Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy (20 page)

Rejoining the main fleet, the Athenians discovered that Cimon was indeed with the gods. He had fallen sick and died while they were away. Fired by the spirit of their dead commander, the allied fleet fought a battle against another large Persian fleet and succeeded in capturing one hundred Phoenician triremes. Coming quickly to shore after the victory at sea, the Greek hoplites disembarked and defeated the Persian army on land. It was a victory that echoed Cimon’s own great double victory at the Eurymedon River, sixteen years before.

When the bitter news reached Susa, King Artaxerxes made a momentous decision. He could see no end to the vengeful attacks of the Athenians on his empire. Only four years earlier they had suffered heavy losses of men and ships in Egypt, yet now they were back, threatening to take Egypt from him once again. It was time to end the war that his forefathers had started. Artaxerxes sent riders along the Royal Road to the coast with a message for the Athenians. The Great King invited an embassy from their city to Susa, where his ministers would negotiate an end to hostilities.

When Artaxerxes’ invitation was delivered to the Assembly, the people voted to send Cimon’s brother-in-law Callias to Susa. As hereditary herald of Athens, he was given full powers to negotiate with the Great King. Months later Callias returned with a number of valuable items: golden bowls, a pair of peacocks, and a peace treaty. The Persians agreed to keep their naval forces east of the Chelidonian Islands in the Mediterranean and east of the Cyanean Rocks in the Black Sea. The Great King thus tacitly recognized the Aegean Sea, the Hellespont, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus as Athenian waters. The Persian Wars were over.

While Callias negotiated peace with Persia, the most remarkable generation in Athenian history was passing into retirement. These citizens were members of the annual cohort who had now reached the age of sixty. The turning points of their lives had been turning points in Athens’ fight against Persia as well. They had been the first crop of Athenian babies born into a free city in the year after the last tyrant was thrown out. At twenty they had fought the Persians at Marathon, the youngest Athenians on the field. At thirty they had boarded the triremes with Themistocles at Artemisium and Salamis. Before reaching the end of their active service at forty-five, they had followed Cimon to the Eurymedon River.

Now they would turn over to their sons the headship of their families and the governance of Athens. They themselves were embarking on the sheltered lagoon of old age, a placid round of family rites and jury duty. In the shade of Cimon’s plane trees, their spears and oars exchanged for walking sticks, they would recount their own deeds and remember fallen comrades. As youths many had taken the traditional oath: “I shall hand on my fatherland not less, but greater.” More than any other generation, these men had fulfilled that promise.

The hostilities with the Spartans and their allies still remained to be resolved. For years the Athenians had been aiding democratic factions in the cities of central Greece. As oligarchic rulers were expelled, these cities joined the Athenian alliance and received Athenian garrisons to ensure democratic rule and loyalty to Athens. By the time of the Peace of Callias an Athenian sphere of influence stretched from the northern Peloponnese almost to Thermopylae. When the forces of the exiled oligarchs finally struck back, the general Tolmides impetuously demanded that the Assembly give him an army to protect the land empire. Pericles opposed the expedition, but the Assembly voted in favor. The army lost a great battle at Coronea in Boeotia, Tolmides was killed, and many of the troops were taken prisoner. To ransom these hostages, the Athenians gave up their newly won territories and concluded a Thirty Years’ Peace with the Spartans and their Peloponnesian allies. In the future the Athenians recognized the wisdom of Pericles and accepted rule of the sea as their destiny.

CHAPTER 8

Mariners of the Golden Age
[MID-FIFTH CENTURY B.C.]

—Strabo

 

 

 

 

AN ATHENIAN SERVING ON ONE OF HIS CITY’S TRIREMES commanded a wide view of the world, and the world teemed with wonders. Great fin whales forged through the Aegean, leviathans that were guided on their way (or so the Greeks believed) by cunning pilot fish. At the opposite end of the scale, the delicate paper nautilus scudded along by spreading a translucent membrane to the breeze, a miniature ship under full sail. Dolphins leaped and sported alongside the triremes, encouraged by whistling and singing from the mariners. Sailors believed that dolphins brought good luck and at times even carried castaways to shore. Solitary sea turtles basked on the surface or plied their powerful forelegs like pairs of oars. Elsewhere a migrating school of tuna might suddenly appear, snaking across the sea’s surface in a turbulent stream of flashing fins and frothing water. These big blue and silver fish were worth a fortune. When fishermen spotted the migrating tuna, they would corral them within a ring of nets, then kill them with clubs or spears.

Steersmen navigated by the stars on clear nights and by landmarks during the day. The archipelagoes of the Aegean were drowned mountain ranges with peaks rising high above the sea, and the mainland coasts were mountainous also. In the watery realm of the Athenian navy, a lookout on a mast top was seldom beyond sight of land. The mountains brewed winds, however, and through most of the summer stiff northerlies ruffled the sea from midday till sunset. The Greeks called them etesian or “seasonal” winds. When they were blowing, the triremes plowed through choppy waves or stayed in port. Occasionally the mountains created violent down-drafts called katabatic winds, cold gusts that hit the sea and fanned out in a rushing wall of white spume. Then the rowers would hear a curse from the lookout followed by a shout of “Squall! Squall coming!”

At day’s end the evening star Hesperus appeared above the western horizon, herald of the great wheeling pageant of moon, stars, and planets. Winds dropped after sundown, and triremes could make good time by rowing through moonlit nights. Sometimes the dark sea was lit by a phosphorescent glow, and balls of greenish-white fire burned at the ends of the yardarms. Like the dolphins, these lights meant good luck. They signified the presence of two divine guardians of seafarers, the twin heroes Castor and Pollux. As dawn approached, the celestial fires faded until only one remained. It was the morning star Phosphoros, the “Light Bearer,” bringing up the sun to start another day.

During these years of peace Athenian ships ventured far beyond their home waters. A sacred trireme carried Athenian envoys to Libya, where they consulted the oracle of Zeus Ammon at Siwa in the Sahara Desert. In the north Athenian emissaries negotiated with the local Scythian and Thracian tribal chiefs for access to wheat, salt fish, and other resources. One diplomatic mission went west as far as the Bay of Naples in Italy and the famous Greek colony at Neapolis (“New City”). There the Athenian crews saw a high conical mountain called Vesuvius, quiet for so long that the world had forgotten it was a volcano.

The same voyage took them past the famous rocks of the Sirens off the Amalfi coast, where a pair of beautiful seductresses once tried to lure Odysseus from his ship with their irresistible song. The general in command of the mission to Neapolis was Diotimus. On another occasion Diotimus’ service to his city took him two thousand miles east of Athens as an envoy to the Great King at Susa. Expeditions like these left their mark on the Athenian character, breeding citizens who were active, adventurous, restless, and proud of their exploits.

The experiences of the common Athenian in seafaring and fighting were beginning to rival those of the aristocrats. He might not know Homer by heart, or trace his ancestry back to a warrior who had fought in the Trojan War. But the average thete had now
seen
Troy with his own eyes, a small hill off to the south as one rowed into the Hellespont on the run to Byzantium. During his naval service the ordinary citizen would follow the sea routes hallowed by the legends of Odysseus, Theseus, Jason, and Cadmus to Asia, Africa, Europe, and the islands between. Although he cut a modest figure ashore in foreign parts, carrying his rowing pad as his only weapon instead of shield and spear, a mariner from Athens was the Odysseus of his time, widely traveled, many-minded, facing dangers on the deep in the struggle to bring himself and his shipmates safely home.

As winter approached and the seafaring season drew to its close, the widely scattered triremes returned like homing pigeons to the Piraeus. While still far out at sea, they were greeted by a flash of light on the summit of the Acropolis, four miles inland. It was the sun reflected on the shining spear tip and crested helmet of a colossal bronze statue of Athena, one of the first great masterpieces of the Athenian artist Phidias. The statue had been nine years in the making and stood thirty feet tall. As the triremes approached the end of their voyaging, the crews strove to look their best with perfect timing and oarsmanship. There was a popular saying, “As the Athenian goes into the harbor,” for any task done with utmost precision. The mariners knew well that thousands of critical eyes were watching and judging their performance.

The two small harbors on the east side of the Piraeus promontory, Zea and Munychia, were entirely devoted to the navy, while the large Cantharus Harbor on the west was both naval and commercial. At the start of an expedition triremes from the other two harbors of the Navy Yard rowed around to the jetty at Cantharus for inspection before setting out, and at times of extreme urgency the Council actually moved down from Athens and held its meetings on the jetty until the fleet was at sea.

Around the rims of all three harbors curved long rows of shipsheds, built at a cost that would ultimately reach a thousand talents. Each returning trireme was assigned to a berth in one of these sheds and hauled up the sloping ramp till it rested high and dry for the winter. The ship was then stripped of its gear, and the sails and rigging were carefully dried before being put into storage. Trierarchs accused of losing naval equipment or mariners condemned for breaches of discipline might choose to slip away furtively through the streets and seek asylum in the sanctuary of Artemis on Munychia Hill. Strict security ruled at the Navy Yard, as hundreds of guards kept watch for everything from outbreaks of fire to the stealing or smuggling of pitch and cordage.

An Athenian mariner’s first stop outside the gates of the Navy Yard was likely to be the barbershop. In Athens haircuts and hairstyles had social and political implications. Aristocratic horsemen still wore long braids and gold hairpins. The common man (and the politicians who spoke for him) preferred a short cut, though not quite a crewcut. The customer sat on a low stool, his body draped in a sheet to catch the shorn locks. The barber then cropped and curled the hair, anointed the head with scented oil, and trimmed the beard to a neat point. (At Athens any man with a long unkempt beard ran the risk of being mistaken for a philosopher.) Dyes were available to hide gray patches. Along with hairdressing and manicures, the barber dispensed a ceaseless stream of anecdotes and observations. The mariner just arrived in port could catch up on all the latest news and add an account of his own voyage to the barber’s store of information. Greek barbers were notoriously talkative. On being asked how he wanted his hair cut, one wit was supposed to have told his barber, “In silence.”

From the barbershop the Athenian mariner emerged neatly trimmed and fully up to date. Flush with pay, he was now ready to plunge into the roiling marketplace of the Piraeus, located just beyond the perimeter of the shipsheds at Zea Harbor. Here the returning mariner could indulge in the luxuries that had been denied him during months of hard service with the fleet. Athenians of the Golden Age never tired of enumerating the seaborne imports that flowed into the Piraeus. From Libya came ivory, hides, and the medicinal plant and dietary supplement called silphium. Egypt provided papyrus and sailcloth. Cretan cypress wood was good for carving images of the gods, and Syrian incense could be burned at shrines in thanksgiving for a safe return.

The food vendors provided fare fit for the Great King himself. An Athenian feast could include salt fish from the Black Sea, beef ribs from Thessaly, pork and cheese from Syracuse in Sicily, dates from Phoenicia, raisins and figs from Rhodes, pears and apples from Euboea, almonds from Naxos, and chestnuts from Asia Minor. The rounds of flat bread, often dressed with relish or fish sauce, were usually made from Russian, Egyptian, or Sicilian wheat. As they enjoyed these delicacies, Athenians could rest their feet or elbows on brightly colored carpets and cushions from Carthage. If the dinner lasted into the night, a bronze lampstand of Etruscan manufacture from central Italy might light the convivial scene. In the words of the comic playwright Hermippus, who wrote a catalog of imported goods to be found in the markets of Athens:

Some unlucky Athenian seafarers, however, were seeking not a grocer but a doctor. Rowing and maritime service involved certain occupational hazards. Among the doctors who treated such conditions were disciples of a revolutionary medical practitioner named Hippocrates. He was born on the small island of Cos in the eastern Aegean, a member of the Athenian alliance, but his teachings had spread far and wide. Hippocrates created a school of medicine patterned after the schools of philosophy. His disciples and successors swore the sacred “Hippocratic” oath, but they based their scientific work not on piety but on observation of symptoms, experimentation with different treatments, and careful recording of case histories.