek liberty. Alcibiades took advantage of the negotiations between Spartans and Persians to ingratiate himself with Tissaphernes, the satrap at Sardis. The two men were rogues and opportunists of the same stamp. Amid the cushions and courtesies of the satrap’s court, Alcibiades transformed himself into the luxury-loving companion of Tissaphernes’ feasts and hunting parties.

  Alcibiades gave Tissaphernes two pieces of advice. First, he should provide as little money as possible for the rowing crews, to keep them poor and tied to the Spartan fleet. Second, he should not favor the Spartans exclusively but should also give something to the Athenians so that the two sides would wear each other down. Alcibiades had in fact been distancing himself from the Spartan cause ever since an Athenian victory on a plain near Miletus (another Athenian ally that Alcibiades had persuaded to revolt). It had been a shock for Alcibiades to confront his fellow citizens on the battlefield and to witness their vigorous resistance to the Spartans. Now almost forty, he felt dissatisfied with his life. A great yearning grew in him to be accepted back by his own countrymen. Alcibiades had played the part of a Spartan, and more recently of a Persian. Now he meant to be an Athenian again.

  To achieve this end, Alcibiades decided to instigate an oligarchic revolution among the Athenians. He envisioned himself returning home as leader of the revolutionary party. His complicated intrigues brought about in rapid succession a brutal oligarchic coup at Athens, the overthrow of the democracy, and the establishment of a new government under a group of oligarchs called the Four Hundred. The crew of the Paralos brought word of the revolution to the Athenian naval base on Samos. Defiantly, the mass of citizens serving with the fleet repudiated the tyrannical oligarchs, set up a democratic assembly on the island, and declared themselves to be the true, legitimate Athens. Democracy now resided not in the Agora or on the Pnyx but in the triremes of the navy. Themistocles’ vision of a city in ships had unexpectedly become a reality.

  After their declaration of independence the Athenians with the fleet realized that well-trained crews and good intentions would not win the war with the Spartans. Victory required a master strategist. In this crisis they were driven to offer command of the fleet to the one man who had done more than any other to injure both the democracy and the navy: Alcibiades. He was again with Tissaphernes at Sardis, since the oligarchs in Athens, having happily accepted his hints about a revolution, wanted nothing more to do with him. Now the seemingly impossible had come to pass. As Aristophanes said, puzzling over the mysterious obsession of his fellow citizens for Alcibiades, “They love him and they hate him. They cannot live with him and they cannot live without him.”

  The man sent to fetch Alcibiades was Thrasybulus, a former trierarch who was now the most popular general of the “democracy in exile.” He returned from Sardis with Alcibiades in tow, a legendary figure of larger-than-life vices and powers, a demon who might yet prove to be a savior. Exerting all his charismatic appeal, Alcibiades spoke to the men about his star-crossed life and of the dangers that still faced them. Most of all he spoke of his conviction that he could bring the Persians over to their side. Once he deprived the enemy of Persian gold, the Spartan naval effort would soon wither away. It was a moving and optimistic speech. The men elected him general on the spot. Alcibiades soon showed his value as a leader by deterring a rash plan to launch the fleet and fight a civil war against Athens itself. He pointed out that as soon as the democratic navy left for Athens, the Spartans would quickly seize all the cities of Ionia and the Hellespont.

  In the end, no action on the part of the fleet was needed to terminate the oligarchic regime in the city. Shortly after Alcibiades’ return a naval setback sealed the fate of the Four Hundred. An enemy fleet was menacing Athenian strongholds on the island of Euboea. Under the command of the oligarchs a hastily assembled Athenian fleet suffered a shameful defeat outside the harbor of Eretria. (The inexplicable failure of the Spartans to attack Athens immediately after this battle led Thucydides to dub them “quite the most convenient enemies that the Athenians could possibly have had.”) The disaster at Eretria exposed the impotence of the oligarchs at sea. And if they could not rule the sea, they were unfit to govern Athens. Spontaneously the citizens assembled on the Pnyx and voted to depose the Four Hundred. The revolution was over.

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p; Alcibiades now turned his attention to the Persians. The Great King was sending a large fleet of Phoenician triremes to aid the Spartan war effort. Tissaphernes had been ordered to oversee the union of the Spartan and Persian fleets at the Eurymedon River, and Alcibiades boldly voyaged there himself with a few Athenian triremes in order to frustrate the plan. No one will ever know what wiles or promises Alcibiades employed with his bosom friend, but against all odds they succeeded. To the incredulous rage of the Spartans, Tissaphernes dismissed the newly arrived armada and sent it back to its home ports of Tyre and Sidon.

  Alcibiades took full credit for saving Athens, but when he arrived back at Samos, he found no one to congratulate him. During his absence the theater of war had abruptly shifted to the Hellespont. The new Spartan admiral Mindarus, angered by Tissaphernes’ broken promises, had accepted the invitation of the more trustworthy satrap Pharnabazus to make war in northern waters. Together the Spartan and the Persian hoped to win control of the grain route from the Black Sea and starve Athens into submission. The entire Athenian fleet had followed the Spartans north. Their new base was at Sestos, facing the Spartans at Abydos, on the Hellespont’s southern shore. Thrasybulus and his colleagues had already won a naval victory near a headland called Cynossema (“Bitch’s Tomb”). Expecting another naval battle, the generals in both the Spartan and the Athenian fleets were appealing far and wide for more ships. Alcibiades quickly manned eighteen triremes and set off for the north.

  The seaways were strangely empty, every available galley having been drawn off to the Hellespont. At their overnight stops on shore the Athenians learned that they were following in the wake of a fleet of Spartan reinforcements from Rhodes, now less than a day’s row ahead of them. Should Mindarus launch his attack as soon as those ships reached him, Alcibiades might miss the battle altogether. It was late afternoon when the Athenian squadron finally turned into the mouth of the Hellespont. No ships were in sight, but the stream carried the wreckage of a great battle: oars, timbers, corpses. Beyond a turn in the channel the struggle came into view: two fleets locked in midstream, clashing and colliding as victory still hung in the balance. Alcibiades had arrived in time.

  Both sides took heart when they saw the eighteen triremes coming up the channel with the sun behind them. Each believed the new arrivals to be ships of their own. Not until Alcibiades ran up his purple flag was he recognized. The hard-pressed Athenians cheered; the Spartans and their allies braced for a flank attack. Mindarus had posted an allied contingent from Syracuse on his left wing, at the downstream end of the line. With grim satisfaction Alcibiades bore down on these Sicilian ships, smashing through their ranks and driving them back toward their own shore. The rest of the enemy line went the way of the Syracusans. Unable to reach their harbor at Abydos, they formed a barrier of ships along a stretch of coast where their army could hold off the Athenian attack.

  The Persian cavalry rode up in support as well, led by the satrap Pharnabazus, a conspicuous figure wearing the high-peaked tiara of a Persian lord. He was witnessing at first hand the fruit of his dubious investment in the Spartan naval enterprise. Pharnabazus was not a man to hang back, however, even in a rout. With heroic zeal he urged his stallion far out in the waves, calling on Persians and Spartans alike to join him in driving back the Athenians. His efforts, along with the rising wind, balked the Athenians in their efforts to destroy all of Mindarus’ ships. Even so, they were able to tow back to Sestos not only thirty enemy triremes as prizes but also Athenian ships that had been captured by the Spartans in the early hours of fighting. Alcibiades joined the other generals in erecting a second trophy, this time for victory in the battle of Abydos.

  Alcibiades and his colleagues spent the winter combing the Aegean Sea and Ionia for money and ships. By early spring they had managed to assemble a fleet of eighty-six triremes near the mouth of the Hellespont. At last, thanks to the winds that had destroyed Spartan reinforcements and to their own successes in battle, they outnumbered the enemy. Along with Alcibiades the Athenian naval command was shared by Thrasybulus and Theramenes, a young general recently sent out by the Assembly at Athens. While the three considered their next move, news came that Mindarus and the Spartans had seized Cyzicus, on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara.

  The Athenians knew Cyzicus well. This prosperous city was a longtime Athenian ally. It lay on a narrow isthmus joining the mainland of Asia Minor to a large rugged landmass that projected far out into the sea. The Spartan fleet was lying in Cyzicus harbor, a sheltered embayment in the sand flats of the isthmus. Alcibiades and his colleagues decided first to recapture the city and then, having robbed the Spartans of their base, destroy them in a sea battle at a time and place favorable to the Athenians. With Spartan sea power broken, they might go on to recover Byzantium, the Bosporus, and control of the grain traffic from the Black Sea.

  THE BATTLE OF CYZICUS, 410 B.C.

  Secrecy was now essential. Should Mindarus get wind of their actual numbers, they might never lure him out into the open. So the Athenian fleet became a nocturnal animal, sleeping by day and moving forward only under cover of darkness. On the first night they rowed up the Hellespont, unseen by the Spartan watchmen on the walls of Abydos. On the second they left the Hellespont behind and crossed the open Sea of Marmara to an island that lay north of Cyzicus. No word of their coming was allowed to reach the enemy—the Athenians adopted Alcibiades’ effective policy of arresting any traveler unlucky enough to cross their path, and at their final landfall on the island of Proconnesus they impounded all local shipping and held it in the port. Alcibiades even had the herald proclaim the death penalty for anyone who tried to cross over to the Asiatic mainland.

  As the third night drew on, Alcibiades assembled the men and fired their spirits for what lay ahead. The troops and rowers would face the challenge that had confronted the Persian forces at Salamis: sleepless hours of ceaseless activity, followed by an attack on an enemy that had enjoyed a full night’s rest. Alcibiades reminded his men that the Athenian fleet now had no money at all, while the Spartans enjoyed the unlimited bounty of the Great King. If they wanted to remedy that situation, they must be prepared to tackle every kind of obstacle: enemy fleets, armies, and fortified cities and camps. “You must be ready to face fighting at sea, fighting on land, fighting on walls,” he told the men. A different general might have appealed to patriotism and noble causes. Alcibiades somehow hit the right note with a speech that could have been made by a pirate chief.

  In darkness the thousands of men boarded the ships and pushed off. Ahead lay the rough promontory and desolate range of hills that guarded the northern approaches to Cyzicus. During the night it began to rain. The spring shower thickened to a heavy downpour, drenching the soldiers and officers on the decks. The men might curse, but to the generals the bad weather was a blessing. Rain and mist would wrap the fleet in a cloak of invisibility and drive watchers on the coast to take shelter indoors. The drumming and hissing of the rain on the sea would help them by drowning out the sound of the oars, which could travel far on a still night.

  Guided by reports from the lookouts in the prows, the steersmen felt their way along the coast until they reached the wide curving beach at Artaki. Here the generals set most of the troops ashore. With Chaireas of the Paralos in the lead, the hoplites were ordered to march over the shoulder of the hills to the northern side of Cyzicus. It would be their mission to create a diversion when the fleet launched the main attack on the harbor. By gray dawn light the army company filed inland and vanished into the gloom of the wet, wooded slopes.

  Riding lighter now, the triremes resumed their slow advance until a rocky islet loomed up ahead of them. This landmark was the island of Polydoros, broad at its base but tapering to a conical summit. Here the Athenians divided. Thrasybulus and Theramenes stayed behind, concealing the main fleet behind the islet, just as Homer’s Greeks had once hidden their ships behind the isle of Tenedos near Troy. Alcibiades forged ahead with the force that woul
d serve as the Athenians’ “Trojan Horse,” a vanguard of twenty fast ships. His mission was to lure the unsuspecting Spartan fleet away from Cyzicus. Thrasybulus and Theramenes would then move forward to attack the harbor, while Chaireas and the Athenian troops assaulted the city’s landward side. Alcibiades might even be able to sprint back in time to assist in recapturing Cyzicus, leaving the outnumbered and disconcerted Spartans bereft of their naval station. That, at any rate, seems to have been the modest and workmanlike plan for the day. Given the involvement of Alcibiades, however, something was bound to go wrong.

  The rain had stopped, and the sky was brightening as Alcibiades led his flying squadron through the channel that ran between Polydoros and the neighboring coast. As the Athenian triremes burst into the sunshine, Alcibiades saw that by a stroke of luck Mindarus had already accomplished half his task for him. The full Spartan naval force was already clear of the harbor, though unaware of the Athenian approach. Their admiral had brought them out for morning exercises. Back and forth in front of Cyzicus they were practicing their maneuvers. There were famous men in the Spartan ranks: the general Hermocrates, nemesis of Nicias and the Athenian expedition to Sicily, led the Syracusans; an Olympic athlete named Dorieus commanded a squadron from Thurii in southern Italy. Pharnabazus and his cavalry were still in winter quarters well inland, on the far side of a range of hills, but the satrap’s mercenary army occupied a fort on the heights above the bay. To Alcibiades’ left lay Cyzicus itself, the prize for which all these forces would soon contend.