The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History

by Chester G Starr

  Sea power is more potent than land power, because it is as pervading as the element in which it moves and has its being. Its formidable character makes itself felt the more directly that a maritime State is, in the literal sense of the world, the neighbour of every country accessible by sea. It would, therefore, be but natural that the power of a State supreme at sea should inspire universal jealousy and fear, and be ever exposed to the danger of being overthrown by a general combination of the world. Against such a combination no single nation could in the long run stand, least of all a small island kingdom not possessed of the military strength of a people trained to arms, and dependent for its food on overseas commerce. The danger can in practice only be averted-and history shows that it has been so averted-on condition that the national policy of the insular and naval State is so directed as to harmonize with the general desires and ideals common to all mankind, and more particularly that it is closely identified with the primary and vital interests of a majority, or as many as possible, of the other nations.28

  In 431 Athens with its empire and Sparta with its allies came to open war, the famous Peloponnesian War immortalized by Thucydides, who decided at its outbreak that it was to be the greatest conflict ever in Greek history. For him the root cause was Spartan fear of the ever growing power of Athens, but though he tried to exculpate Pericles it is clear that the political leader of Athens did much to bring about the war at the time it broke out. For modern students of sea power this protracted conflict provides as valuable guidance as the vicissitudes of British naval history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, both in understanding the utility of sea power and also in the dangers of overreliance on this one factor.

  The first phase of the war from 431 to 421 was a contest of the elephant and the whale. The Peloponnesian league had only limited naval strength and did not possess the funds either to build a large navy or hire the necessary rowers. Although its powerful army invaded and laid waste Attica, it could not attack Athens proper, which was safe behind its stone walls and drew much of its food from overseas; nor were the Spartans able to keep their army active throughout the agricultural season. Sparta stood for liberty, but it could not aid Athenian subjects overseas to secure their freedom. When Mitylene rebelled in 428-27 the Athenian fleet inexorably reduced it once more to obedience.

  On the other hand Athens could not force Sparta to surrender, for it dared not meet the invincible Spartan hoplites by land. Pericles had laid down the fundamental lines along which Athens would fight. When the enemy invaded Attica its citizenry abandoned their ancestral homes and poured into the safe refuge of the city until the Spartans retreated. Although they raged against Pericles and even temporarily removed him from office, he calmly adhered to his policy of wearing down the enemy by naval raids about the Peloponnesus. Above all, Athens must keep its fleet intact, on which rested its imperial revenues and its overseas supplies of grain. This cautious approach, very similar to the En glish naval strategy during the Napoleonic wars, could not bring victory, but it could avoid defeat.

  Down to 421 the Athenians had the better of the widely scattered actions. Sparta itself they could not touch, but at points about the Peloponnesus they set up coastal forts to which disaffected helots and others might escape. Corinth, on the other hand, suffered severely. The Athenians secured naval mastery in the Gulf of Corinth through the brilliant battles of their admiral Phormio, and from their base of Naupactus they virtually prevented Corinthian trade to the west. By a chance of war the Athenian fleet cut off a whole battalion of Spartans on an island at Pylos and forced it to surrender. Among other prisoners were 120 Spartan "Equals," a sizable proportion of the Spartan citizen body, and the Spartans thereafter dared not invade Attica lest these hostages be executed.29

  The last major actions in the first phase of the war took place along the coast of Macedonia, where a brilliant Spartan leader, Brasidas, was able to get at Athenian subject states by land and incite them to rebel. In a battle at Amphipolis both he and the radical Athenian leader Cleon were killed (422). Both sides were ready to call a halt to the inconclusive struggle, and the Spartans acquiesced in a peace treaty that led to massive discontent and defection of their allies, whose grounds of complaint against Athens were almost ignored in the treaty.

  Athens had done as well, or better, than could have been expected. The Aegean empire was intact; in western waters its power had risen; the Peloponnesian league had been sorely shaken. Throughout history a naval power has usually been able to defeat a land power only if it secures a powerful land ally; but no major Greek state had been willing to link itself to Athenian imperialism. Argos, the one possibility, had been bound to neutrality by a treaty with Sparta that expired in 421.

  Yet the Athenians were far from satisfied inasmuch as their eager expansionism had been essentially checked. During the strains of war the temperament of the assembly became steadily harsher, especially after Pericles died in 429, a victim of a great epidemic akin to typhus; the more vengeful rabble-rouser Cleon had then become its main adviser. The epidemic and overcrowding affected everyone; the devastation of the countryside and the losses of the army in several land battles damaged the rural classes especially.

  Now that the war was over, Athenian opinions were sharply divided, and so was Athenian leadership. Nicias, a conservative aristocrat, was a second Pericles, except that his religious piety and high sense of duty were not matched by equal firmness and clarity of thought. Far more radical was the handsome and popular Alcibiades, a pupil of Socrates. First Alcibiades persuaded the Athenians to ally themselves with Argos and attempt land operations in the Peloponnesus; though the upshot was a defeat of the Argives and a small Athenian force at Mantinea (418), the peace was not formally broken.

  Then came a tempting opportunity to intervene in the affairs of Sicily. During the war the Athenians had made some diplomatic and naval gestures toward unseating its main power, Syracuse; now an appeal from the native state of Segesta promised more extensive local support. Nicias stood in opposition and pointed out the basic strategic requirement that Athens remain powerful in the Aegean, but Alcibiades successfully rallied the spirit of excitement and possible economic profits among the citizens. The assembly not only voted to send an expedition but also set its size on the large scale that Nicias had proclaimed necessary; and it placed in command a triumvirate consisting of Nicias, Lamachus (a professional general), and Alcibiades. That in itself was almost enough to ensure disaster for the greatest amphibious operation ever launched in Greek history, but the fleet of some 100 triremes and troopships rowed out of the harbor of Piraeus in gala array (June 415), met a further contingent off Corcyra, and set course for Sicily.

  The main Syracusan leader, Hermocrates, tried in vain to convince his fellow citizens to meet the Athenians on the sea;30 but the Athenian leaders gave the Syracusans time to prepare by land as they fell to wrangling among themselves about the proper course of action. Alcibiades was soon recalled by his enemies in Athens on grounds that he had profaned the sacred Eleusinian mysteries during a drunken revel. Rather than return to face the probability of death, Alcibiades fled to Sparta where he urged the Spartans to aid Syracuse and to resume the war against Athens. Although Sparta sent only the general Gylippus to command the Corinthian relief expedition to Syracuse, this leader invigorated the Syracusans to withstand a great siege by the Athenian force.

  Lodged in a swampy corner of the great harbor of Syracuse, Nicias grew more and more despondent and called for help, which was provided by a further expedition in 413. When the Athenians still failed to carry the city, their commanders decided to retreat by sea; but since an eclipse of the moon had just occurred, Nicias refused to leave for 27 days. During that period the Syracusans strengthened their ships and in a hand-to-hand naval battle in the great harbor defeated the Athenian forces. When finally Nicias led off his dejected army by land, they were cut to pieces by Syracusan cavalry. Nicias and the other Athenian leaders were executed, th
e Athenians died of hunger and thirst in the quarries where they were imprisoned, and the Athenian subjects were sold into slavery. All told 50,000 men and over 200 triremes were lost in one of the most poorly conceived amphibious operations ever attempted in history.

  By 413 Sparta was again at war with Athens. Finances were so imperiled that Athens had to shift to a general tax of 5% on seaborne commerce; the Athenian empire tottered amid widespread disaffection and even revolt among its subjects. Spartan fleets could cruise the Aegean almost at will and were aided by contingents from Syracuse and other west Greek states, but the Athenians stubbornly held on, aided by Spartan indecisiveness"the Spartans proved to be the most remarkably helpful enemies that the Athenians could have had."31

  In the earlier stages of the war the Persian satraps of Asia Minor remained uncommitted, but from 411 on they came to the aid of Sparta by providing funds with which it could really challenge Athenian hegemony. Spartan admirals, unfortunately, lost battle after battle, but finally the able commander Lysander took charge and on September 1, 405, swooped across the Hellespont, where the Athenian fleet lay anchored at Aegospotami, and seized its ships while the crews were mostly on shore. He then swept down the Aegean, driving ahead of him all the Athenian colonists to Athens, which helplessly endured a siege by sea and land for several months before starvation forced surrender.

  Athenian thalassocracy had failed but not entirely through its own inherent weaknesses. True, the Athenians could never get a useful land ally, as the British were generally able to do in their wars with France, Spain, and Germany; they also treated their dependent states as subjects while the Spartans presided over an alliance in which the allies had a real voice. The fundamental cause of defeat nonetheless was the ability of the Spartan political and military system to endure the stress of war and produce able commanders whereas Athenian democracy proved unstable and was led ever more poorly by demagogues. The Spartans also discovered that victory could be reached only by attaining naval mastery; they and the Romans later are almost unique in all history in facing the need to gain naval power and actually securing it.

  After the surrender of Athens the allies of Sparta wished to see the oppressor city destroyed, but Sparta was content to tear down its Long Walls to the accompaniment of flute-girls, restrict its navy to 12 ships, and install an oligarchy. Sparta remained master of the Aegean world by land and by sea until it fell at odds with Persia over the Greek states of Asia Minor, which were to be surrendered to the Persians in repayment for their financial aid; when Sparta went back on its bargain the Persians reenforced the Phoenician fleet, hired the former Athenian admiral Conon, and in 394 defeated the Spartan navy in the battle of Cnidus. Thereafter Persia was the hidden master of Greek politics until the rise of Macedonia. When Athens ventured to interfere in Asia Minor during the reign of Artaxerxes he threatened to send his navy into the Aegean, and Athens evacuated Asia at once.

  As this event may suggest, Athens had quickly recovered its democratic structure, its economic strength, and its cultural position; during the fourth century Athens was far more the center of the Grrek world than it had ever been. It rebuilt its Long Walls, constructed a great arsenal at the naval port of Zea on the east side of the Piraeus promontory, and even had the financial strength to fashion a new navy that had 120 active ships in 356 and 170 in 322 (its dockyards inventories eventually list no less than 360 trireme hulls).32 Although Athens dared not incur Persian hostility it was at least master of the western Aegean waters.

  Why the new navy? Largely because it was useful in protecting the route of supply from south Russia; Athenian warships went as far as the Crimea to convoy grain ships and Athens' might was exerted against such states as Byzantium when they sought to interfere with the flow of grain. By law Athenian traders had to bring grain to Athens, and only one-third could again be exported; "the foreign policy of the Athenians was largely a grain policy."33 Athenian commerce also needed protection against pirates; several naval cruises were designed specifically to put down these predators, and Athens even established a colony at the head of the Adriatic to protect its merchants from Illyrian marauders.34 Trade had become ever more important to Athens; an envoy could assert in its assembly, "The majority of you derive your livelihood from the sea, or things connnected with it. . . . The sea is your natural element-your birthright."35 Also important in nurturing naval interest was the memory of Athenian greatness on the sea in the past; by the fourth century orators and pamphleteers such as Demosthenes and Isocrates often incorporated in their arsenal of arguments an appeal to the pride of the Athenians in their earlier history.

  Athenian public finances were always hand-to-mouth, and in the fourth century were burdened by far greater charges to support the poorer citizens by payment for attending the assembly and even the public festivals. Yet there were sufficient resources to build and maintain the navy. For a time there was a second Athenian confederacy, supported by the willingness of the island states to aid in assuring peaceful seas, but the limited contributions of the league came to an end by 357, when Athens again showed signs of imperialistic tendencies. Thereafter Athens had to depend on its own income, tapped by means of a revision of the system of trierarchs.36

  In the fifth century each trireme had had a captain or trierarch, appointed for a year by the board of generals, who had not only to command his vessel but to keep it in good order. Through the opening years of the Peloponnesian War this post was more a responsibility than a burden, and one citizen, Clinias, had even provided his own ship and crew in the Persian wars.37 The stresses after 431 made the task so onerous that at times two wealthy men were appointed to share the position, as remained the custom in the fourth century. In 357 a panel of the 1200 richest citizens was organized, with subpanels or symmories to provide trierarchs and the funds for the running expenses of ships. Resident aliens could be appointed and even a man such as Isocrates could serve as trierarch when over 80 years of age, operating through a contractor.38 About 340 Demosthenes carried out a further reorganization that limited the panel of possible trierarchs to the 300 wealthiest citizens.

  Theoretically, a trierarch secured his warship at the beginning of the year from the 10 overseers of the dockyards, complete with tackle and sails; the oarsmen were drafted by the local units of government, the demes. Provision of food and so on was the responsibility of the generals. In practice, nonetheless, the system worked poorly. Apollodorus, a new citizen, was proud in 360 to be appointed trierarch but had largely to recruit his own rowers, provide better tackle, and pay his men for their food when the general failed to do so; moreover much of his crew deserted. "My men, knowing that they were skilled oarsmen, went off to take jobs wherever they figured they could get the highest pay."39 It is a marvel that the navy remained a valuable asset to Athens.

  Across the middle years of the fourth century Philip of Macedonia wove his way through the complicated tissue of Greek politics to become ever more powerful; in 338 his army met and defeated the citizens levies of Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea. Thebes he treated brutally; to Athens he was much more forgiving, partly because of its proud cultural inheritance but also because he needed the aid of its navy. When his son Alexander succeeded to the throne and carried out Philip's plan to invade Asia Minor, he actually made little use of Aegean naval resources, and instead carried out the most ingenious scheme of dealing with hostile sea power ever executed in history; he simply marched along the Levantine coast as far as Egypt, taking the Persian ports as he went. The strategy required two major battles by land and the long-protracted siege of Tyre, the most famous in antiquity, but was in the end successful.

  A recent eulogy of sea power asserts, "The sea has supplied mobility, capability and support throughout Western history, and those failing in the sea power test-notably Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler-also failed the longevity one."40 Whatever may be the truth concerning Napoleon and Hitler, this is meaningless rhetoric as applied to Alexander. When he had reached the far
thest end of his conquests in India he had a fleet constructed to operate in the Persian Gulf, and only the fact that neither he nor his admiral Nearchus was aware of the monsoon winds prevented his ships from providing food and water for the return march to Babylon across the Gedrosian desert. In preparation for his next adventure, the conquest of Arabia, he even had warships disassembled and transported overland from Phoenicia to Babylon.41 It was Caesar, not Alexander, who several times came close to disaster by failing to make proper use of the sea.

  After the death of Alexander in 323 his Macedonian regent Antipater faced a general revolt in Greece, which he put down without mercy. To counter the Athenian navy he summoned Phoenician forces which eliminated that fleet in the battle of Amorgos in 322. So ended almost two centuries of Athenian naval power, which had helped to protect and nourish one of the most remarkable cultural outbursts of all time. The future on the sea lay in the hands of the great monarchies carved out of Alexander's empire and also to a state that thus far had played no role in naval history.42

  CHAPTER IV

  The Age of Monster Fleets

  When Alexander died in Babylon in 323 he had a posthumous son and a half-brother among other kin. Unfortunately he also left a group of extremely able marshals; in a few years all of Alexander's blood had been exterminated, their survival too threatening, as the generals fell to fighting for the inheritance of the vast empire. Temporarily the wily satrap of Phrygia, Antigonus the One-Eyed, gained control of everything save Macedonia and Egypt; the latter had been seized by Ptolemy immediately after Alexander's death, together with Cyprus, the south coast of Asia Minor, and several Aegean posts.'

  Coping with Ptolemy would require a fleet, so Antigonus set to work to build his own navy, but on that large scale which characterized all his schemes. Eight thousand men were employed in cutting timber from the Lebanon and Taurus mountains, and shipbuilding centers were created at Tripolis, Byblos, Sidon and also in Cilicia; even Rhodes accepted a part in the naval preparations though it tended to favor Ptolemy. His son Demetrius was assigned naval responsibility and in 306 justified his appointment by destroying the Ptolemaic fleet off Salamis in Cyprus; Ptolemy lost 120 warships, 180 transports, and most of his overseas empire.2 Demetrius went on in 305 to attack Rhodes by land and sea but failed in one of the most famous sieges in antiquity. Then the other generals combined against Antigonus and in 301 defeated and killed him in the battle of Ipsus. Demetrius survived and held power for a time in the Aegean but dissipated his strength and died a captive.