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

by John R. Hale

  Historical narrative: Diodorus Siculus, book 16; Demosthenes, Philippics, Olynthiacs, and other orations; Aeschines, On the Embassy and other orations; Isocrates, To Philip and other orations. A reconstruction of these decades is presented by J. R. Ellis in “Macedonian Hegemony Created,” in The Cambridge Ancient History Volume VI: The Fourth Century B.C., ed. D. M. Lewis et al.

  The life and career of the orator Demosthenes: Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes. Evidence for the orator’s family and early experience as a trierarch is presented in the entry for Demosthenes in John K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600-300 B.C. Aeschines and other contemporaries questioned the practical value of Demosthenes’ opposition to Philip. The same negative view was expressed in the second century B.C. by Polybius, followed by a host of historical writers down to the present day. This book, taking Demosthenes’ consistent championship of the navy as a starting point, attempts to offer a more positive view of his personality, politics, and patriotism.

  Passages quoted from Demosthenes’ orations to the Assembly: On the Navy Boards, 1 and 29, adapted from the translation of J. H. Vince; First Philippic, 15, 16, 29, 40, and 50, translation by R. D. Milns; Third Philippic, 51 and 69. Demosthenes reflects on Philip’s advantages over a democratic leader such as himself, “First, he had absolute rule over his followers . . .”: On the Crown, 235-36, translation by John Keaney.

  Chapter 20. In the Shadow of Macedon [339-324 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 294: Isocrates, Panegyricus 21, adapted from the translation by George Norlin, Loeb Classical Library, 1928.

  “If the lightning that struck us”: Demosthenes, On the Crown, 194, adapted from translation by John Keaney. Historical narrative of Macedonian victories, the recognition by the Greeks of first Philip and then Alexander as their supreme war leaders, and Alexander’s campaigns in Asia: Diodorus Siculus, books 16 and 17; Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes and Life of Alexander; and narratives of Alexander’s expedition by Arrian, Quintus Curtius Rufus, and Justin (epitomizing the history of Pompeius Trogus). For a comprehensive history of Alexander’s career see A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great.

  New ships added to the Athenian navy, quadriremes and quinqueremes: John Morrison, “Hellenistic Oared Warships 399-31 B.C.,” in The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times. Philo’s Arsenal: Elvind Lorenzen, The Arsenal at Piraeus.

  The philosophical school at the Lyceum: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, book 5, “Life of Aristotle” and “Life of Theophrastus.” Excerpts from three treatises deriving from the school of Aristotle—Problems, Meteorology, and Mechanics—are quoted or adapted from the English versions in J. Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Sources for quotations from the works of Aristotle are as follows: “From the collection of constitutions”: Nicomachean Ethics, 1181B; “The constitution to which Aristides pointed and Ephialtes accomplished”: The Constitution of Athens, 41, translation by P. J. Rhodes; “At Athens there is a difference between the dwellers in the city itself and those in the Piraeus”: Politics, 5.3; “The large population associated with a mob of seaman”: Politics, 7.6, the two translations from the Politics being by T. A. Sinclair and T. J. Saunders.

  The monument of Lysicrates, with a frieze showing Dionysus transforming Etruscan pirates into dolphins, and the building projects of Lycurgus: John M. Camp, The Archaeology of Athens. The colonizing expedition of 324 B.C. to the Adriatic led by Miltiades and including Lysicrates as a trierarch: Athenian inscription found in the nineteenth century at the Piraeus, inscribed on a broken marble slab, and numbered IG II2, 1629. For translation and commentary, see P. J. Rhodes and Robin Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404-323 B.C. (Oxford, U.K., 2003).

  Chapter 21. The Last Battle [324-322 B.C.]

  Epigraph, page 311: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, lines 68-69.

  Historical narrative of Alexander’s last years and Athenian leadership in the war against the Macedonians: Diodorus Siculus, books 17 and 18; Plutarch, Life of Alexander, Life of Demosthenes, and Life of Phocion. The opposition of upper-class Athenians to the war: Diodorus Siculus, 18.10. The Athenians call on the Greeks to follow their lead in making war on the Macedonians after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.: Diodorus Siculus, 18.10.1-2.

  Naval battles of the Hellenic War (also known as the Lamian War) in 322 B.C.: Diodorus Siculus, 18.15, in which two naval battles and destruction of Athenian ships are mentioned; also Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, in which the false report of victory at the battle of Amorgos and the towing home of wrecks is described, and Moralia, 338A, where Plutarch refers to the light Athenian losses at Amorgos, in contrast to the glory that Cleitus claimed for his victory. Thucydides’ verdict that the Athenians had lost the Peloponnesian War because of their own internal dissen sions: Thucydides, 2.6.65.

  The version of the naval war against the Macedonians presented in this book retains Diodorus’ statement that Cleitus destroyed many Athenian ships near the Echinades Islands in western Greece (perhaps by catching them on shore, as Lysander had done at Aegospotami). It also equates Diodorus’ two defeats that Cleitus inflicted on the Athenian fleet under Euetion with, first, the shadowy operation in the Hellespont referred to in a couple of inscriptions and, second, the famous battle at the island of Amorgos in the Cyclades. The battle of Amorgos is the only one of these naval actions listed on the ancient chronological table known as the Parian Marble, where it is entered under the year 323-322 B.C. Current scholarly views on how best to deal with this meager and scrappy evidence can be found in articles by Peter Green and Brian Bosworth, in The Macedonians in Athens, 322-229 B.C., ed. Olga Palagia and Stephen V. Tracy (Oxford, 2003).

  The breaking of Athenian democracy: Diodorus Siculus, 18.18, and Plutarch, Life of Phocion. The manuscripts of Diodorus, book 18, state that according to the terms of surrender to the Macedonians, twenty-two thousand Athenians lost their citizenship rights. Diodorus’ figure is commonly emended to twelve thousand, to match the number given by Plutarch. Peter Green has suggested that twelve thousand was the number of Athenian citizens who actually went into exile, while the remainder stayed home despite abusive treatment. (Peter Green, “Occupation and Co-existence: The Impact of Macedonians in Athens, 323-307,” in Macedonians in Athens, cited above.) The ancient evidence is also discussed by Lawrence Tritle in Phocion the Good.

  The disharmony between upper and lower classes that appeared repeatedly in Athenian history was best described by Plutarch in his Life of Pericles, chapter 11: “Below the surface of affairs in Athens, there had existed from the very beginning a kind of flaw or seam, such as one finds in a piece of iron, which gave a hint of the rift that divided the aims of the common people and the aristocrats.” (Translation adapted from Ian Scott-Kilvert.) Nicias reminds the Assembly that a trireme’s crew can perform at its peak for only a short time: Thucydides, 7.14.

  The Athenian navy ceased to exist in 322 B.C. following the Macedonian garrison’s occupation of the Piraeus, when the Assembly allowed the onshore administrative organization of the fleet and the Navy Yard to lapse. After that watershed date, Athens occasionally launched ad hoc fleets of warships, just as any Mediterranean city might do to meet a crisis or fulfill a commitment to a hegemon or ally. In the decade following their loss of maritime autonomy, the Athenians several times sent out fleets at the behest of Macedonian rulers (Diodorus, 18.5.8). In 279 B.C. Athenian warships rescued Greeks who attempted to block an invading army of Gauls at Thermopylae, and some years later the Assembly sent five ships westward to aid the Romans in their war against Carthage (Pausanias, 1.4.3 and 1.29.14). Philo’s Arsenal and the Navy Yard at the Piraeus endured until 86 B.C., when they were destroyed at the orders of the Roman general Sulla.

  ANCIENT SOURCES

  Aeschines (ca. 397-322 B.C.), Athenian actor turned orator. He was the principal political opponent of Demosthenes during the period of conflict with Macedon. Aesc
hines’ three surviving speeches provide valuable insights into the range of public opinion at Athens, along with details about contemporary personalities, events, and policies.

  Aeschylus (ca. 525-455 B.C.), Athenian playwright. A veteran of the battles at Marathon and Salamis, Aeschylus frequently alluded to maritime and military matters in his tragedies, of which seven survive. His Persians includes a poetic account of the battle of Salamis.

  Androtion (ca. 410-340 B.C.), Athenian “atthidographer” or chronicler of the local history of Attica. Androtion served as governor of Amorgos during the time of the Second Maritime League. Almost seventy fragments of his work survive.

  Aristophanes (ca. 450-385 B.C.), Athenian playwright. His surviving comedies—from Acharnians of 425 B.C. to Plutus of 388 B.C.—are an invaluable source for reconstructing the political, social, sexual, and maritime life of Athenians in the Golden Age. Horsemen of 424 B.C. and Frogs of 405 B.C. are particularly important for their references to the Athenian navy.

  Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), philosopher, born at Stagira in northern Greece. His school at the Lyceum maintained Athens’ place as the center of Greek philosophy. A pupil of Plato, Aristotle was famous for having tutored Alexander the Great and for his biological fieldwork in Lesbos with Theophrastus. His Rhetoric culls naval and maritime turns of phrase from contemporary orators, while his Politics shares his teacher Plato’s negative view of the effects of naval power on a city-state. The corpus of works attributed to Aristotle or his school include treatises called Mechanics, Meteorology, and Problems, all of which contain material relating to ships and the sea. In the late nineteenth century, in a most important discovery in the field of classical papyrology, a copy of a Constitution of Athens attributed to Aristotle was found among the reams of ancient papyri in the British Museum. Amid its chronological review of Athens’ changing political systems, this long-lost work provides many new details about naval history as well.

  Ctesias (fifth century B.C.), Greek medical doctor from Cnidus in Asia Minor who served at the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes II. His history of the Persian Empire survives only in fragments but differs from the accounts of Herodotus and other writers especially with regard to numbers of troops and ships. References both to the expedition of Xerxes and to the Athenian expedition to Egypt in the 450s appear among the fragments of Ctesias.

  Demosthenes (ca. 384-322 B.C.), Athenian orator and advocate of naval power. Posterity has remembered him best for his Philippics, brilliant speeches that attacked the Macedonian menace under Philip II.

  Diodorus Siculus (first century B.C.), Sicilian Greek historian. His encyclopedic library of classical history provides alternative versions for events recounted by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, drawing on such lost writers as Hellanicus of Lesbos, Ephorus of Cyme, and perhaps the Oxyrhynchus historian or “P” (see below). Diodorus’ reputation has fluctuated more wildly than that of any other ancient writer, but for some events, such as the Peace of Callias and even entire battles, he remains an important source.

  Diogenes Laertius (third century A.D.), Greek biographical writer. He did for philosophers what Plutarch had done for Greek and Roman men of action. Diogenes Laertius drew on more than two hundred ancient sources to create anecdotal Lives of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and many others.

  Eupolis (ca. 450-410 B.C.), Athenian playwright and contemporary of Aristophanes. The fragments of his comedies provide details about Athenian naval figures and maritime life. Ancient scholars claimed that Eupolis wrote the passage in Aristophanes’ Horsemen in which the Athenian triremes discuss, like angry women, a proposal to send them to Carthage. Eupolis’ comedy Taxiarchs brought the Athenian general Phormio onstage as a leading character.

  Euripides (ca. 480-406 B.C.), Athenian playwright. He introduced many innovations into Attic tragedy through his ninety or so plays, of which nineteen survive. Many of them were parodied by Aristophanes. Though apparently lacking the direct contact that Aeschylus and Sophocles had with the Athenian navy, Euripides wrote detailed descriptions of ships and maritime exploits in Helen, Iphigenia in Aulis, and Iphigenia Among the Taurians.

  Hermippus (fifth century B.C.), Athenian playwright. His comedies included scenes with rowers and other nautical subjects. Again, as with all poets of the Athenian Old Comedy except Aristophanes, only fragments of Hermippus’ plays survive.

  Herodotus (ca. 485-425 B.C.), Greek historian, born in Halicarnassus but in later life a citizen of the panhellenic colony at Thurii in southern Italy. Herodotus’ historical work in nine books, often called The Histories, wove eyewitness accounts, oral traditions, and local chronicles into an epic account of the wars between Greeks and Persians. Herodotus is the indispensable source for the Persian Wars down to the capture of Sestos in 479 B.C. As Herodotus said himself, he considered it his mission to record the historical traditions of the Greeks—not necessarily to believe them.

  Hippocrates (fifth century B.C.), medical pioneer, from the island of Cos in the Athenian Empire, who founded a school based on the careful recording of symptoms and their daily progress. Among the cases preserved in the immense Hippocratic corpus of writings (much or all of which was written by his followers) are some that deal with mariners.

  Homer (ca. eighth century B.C.), Greek epic poet from Asia Minor and fountainhead of Greek literature. His works contain descriptions of ships and voyages: the “Catalog of Ships” in the Iliad purports to record the number of ships that Agamemnon levied from the different kingdoms of Greece for the expedition to Troy (Athens contributed fifty), while the episode in the Odyssey in which Odysseus builds a raft or vessel on Calypso’s island remains the most detailed literary account of the ancient shipwright’s art.

  Isocrates (436-338 B.C.), Athenian patriot and teacher of rhetoric. Immensely long-lived, he was born while the Parthenon was still under construction and died shortly after the battle of Chaeronea. Isocrates circulated his “speeches” as political pamphlets and addressed such important issues as panhellenism, Athenian imperialism, and the rise of Macedon.

  Nepos, Cornelius (first century B.C.), Latin writer. His short biographies of famous generals may have inspired Plutarch, more than a century later, to write more extensive Lives of Greek and Roman leaders. Like Plutarch, Nepos wrote biographical essays on Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Alcibiades, and Phocion. But Nepos also treated some important Athenian commanders ignored by Plutarch, such as Miltiades, Thrasybulus, Conon, Iphicrates, Chabrias, and Timotheus.

  Oxyrhynchus Historian or “P” (fifth to fourth century B.C.), anonymous Greek historian whose work survives only in fragments. He picked up Greek history where Thucydides broke off in 411 B.C. and continued it down to 395 B.C., a decade after the official “end” of the Peloponnesian War. Passages from his work were recovered on scraps of papyrus in the ancient rubbish dumps at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, west of the Nile. Correspondences between his history and the version preserved in the text of Diodorus Siculus suggest that Diodorus at times used “P” as a source. The Oxyrhynchus historian is often at variance with Xenophon, whose Hellenica is the principal surviving contemporary source for this period. Many identifications have been proposed, but none has won universal acceptance.

  Pausanias (second century A.D.), Greek from Magnesia in Asia Minor. His Description of Greece provides historical background about hundreds of classical buildings and statues that were still standing during the time of the Roman Empire. Pausanias often quotes inscriptions that have now vanished and sometimes anecdotes from local guides as well. Among his passages most important for Athenian naval history are his descriptions of the tombs in the state cemetery along the Sacred Way, starting with those of Thrasybulus, Pericles, Chabrias, and Phormio next to the city gate and ending with those of Ephialtes and Lycurgus near the entrance to the Academy.

  Plato (ca. 429-347 B.C.), Athenian philosopher and disciple of Socrates. Plato’s dialogues contain numerous nautical images, along with anecdotes concerning such Athen
ian naval commanders as Nicias and Alcibiades. Many passages are harshly critical of the Athenian navy. Plato also wrote the myth of Atlantis as an allegory of the archetypal thalassocracy or naval power.

  Plutarch (ca. A.D. 50-120), Greek biographer, philosopher, scholar, and essayist from Chaeronea in Boeotia. He also served as a priest of Apollo at Delphi. Such essays as “Were the Athenians more notable for war or wisdom?” reflect Plutarch’s wide reading in historical sources, many of them now lost to us. His most important works for Athenian naval history are his famous Lives. Plutarch wrote biographies of Theseus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, and Phocion. Passages in his biographies of such important non-Athenians as Lysander, Philip II, and Alexander the Great also shed light on Athenian naval history.

  Polyaenus (second century A.D.), Macedonian writer on tactics. He dedicated his compilation of stratagems to the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Athenian naval exploits are represented by entries on Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Tolmides, Pericles, Phormio, Diotimus, Nicias, Alcibiades, Aristocrates, Thrasyllus, Conon, Iphicrates, Timotheus, Chabrias, and Phocion. For some major battles, such as Phormio’s “Battle of Fifty and Thirty” and Timotheus’ victory at Alyzia, Polyaenus is the only surviving source. The entertaining trireme tactics of the Athenian naval commander Diotimus also appear only in Polyaenus. The final two sections in the Florentine codex’s summary of Polyaenus are “Naval affairs” and “Capture of coastal sites and cities.” Intriguingly, Polyaenus seems to have had access to an ancient pilots’ manual: he describes several stratagems credited to specific steersmen on warships, including a Corinthian who faced the Athenian fleet at Syracuse.