The Athenian Navy
Dave U. Random
the Birth of Democracy" by John R. Hale (Amazon.com:
http://xrl.us/LordsSea )
NY Times
Mr. Hale�s thesis in �Lords of the Sea� is that the
construction of the mighty Athenian navy, composed largely
of lightweight warships known as triremes, in which 170
oarsmen rowed in three tiers, led directly to Athens�s
Golden Age and its advanced form of democracy. For more
than a century and a half, from 480 to 322 B.C., Athens�s
city-state of some 200,000 people had the strongest navy on
earth. �Without the Athenian navy there would be no
Parthenon, no tragedies of Sophocles or Euripides, no
�Republic� of Plato or �Politics� of Aristotle,� Mr. Hale
writes. �Before the Persian Wars, Athens produced no great
traditions of philosophy, architecture, drama, political
science or historical writing. All these things came in a
rush after the Athenians voted to build a fleet and
transform themselves into a naval power in the early fifth
century B.C.� The hard work of building and maintaining a
fleet pulled the society together. The protection the navy
afforded Athens allowed it to prosper, to fend off the
enemies that would have overrun it and changed its tolerant
and inquisitive character. Among those who commanded fleets
or squadrons of triremes were the playwright Sophocles and
the historian Thucydides...
Continued: http://xrl.us/LordsS
Excerpt: http://xrl.us/LordsExc
Ned Latham
>
> "LORDS OF THE SEA - The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and
> the Birth of Democracy" by John R. Hale (Amazon.com:
> http://xrl.us/LordsSea )
>
> NY Times
>
> Mr. Hale's thesis in "Lords of the Sea" is that the
> construction of the mighty Athenian navy, composed largely
> of lightweight warships known as triremes, in which 170
> oarsmen rowed in three tiers, led directly to Athens's
> Golden Age and its advanced form of democracy.
He's wrong. The *democracy* was the causative element, not the
Navy.
> For more
> than a century and a half, from 480 to 322 B.C., Athens's
> city-state of some 200,000 people had the strongest navy on
> earth.
False. They had almost nothing immediately after the Peloponnesian
War, and they never regained the pre-eminince they'd had before it.
> 'Without the Athenian navy there would be no
> Parthenon, no tragedies of Sophocles or Euripides, no
> "Republic" of Plato or "Politics" of Aristotle', Mr. Hale
> writes. "Before the Persian Wars, Athens produced no great
> traditions of philosophy, architecture, drama, political
> science or historical writing. All these things came in a
> rush after the Athenians voted to build a fleet and
> transform themselves into a naval power in the early fifth
> century B.C."
Did he forget Marathon?
Did he forget Perikles? "All these things came in a rush" under
*his* guiding hand.
> The hard work of building and maintaining a
> fleet pulled the society together.
Crap. Obols for the juries and the crews and the workmen who
built the ships and beautified the City did that.
> The protection the navy
> afforded Athens allowed it to prosper,
It also allowed Sparta to prosper (before the Peloponnesian War).
> to fend off the
> enemies that would have overrun it and changed its tolerant
> and inquisitive character.
Its "tolerant and inquisitive character" changed during the
Peloponnesian War.
----snip----
Ned Latham
Tiglath
> Dave U Random wrote:
>
> > "LORDS OF THE SEA - The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and
> > the Birth of Democracy" by John R. Hale (Amazon.com:
> >http://xrl.us/LordsSea)
>
> > NY Times
>
> > Mr. Hale's thesis in "Lords of the Sea" is that the
> > construction of the mighty Athenian navy, composed largely
> > of lightweight warships known as triremes, in which 170
> > oarsmen rowed in three tiers, led directly to Athens's
> > Golden Age and its advanced form of democracy.
>
> He's wrong. The *democracy* was the causative element, not the
> Navy.
>
People who believe in single causes are usually seized by the feeling
that they just had an idea nobody had before. It's tempting and easy
to fall for it.
Likewise, others have proposed the theory that the hoplite phalanxe
lead to democracy because rich and poor shared a place in the battle
line.
As always to attribute a long and complex process to a single cause,
or even a main cause, it's simplistic at best. Greek history was
shaped as much by political and societal events, as it was by
geography and climate and other factors. How much each contributed is
really hard to say, one may have been prevalent for some years, others
at other times. A common menace unifies the menaced. Yet, some
societies have such quarrelsome nature that in times without an
external threat internecine strife easily erupts. Greece's great
navy and great cultural achievements will always be overcast by the
cloud of having failed to become a cohesive and lasting political unit
that would include all Greece and much of the Mediterranean as the
Romans did with Italy and their Mare Nostrum.
Ned Latham
> Ned Latham wrote:
> > Dave U Random wrote:
> > >
> > > "LORDS OF THE SEA - The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and
> > > the Birth of Democracy" by John R. Hale (Amazon.com:
> > >http://xrl.us/LordsSea)
> > >
> > > NY Times
> > >
> > > Mr. Hale's thesis in "Lords of the Sea" is that the
> > > construction of the mighty Athenian navy, composed largely
> > > of lightweight warships known as triremes, in which 170
> > > oarsmen rowed in three tiers, led directly to Athens's
> > > Golden Age and its advanced form of democracy.
> >
> > He's wrong. The *democracy* was the causative element, not the
> > Navy.
>
> People who believe in single causes are usually seized by the feeling
> that they just had an idea nobody had before. It's tempting and easy
> to fall for it.
Hmm. You could say that I did so too, in saying that the democracy was
*the* causative element.
> Likewise, others have proposed the theory that the hoplite phalanxe
> lead to democracy because rich and poor shared a place in the battle
> line.
That's an even sillier one. Poor people didn't have the wherewithal to
be hoplites (not to mention that plenty of oligarchies and tyrannies
had phalanx armies).
> As always to attribute a long and complex process to a single cause,
> or even a main cause, it's simplistic at best. Greek history was
> shaped as much by political and societal events, as it was by
> geography and climate and other factors. How much each contributed is
> really hard to say, one may have been prevalent for some years, others
> at other times. A common menace unifies the menaced. Yet, some
> societies have such quarrelsome nature that in times without an
> external threat internecine strife easily erupts. Greece's great
> navy and great cultural achievements will always be overcast by the
> cloud of having failed to become a cohesive and lasting political unit
> that would include all Greece and much of the Mediterranean as the
> Romans did with Italy and their Mare Nostrum.
A great tragedy for the whole world, IMO: a Greek empire tempered with
the understanding the Athenians learnt from the Peloponnesian War might
have endured.
----snip----
Ned Latham
Tiglath
>
> > As always to attribute a long and complex process to a single cause,
> > or even a main cause, it's simplistic at best. Greek history was
> > shaped as much by political and societal events, as it was by
> > geography and climate and other factors. How much each contributed is
> > really hard to say, one may have been prevalent for some years, others
> > at other times. A common menace unifies the menaced. Yet, some
> > societies have such quarrelsome nature that in times without an
> > external threat internecine strife easily erupts. Greece's great
> > navy and great cultural achievements will always be overcast by the
> > cloud of having failed to become a cohesive and lasting political unit
> > that would include all Greece and much of the Mediterranean as the
> > Romans did with Italy and their Mare Nostrum.
>
> A great tragedy for the whole world, IMO: a Greek empire tempered with
> the understanding the Athenians learnt from the Peloponnesian War might
> have endured.
>
I agree and without venturing too deep into what-if territory, Greece
was even better positioned than Italy to expand both westward and
eastward. Had Alexander's Eastern conquests been added to a large
Mediterranean Greek empire with time tested imperial institutions and
administration, Greek Euroasian domination could have been a durable
reality.
ADR
wrote:
This is a usual piece of exaggeration. Sure, the Athenian Navy was an
important element of the expansion of the Athenian state but not the
device that created the great classical age all on its own. In the
5th century, Athens also possessed a strong hoplite army. The navy on
its own would have been unable to reduce the cities of revolting
allies, such as in Mytilene. It took a strong hoplite force,
transported and fed by the navy to achieve this. It was this, in
combination with a network of trading posts throughout the
Mediterreanan and exporting industries such as pottery and olive oil,
the Lavrion silver mines etc, etc that created the golden age, not
just the Navy alone. Nor did the navy protect Athens. The walls,
including the long walls, did that. Without its impressive walls,
Athens would have been overrun by the Spartan army in the first year
of the Peloponnesian war. Nor did the navy manage to arrest the
decline of Athens. Although possessing still a superior navy of over
200 triremes in the late 4th century, its capacity of fending off ally
revolt, the Theban and the Macedonian hegemony was minimal. The
reason was the severe decline in the hoplite army that it could field
and that the navy could transport. Probably, it never recovered the
Sicily debacle. For most of the 4th century BCE, Athens fought its
wars mainly with mercenaries and these were expensive and not as
effective, despite Phocion's reforms.
SolomonW
The argument here would be that without the Athenian navy the hoplite army
could not have created the empire.
Tiglath
Or survive Xerxes.
ADR
I appreciate this argument. However, it is simplistic. One can
actually move the whole nexus one notch earlier and claim that without
the silver mines at Lavrion, there would not have been a navy and thus
no Athenian empire. This whole argument is based on the assumption
that a single element is what is missing to have a state emerge as a
powerful force. I feel that such arguments are overall quite
simplistic. First of all, one needs to wonder as to why the Athenians
decided to invest their new found wealth in building a navy. However
persuasive Themistocles may have been,if his vision was not shared
widely, he would not have been successful. Thus, it is safe to assume
that the Athenians as a whole saw a lot of future in naval power
mostly as a vehicle to maintain the control of their colonies and
trading posts in the Northern Aegean (Miltiades came from one of
these) and their mercantile relationships in the Black Sea. So, it
was the pre-existing political and economical stimuli that
necessitated the creation of the navy. So, now we have the silver
mines (provided the funds) and the pre-existing colonies in the
Northern Aegean and extensive trade (provided the rationale and
desire) that required them to built a navy....and it goes on and on.
I think that looking at a single factor is rather simplistic. It is
instructive than when Sparta had to have a navy to win the
Peloponnesian war, it **got** one. And it was the Spartan navy that
delivered the victory and it was its admiral, Lysander, that imposed
terms and the man who built the biggest monument in Greece dedicated
to naval power (the Monument of the Admirals in Delphi).
SolomonW
I agree with these points.
Let me make an observation, the Athenians choice to build their navy at
great expense. The Spartans were given the money.
ADR
Thanks. Yes, the Spartans were given the money. But my thesis was
that a navy does not equate into a maritime empire. Despite the
Spartan navy, Sparta never became a maritime empire simply because the
Spartan state was not organized as such. So, a navy on its own does
not provide any transformation stimulus. There are many other
ingredients that need to be added to create a maritime-centered state.
SolomonW
Big difference.
A navy requires continuous money to keep it going.
The Athenian Empire generated that money and the Athenian navy was required
to keep this empire and so the flow of money coming in.
The Spartan's Persian subsidy stopped after the conflict.
ADR
True but the transformed Sparta did not need the subsidy at that
time. It had or it could extract all the money it needed. It simply
had no commercial interests in creating a maritime empire. It did not
need corn from the black sea nor did it have far flunk colonies to
maintain. If it wanted to maintain its fleet (and it did partly) or
even increase it, at the end of the Peloponnesian war it had more
resources to do so than Athens ever did. Of course, Sparta dissipated
its advantage by antagonizing its allies and oppressing the rest, as
well as engaging in protracted nonsensical wars.