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

by John R. Hale

  Symposia and metaphorical seafaring: M. I. Davies, “Sailing, Rowing, and Sporting in One’s Cups on the Wine-Dark Sea,” in Athens Comes of Age: From Solon to Salamis, ed. William Childs. Seafarers and sex: Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy.

  Epigraph for Part Three, page 123: Pericles’ speech to the Athenians in 430 B.C., in Thucydides, 2.64, translation by Rex Warner.

  Chapter 9. The Imperial Navy [446-433 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 125: R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci, vol. VIII, fragment 155.

  The life and vision of Pericles: Plutarch, Life of Pericles; Thucydides, 2.35-46, “Pericles’ Funeral Oration”; also Donald Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy; Philip A. Stadter, A Commentary on Plutarch’s Pericles; and Loren J. Samons, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles. The building program, including the Parthenon: Plutarch, Life of Pericles; Jeffrey M. Hurwit, The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles.

  Pericles’ eloquence compared to the work of bees: Eupolis, Demes, fragment 102. Pericles explains the nature of an eclipse to his steersman: Plutarch, Life of Pericles, 35. Pericles likens Athens to the “School of Greece” and gives his opinion of the citizen who does not participate in public affairs: Thucydides, 2.41 and 2.40. Herodotus on the poor performance of the rebellious Ionian fleets at Lade in 493 B.C.: Herodotus, 6.7-16 and 7.139, translations by Aubrey de Sélincourt. Sophocles on the cowardly commander during a storm at sea: Sophocles, Ajax, lines 1142-46, translated by E. F. Watling.

  The maritime empire: Russell Meiggs, The Athenian Empire, a work that includes maps of each district, lists of subject cities and the tribute that they paid, a chronological overview of the empire, and numerous specialist studies. For the expansion into the Black Sea, see also Marianna Koromila, The Greeks and the Black Sea. The Samian War of 440 B.C.: Thucydides, 1.115-17, and Diodorus Siculus, 12.27-28. The Panathenaea festival: Jenifer Neils, et al., Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens.

  Chapter 10. War and Pestilence [433-430 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 138: Aeschylus, Suppliants, lines 438-42, adapted from the translation by Philip Vellacott, Penguin Classics, 1961.

  Athenian conflicts with Corinth and Megara escalate into a full-blown Peloponnesian War: Thucydides, books 1 and 2 (including all quotations attributed to Pericles); Diodorus Siculus, 12.30-45; Plutarch, Life of Pericles. The adventures of Socrates and Alcibiades at the siege of Potidaea: Plato, Symposium. Pericles on the difficulties faced by Spartans in trying to learn seamanship: Thucydides, 1.142, translation by Rex Warner. The fear felt by the people on seeing their steersman fail: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, lines 922-23. Many attempts have been made to identify the great plague of Athens, but no known disease fits all the symptoms listed by Thucydides. Overview of the events leading up to the war, and the campaigns of the first two years: Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.

  Chapter 11. Fortune Favors the Brave [430-428 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 154: Xenophon, Memorabilia, 3.1.6.

  Life and character of Phormio: Eupolis’ comedy Taxiarchs (fragments); Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.23.12, with information on Phormio’s background linked to mention of his statue on the Acropolis. Pausanias mentions Phormio’s disgrace and the people’s discharging of his debts so that he can accept the command in Acarnania in the winter of 430-429 B.C. For additional details see book 3, fragment 8 of Androtion’s Atthis, or local chronicle of Attica, published with translation and commentary in Phillip Harding, Androtion and the Atthis. The lines from an Athenian comedy that describe Phormio setting up a lead tripod (instead of three silver ones) are fragment 957 in R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci, vol. VIII.

  Phormio’s early campaigns: expedition to Acarnania to capture the city of Amphilochian Argos (in the 450s?) leading to an alliance between Acarnanians and Athenians, reported in Thucydides, 2.68. Phormio uses playacting to fool the citizens of Chalcis (probably the Chalcis in Aetolia, west of Naupactus) into opening their gates: Polyaenus, Stratagems, 3.4.1. With thirty Athenian ships Phormio uses cavalry-style maneuvers to gain a victory over an enemy fleet of fifty: Polyaenus, Stratagems, 3.4.2. Polyaenus is the only source for this major battle. For a discussion of Phormio’s tactics see John R. Hale, “Phormio Crosses the T.” Phormio and two other Athenian generals bring a relief fleet to join Pericles at Samos during the Samian War of 440 B.C.: Thucydides, 1.117.

  The topography and history of Naupactus: Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10.38.5. Phormio sent with twenty ships to Naupactus in winter 430-429 B.C.: Thucydides, 2.69. The little walled harbor at Naupactus is artificial and just the right size for the twenty triremes that the Athenians habitually stationed there during the Peloponnesian War. Although the harbor fortifications visible today are Venetian (Naupactus is the ancient name for Lepanto, famous for the last great battle of galleys in A.D. 1471), it is possible that the walls rest on ancient Greek foundations laid down by Phormio in the winter of 430-429 B.C.

  The battle of Patras in summer 429 B.C.: Thucydides, 2.83-84, and Diodorus Siculus, 12.48. Some scholars have asserted that the “dawn wind” that disrupts the Peloponnesian kyklos seems too convenient to be true, but it still blows almost daily in the eastern part of the Gulf of Patras and is mentioned in manuals for pilots in the Mediterranean.

  Thucydides calls the cape where Phormio camped Rhium of Molycria. This was also the site of the sanctuary of Poseidon. Its modern name is Antirrio, while modern Cape Rhium or Rhio lies across the channel on the southern shore. Today a spectacular suspension bridge joins the two capes.

  Phormio’s speech to the mutinous crews and the battle of Naupactus: Thucydides, 2.88-92 (translation by Rex Warner), and Diodorus Siculus, 12.48 (where Phormio is called “puffed up with pride” for tackling an enemy so much more numerous than his own fleet). Some medieval manuscripts of Thucydides’ text state that Phormio faced seventy-seven enemy ships in the battle at Naupactus; others give the figure as fifty-seven. The higher figure seems more likely in view of the Peloponnesian array in four lines of ships (their line would have been shorter than Phormio’s if the Spartans commanded only fifty-seven ships) and the statement that Timocrates’ flying squadron of twenty triremes was added to the right wing, rather than being itself the right wing.

  The racing turn around the anchored freighter is credited to Phormio and the Paralos in Polyaenus, Stratagems, 3.4.3. (Thucydides identifies neither the ship nor its commander.) Victory trophies from the battle set up in the stoa of the Athenians at Delphi, with an inscription also mentioning the dedication to Poseidon and Theseus at Rhium: Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10.11.5.

  Phormio’s tactical genius: Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, where a comparison is drawn between Phormio’s encircling maneuver against the Peloponnesian kyklos at Patras and a traditional Mediterranean tuna hunt or “mattanza.” See also John R. Hale, “General Phormio’s Art of War,” in Polis and Polemos, ed. Charles D. Hamilton and Peter Krentz, in which Phormio’s approach to tactics is compared to that of the slightly earlier Chinese military genius Sunzi or Sun-tzu.

  Chapter 12. Masks of Comedy, Masks of Command [428-421 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 171: Sophocles, Antigone, lines 715-17.

  Historical narrative: Thucydides, 2.93-5.25; Diodorus Siculus, 12.49-74; Plutarch, Life of Nicias. Modern works on this period include Donald Kagan, The Archidamian War, and John B. Wilson, Pylos 425 B.C. : A Historical and Topographical Study of Thucydides’ Account of the Campaign. Remarkable archaeological evidence for Cleon’s successful expedition is a crumpled bronze hoplite shield inscribed THE ATHENIANS FROM THE LACEDAEMONIANS ON PYLOS that was discovered in a cistern during the American excavations in the Agora: see John M. Camp, The Athenian Agora: Excavations in the Heart of Classical Athens.

  The comedies of Aristophanes: Acharnians in 425 B.C. (source of the exchange about the beetle and lamp w
ick setting fire to the Navy Yard), Horsemen, or Knights, in 424 (source of his comparison of a playwright to a rower working his way up to the office of steersman, as well as the choral Hymn to Poseidon), and Peace in 421. For a reconstruction of the conditions under which Aristophanes wrote and produced his plays, see Kenneth McLeish, The Theatre of Aristophanes.

  Chapter 13. The Sicilian Expedition [415-413 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 185: Sophocles, Ajax, lines 1081-83.

  Historical narrative: Thucydides, books 6 and 7. (Nicias’ letter sent to the Assembly in winter 414-413 is quoted from Thucydides, 7.11-15, translation by Rex Warner.) Additional historical material: Diodorus Siculus, 12.77-13.33; Nepos, Life of Alcibiades; Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades and Life of Nicias; Polyaenus, Stratagems, 1.39 (Nicias), 1.40 (Alcibiades), 1.42 (Gylippus), and 1.43 (Hermocrates). Excavations at Athens have unearthed official inscriptions related to various phases of the Sicilian campaign, ranging from the vote of the Assembly that enlarged the original plan of the expedition to Syracuse, to the list of Alcibiades’ personal property put up for public auction after his condemnation in absentia. Modern accounts of the Athenian campaign at Syracuse include Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, and Peter Green, Armada from Athens. Timon of Athens congratulates Alcibiades: Life of Alcibiades, 16. The promise to show the Athenians that he is “still alive”: Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades, 22.

  Archaeological surveys and excavations at Syracuse have revealed that in the fifth century B.C. the Little Harbor covered an extensive area that is now dry land. The theater and the nearby quarries where the Athenian prisoners were held after their surrender can still be visited today. The impressive fortifications that crown the heights of Epipolae postdate the Athenian campaign. On the other hand the inconvenient rocky coast at Plemmyrium where Nicias stationed his triremes is still exposed, as is the stretch of shore south of the marshy estuary of the Anapus River in the Great Harbor where the Athenians built their stockaded camp. The remains of ships and weapons that sank during the naval battles in the Great Harbor now lie sealed under a protective layer of mud from the Anapus River. In this zone underwater archaeologists may one day recover extensive physical evidence for the battles described by Thucydides, from javelin points to entire charred hulls of Syracusan fire ships.

  Epigraph for Part Four, page 203: Pericles’ Funeral Oration of 431 B.C., in Thucydides, 2.43, translation by Rex Warner.

  Chapter 14. The Rogue’s Return [412-407 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 205: Sophocles, Women of Trachis, lines 655-57.

  Historical narrative of Athenian naval recovery after the Sicilian disaster, the split between oligarchic Athens and the democratic fleet on Samos, and naval victories up to the return of Alcibiades to Athens in 407 B.C.: Thucydides, book 8, which breaks off after the victory at Cynossema in autumn 411 B.C.; Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.1-5 (including text of the Spartan message home after the battle of Cyzicus); Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29-33 (on the oligarchic regime of the Four Hundred); Diodorus Siculus, 13.34-69; Nepos, Life of Thrasybulus and Life of Alcibiades; Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades. For this and the following two chapters, an authoritative account with references to modern scholarship can be found in Donald Kagan, The Fall of the Athenian Empire. “Men in exile feed on dreams”: Aeschylus, Agamemnon, line 1668, translation by Gilbert Murray. The observation that democracies are at their best when things look worst: Thucydides, 8.1. “The sea can wash away all human ills”: Euripides, Iphigenia Among the Taurians, line 1192. The Athenians both love and hate Alcibiades: Aristophanes, Frogs, lines 1425-26. The Spartans as “most convenient enemies”: Thucydides, 8.99.

  Despite the central role that the Hellespont played in Greek history, the waterway and its coasts have not been extensively explored by archaeologists. The exact location of many sites, including important cities like Sestos, remains to some extent conjectural. Part of the problem lies with the burial of ancient settlements under modern construction. In addition, the course of the stream may have altered over the last twenty-five hundred years, eroding away some classical sites altogether and leaving others well inland from the modern coastline. It is clear that the naval battles of Cynossema and Abydos (fought in late summer 411 B.C.) must have taken place in the lower reaches of the Hellespont, but it is difficult to be more precise at this time.

  Cyzicus, a Greek city on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmara, or Propontis, presents a different set of problems. First, aerial photographs show that the ancient harbor of Cyzicus, held by the Spartans in the spring of 410 B.C., lay on the sandy isthmus that joins the peninsula to the Asiatic mainland, but is now completely silted up. Second, the accounts of Xenophon, Plutarch, and Diodorus (supplemented by Frontinus, a Roman writer on military tactics and stratagems) do not make it absolutely clear where the Athenians set their army ashore on the night before the battle. In 2006, in company with Muharrem Zeybek of Izmir, I conducted a survey of the mainland shore west of the isthmus. We found that the steep and rocky coasts would have prevented a landing anywhere except at the point where the isthmus joins the mainland. This spot was identified as Mindarus’ emergency landing place (equivalent to the ancient site of Cleri, or Kleroi, “the allotments”) by Kagan, Fall of the Athenian Empire, pages 242-43. I believe that in the darkness before dawn the Athenians set their army ashore on the long sandy beach of modern Erdek (ancient Artaki), close to the unwalled city of Cyzicus but hidden from Spartan lookouts by a high rocky spur of land. Alcibiades’ speech to his men before the battle of Cyzicus: Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.1.14, adapted from translation by Rex Warner.

  The little island called Polydoros, where Thrasybulus and Theramenes concealed their fleet and where the Athenians erected a trophy after the battle, lies just off the point of this rocky spur, and is separated from it by the channel through which Alcibiades led his flying squadron of twenty to lure Mindarus away from the safety of Cyzicus harbor. It rained heavily when I visited Erdek in 2006, with conditions like those Xenophon described on the night before the battle. As a result of the downpour some of the modern roads and streets were impassable due to runoff and mudslides. The Athenian troops would have found it hard going to work their way along the coast to the northern edge of Cyzicus, but they could certainly have counted on accomplishing their mission undetected by the Spartans who held the city. Spartans’ message home after their defeat at Cyzicus: Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.1.23. The Athenians now elect as generals men who would formerly not have been chosen as wine inspectors: Eupolis, Cities, fragment 219.

  Chapter 15. Of Heroes and Hemlock [407-406 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 221: Euripides, Hecuba, lines 28-30, translated by John Davie, Penguin Classics, 1998.

  Historical narrative of the naval battles at Notium, Mytilene, and the Arginusae Islands, and the trial of the Athenian generals in 406 B.C.: Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.5-7 (including Euryptolemus’ speech in defense of the generals, translation by Rex Warner); Oxyrhynchus historian or “P,” fragment 4, mentioning a naulochein, or naval ambush, associated with the battle of Notium; Diodorus Siculus, 13.69-103 (including the episode of Thrasyllus’ dream before the battle of the Arginusae Islands); Nepos, Life of Conon; Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades. Message of Callicratidas to Conon regarding Athenian fornication with the sea: Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.6.15.

  Socrates as epistates or president of the Assembly at the trial of the generals: Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.7.15, and Memorabilia, 1.1.18 and 4.4.2; Plato, Apology, 32, and Gorgias, 473. Socrates is not mentioned in the account of the trial in Diodorus Siculus, 13.101-2, nor is his participation included in the anecdotes about Socrates presented in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Because Socrates’ heroic role at the trial is attested to only by his former students Xenophon and Plato, some modern historians doubt the truth of their account.

  There are a number of important Athenian official inscriptions that survive from these years, including a marble slab that thanks king Archelaus of Macedon for
allowing the Athenians to build new warships in his country. See Russell Meiggs, Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World, page 128. The most important inscription is IG II2 1951 (now renumbered IG i3 1032), which is spread over a number of fragments that were found in the area of the Erechtheum on the Acropolis and the slope below it. This is a list of complete crews for a fleet of triremes. At least eight ships are represented on the surviving fragments. Each ship was commanded by a pair of trierarchs, an innovation that links the inscription to the last decade of the fifth century B.C. or later. Each crew includes large numbers of non-Athenians and slaves (identified by place origin and name of master, who is in some cases a trierarch on board the same ship).

  Any explanation of this inscription should take into account its provenance: the sanctuary atop the Acropolis, not the Agora or the Navy Yard at the Piraeus. (Most of the fragments came from the foundations of a small Christian church that was erected within the shell of the Erechtheum.) Lionel Casson supported the interpretation of earlier scholars that linked this inscription to the battle of the Arginusae Islands. See Casson’s Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, page 323. The inscription may have been set up on the Acropolis as part of a victory monument. It is my belief that the placement on sacred ground would also ensure that slaves who fought in the battle could point to a permanent and ineradicable record of their emancipation. Similar inscriptions attesting to the emancipation of slaves cover the wall of the Athenian Stoa in Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi. The interpretation of events presented in this book places the emancipation of the slaves before the battle as an emergency measure to man the ships (like the offer of Athenian citizenship to metics or resident aliens), rather than bestowed in gratitude after the battle as is commonly thought.