Perhaps the single most important development of Classical warfare was the rise of strategic naval power. Beginning in the early fifth century, fleets of oared galleys presented a radical military challenge to the hoplite-dominated, limited war ethos of the polis. The development of naval warfare also had profound effects on the politics, society, and economy of its foremost practitioner, Athens.
Classical Greeks ascribed the building of the first navy to the legendary King Minos of Crete, said to have been the first ruler to aim at thalassocracy, imperial control of the seas. Polykrates, tyrant of Samos in the mid-sixth century, was the first historical figure to organize and deploy a significant fleet. Aigina and Korinth were other early naval powers. Even Sparta took to the sea in the sixth century, amongst other things sending a ship-borne army to overthrow the Athenian tyrant Hippias in 510.
At the beginning of the fifth century, the Athenians were not known for naval power. In fact, they had to borrow ships from Korinth to carry on a feud with Aigina in the early 490s. Nonetheless, one of the first major foreign policy decisions of the Athenian democracy was to dispatch, in 499, a force of twenty ships to aid the Ionian revolt against Persia. The real start of Athenian naval dominance came in 483/2 with the construction, at the urging of the politician Themistokles, of a fleet of more than one hundred large oared galleys. In 480, this formed the backbone of the combined Greek force that defeated a much larger Persian navy in the straits between Salamis and Attika, and subsequently enabled Athens to become dominant in the Delian League, an anti-Persian defensive alliance established in 479. As the Persian threat receded in the following three decades, the Athenians took advantage of their naval supremacy to reshape the Delian League into their own Aegean maritime empire.
Empire brought Athens unprecedented power and prosperity, but it also prompted the hegemonic rivalry with Sparta that culminated in the Peloponnesian War. During the war, naval power was Athens’ lifeline, enabling the Athenians to shelter behind their Long Walls, import food, and conduct far-flung amphibious operations while refusing hoplite battle against the superior Spartan army. Overconfidence in the abilities of their fleet, however, led the Athenians to undertake the disastrous Sicilian expedition of 415-413. Even so, in the last decade of the war their reconstituted fleet continued to excel at sea. The Spartans responded by building, with Persian assistance, a navy of their own. Although repeatedly trounced by the Athenians, the Spartans scored a war-winning naval success in 404, surprising the Athenian fleet on the beach at Aigospotamoi in the Hellespont. Reduced to just twelve ships at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian fleet rebounded in the fourth century, and Athens played a leading, though no longer imperial, role in a second Aegean naval confederacy. Although never nearly as mighty as they had been in the fifth century, the Athenians remained a naval power to be reckoned with until the very end of the Classical period - their last sea battle, a defeat at Macedonian hands, came in 322 off Amorgos in the Cyclades.
The standard warship of all Classical Greek navies was an oared galley, the trieres or trireme. The vessel took its name from the arrangement of its 170 rowers into three levels, closely packed one above the other. Thirty-odd other crewmen, including the captain, a helmsman, sailors, hoplite marines, and archers, perched precariously on deck. Some 35 m long and less than 5 m at the beam, the trireme was optimized for speed and maneuverability. So light was its construction that the vessel had to be held together by tensioned ropes (hypozomata) fitted low down in the hull. Much valuable information on trireme performance comes from an experimental reconstruction, the
Figure 23.7 Reconstruction of Athenian trireme (1992) under oar at Poros. Photo: Alexander Guest. Courtesy: Trireme Trust.
Olympias, built by an international team in the 1980s (Morrison et al. 2000). Rowers on this vessel have achieved short-burst speeds of more than nine knots. Sea trials of Olympias have also highlighted the trireme’s instability, as even a single person walking across the deck can cause significant pitching.
Although it used sails for long-distance travel, in battle a trireme was propelled by its rowers. The vessel attacked by smashing into enemy ships with its bow-mounted ram, a cast bronze prow flared at the end to prevent sticking in a holed opponent. Ancient sources mention two primary offensive tactics, the diekplous (‘‘sailing through and out’’) and the periplous (‘‘sailing around’’). How these worked in practice remains uncertain. Some picture trireme combat as a series of individual dogfights, with swifter vessels turning tightly to hit the sterns of slower opponents (Whitehead 1987: 183-5). More likely, fleets maneuvered as units, either outflanking a shorter enemy line in the periplous, or, in the diekplous, sailing line-ahead to punch through an enemy formation. Either way, great skill on the part of helmsmen and rowers was required to time and execute attacks properly. Successful ram strikes could cause severe damage, shattering oars and pulverizing rowers at the point of impact, although the ships themselves were so buoyant that they tended to float even when disabled and could often be recovered after battle by the winning side.
Ramming tactics were particularly associated with the Athenian navy, which possessed light, fast ships, expert crews, and able commanders. These tactics had not developed overnight. At Salamis in 480, for instance, the inexperienced Greeks, fearing the skilled Phoenician rowers of the Persian fleet, lured their opponents into a narrow strait, where their hoplite marines could more easily grapple and board the Persian ships. As the Athenians became practiced in trireme warfare in the decades after Salamis, they embarked fewer marines, only ten per ship, against the forty carried by vessels of other states, and increasingly emphasized maneuver over boarding. There were other tactical viewpoints, though. During the Eurymedon campaign of the mid-460s, for example, the Athenian general Kimon modified his ships with broader decks and gangways to carry more hoplites. This may have been as much a political as a military decision, as Kimon sought to promote the glory of the hoplites at the expense of poor rowers (Strauss 2000: 321-3).
By the start of the Peloponnesian War, maneuver reigned supreme in Athenian naval circles, ramming and boarding being considered rather old-fashioned. The Athenians displayed their skills abundantly in the first years of the war, notably in the Gulf of Korinth, where a flotilla under Phormion repeatedly defeated larger Peloponnesian squadrons. In one battle Phormion’s triremes literally sailed in circles around a frightened Peloponnesian convoy before closing in for the kill (Thuc. 2.83-4). So formidable were the Athenians that a 40-ship Peloponnesian fleet on the way to assist Mytilene in 427 fled rather than risk a fight after being sighted by a pair of Athenian triremes.
Athens’ enemies, recognizing that maneuver required sea room and lighter, faster ships, found ways to fight back. The defenders of Syracuse, for example, won several naval battles by pinning the invading Athenian fleet in Syracuse’s Great Harbor. In such confined waters, the Athenians found little space for their favored tactics. At close range, moreover, Syracusan archers, slingers, and javelin-throwers found easy targets on the Athenian triremes. The Syracusans unsuccessfully tried a fire ship on one occasion, and both sides employed artificial barriers, including sunken pilings and merchant ships, to protect their triremes. The Korinthians also discovered that Athenian ships, while optimized for high speed and quick turns, were vulnerable to frontal collisions. Exploiting this weakness by fitting their triremes with reinforced prows and training their crews to attack head-on, the Korinthians managed to fight the Athenians to a draw at Erineos in 413. The Syracusans quickly adopted the design and the tactic for their battles in the Great Harbor, with stunningly successful results (Thuc. 7.34-6).
There was more to naval power than sea battle. By controlling piracy, collecting tribute, and escorting merchant shipping, navies made maritime empire possible. Until the very end of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian navy ensured Athens’ survival by protecting the vital grain convoys that sustained the city even when the Spartans occupied the countryside. Through commerce raiding, the Athenians also caused some economic difficulty for their opponents, particularly the Korinthians. Furthermore, fleets enabled states to move ground forces quickly and easily over long distances, using specialized troop carriers as well as cavalry transports capable of carrying up to thirty horses (Morrison et al. 2000: 153-7). Seaborne troops could suppress revolts, launch lightning amphibious raids, establish outposts in enemy territory, or, as in the Sicilian expedition, conduct large-scale invasions. In the later stages of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians even resorted to arming sailors as peltasts to mount improvised amphibious operations (Xenophon Hellenika 1.2.1).
There were several strategic limitations on naval power. Their light construction and cramped confines meant triremes were not sea-going vessels. Each day, crews had to find a port, or at least a shelving beach where they could draw up their ships and disembark to eat and sleep. This made blockades difficult to maintain. The Spartans trapped on Sphakteria in 425-424, for instance, received supplies via small boats despite a strong Athenian naval presence (Thuc. 4.26). More ominously, a fleet drawn up on shore was virtually helpless against surprise attack, particularly if rowers scattered in search of provisions. The Athenians at Aigospotamoi lost their fleet, and thus the Peloponnesian War, this way. Even if a safe anchorage was at hand, triremes could not remain on station indefinitely. Extended immersion caused hulls to become waterlogged, significantly reducing performance. Unless brought into dry-dock regularly for drying and cleaning, triremes were in serious trouble.
Triremes represented the acme of Classical technology, and they were expensive. A fleet required not only ships, but also spare parts, equipment, and supplies such as pitch and paint. Athens, with a navy averaging roughly 150-200 triremes over the course of the fifth and fourth centuries, had to maintain an extensive complex of ship sheds, building yards, and warehouses in its port of Piraeus. Paying for all this required the Athenians to draw on the resources of their wealthiest citizens (Gab-rielsen 1994). In the fifth century, individual trierarchs were responsible for outfitting and maintaining a ship and its crew. Although not professionals, they were expected to accompany their vessels into battle. Such was the expense involved that by the end of the fifth century joint trierarchies, where two or more men combined to pay for a ship, became increasingly common. During the mid-fourth century a further series of reforms created twenty symmories of sixty men apiece, with each symmory financing an equal proportion of the fleet.
Without trained crews, triremes were little more than expensive firewood. Given that a fleet of 100 ships required 17,000 rowers, finding enough oarsmen was a constant concern. In the Athenian navy, a mix of poorer citizens and hired foreigners manned the oars. Some slaves also served as rowers, although the extent of their use remains disputed. Only the state triremes Paralos and Salaminia mustered all-citizen crews (Jordan 1975: 173-84). Rowers could receive up to a drachma a day in state pay, with additional bonuses often provided by trierarchs. To forestall desertion, men received only half their wages on enlistment, the rest being distributed upon return to Piraeus. Even so, in the last years of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans, aided by Persian subsidies, managed to entice numbers of hired rowers away from the Athenian fleet with offers of higher pay.
For the thetes, poor Athenian citizen oarsmen, naval service carried powerful political implications. Just as some fifth-century hoplites appealed to the legend of Marathon to justify their claims to represent the true spirit of Athens, so too could thetes point to Salamis and to Athens’ maritime empire as evidence of their importance to the polis. Rowing together in triremes provided thetes with a shared identity and experience, while the close association of trireme crews fostered political consciousness and discussion (Strauss 1996: 313). The rise of sea power went hand in hand with the development of radical democracy in fifth century Athens. Indeed, an elite writer (‘‘The Old Oligarch’’) of the period reluctantly admitted that ‘‘the poor and ordinary people [of Athens] rightly have greater power than the well-born and the rich, because it’s the ordinary people who row the ships and bring power to the city’’ (Pseudo-Xenophon Ath. Pol. 1.2). If no marble edifices glorified rowers and triremes, the thetes could point to still more impressive symbols of their glory: the arsenals and dockyards of Piraeus, and the prows of their triremes, carrying names such as Eleutheria (‘‘Liberty’’) and Parrhesia (‘‘Freedom of Speech’’).
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