The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History Read online

  The only true example of control of adjacent waters for political and military purposes in the era was that exercised by the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty.13 Already in the Old Kingdom of the third millennium troops had been transported by sea to Palestine; after the expulsion of the Hyksos invaders who had ended the Middle Kingdom the rulers who restored Egyptian unity, along with their followers, were more military minded than any other dynasty in Egyptian history. They pushed their power far up the Nile into Nubia, and used river craft to support their advance; as we saw earlier Thutmose III avoided in some of his campaigns in Palestine and Syria the march across the Sinai desert by ferrying his army by sea on vessels built in the royal dockyard near Memphis. These ships, however, were "only naval in that they were intended to serve the ends of war,"14 for Thutmose III faced no opposition on the sea. He controlled all the Syrian ports, and no one else either could or desired to challenge Egyptian control of the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean.

  One famous "thalassocracy" does remain to be considered. In Greek legend a powerful king of Crete, called Minos, was active on the sea. Thucydides, more credulous of legend than one might expect, picked up the tale and in discussing the role of sea power in Greek history, proclaimed Minos the first to have a navy and went on to rationalize this power; Minos "from a natural desire to protect his growing revenues, sought, as far as he was able, to clear the sea of pirates." Clearly, Thucydides was transposing into the past the nature of Athenian naval imperialism in his own day. His predecessor Herodotus had been more critical; for him Polycrates, tyrant of Samos in the late sixth century, was the first to aim at empire of the sea, and he dismissed Minos as legendary.15 But the weight of Thucydides' authority led to the acceptance of Minoan thalassocracy as a commonplace of ancient thought, and modern historians, also influenced consciously or unconsciously by Mahan and British naval power, have only rarely had any doubts. As a reasonably careful scholar recently put it, the Minoan fleet "was a navy that successfully policed the Mediterranean for centuries."18

  The truth rather is that there is not one shred of positive evidence to support the myth of the Minoan thalassocracy, and much to weigh against its acceptance. In the greatest days of Minoan civilization Crete was divided into a number of principalities centered on the various palaces; this was no base for a major naval power. These palaces were unfortified, a fact often used to support the idea that they possessed a bulwark of wooden walls which could stand out to sea against invaders. Islands, however, commonly in history have relied on the sea itself to protect them against outside threats and so tend not to have navies of their own. The rulers of England only came to realize the necessity of meeting enemies on the sea rather than on the shore in the days of the Spanish Armada.17

  If the Cretan states shared a navy, unlikely though that may be, it failed to protect them, for in the fifteenth century the island was invaded by Mycenaean warlords-who must have had their own ships. Thereafter the mainland Greek script of Linear B was used by the scribes of Cnossus, and a variety of other evidence attests this external mastery. Quite possibly the splendor of Cnossus in the period called Late Minoan II "was the result, not of far-ranging activities conducted by the fleet of an imperial Minos, but merely of the subjugation of all Crete to Knossian rule."18 Finally, it may be observed that the galleys of the second millennium did not yet have rams with which to engage in battle by sea; they could have been used, as the Thera frescoes suggest, only for coastal raids.19

  Toward the close of the Bronze Age Mediterranean lands suffered waves of invasion that in the west reached as far as Sicily in their devastation. Mycenaean palaces were sacked and burned in the period centering on 1200; Linear B was no longer needed because their bureaucracies were wiped out and life sank to as low a level as had been known for a thousand years or more. So too in Asia Minor the Hittite realm was overthrown, and other invaders marched down the coast of Syria by land and sea as far as Egypt. Here the Peoples of the Sea, as they are called in local records, were met just after 1200 by Ramses III, who assembled "warships, galleys, and coasters . .. manned completely from bow to stern with valiant warriors carrying their weapons."20 The invaders were defeated in a great battle of hand-to-hand combat with grappling irons, depicted later on his temple at Medinet Habu.21 This was the first known sea battle in ancient history and the last for over half a millennium.

  Egypt thus survived as a civilized state, but any naval power it once had exercised vanished. In the eleventh century Wen Amon from Karnak was sent to Byblos to purchase cedars of Lebanon for the barque of Amon-Re; his gold and silver were stolen in the town of Dor, and local princes showed little respect for his commission. Eventually, he did secure the timber, but unfavorable winds carried him to Cyprus, where he met further delays; then the papyrus account of his misadventures breaks off, but it reveals both the continued trade of Egypt with Phoenicia and the independent role of ships belonging to people called Tjeker.22 At the close of the Bronze Age as at its beginning the seas were open to maritime activity by anyone venturing risks of storms and piracy, but mastery belonged to no one power. Only in the next millennium were political and economic conditions to become so advanced and complex that a variety of states were to seek naval dominion.

  CHAPTER II

  Prelude to Thalassocracy

  The centuries immediately after 1000 B.c. are almost without history. Egypt continued to support its structure of government though it was often under alien rule; so too in Syria there were kingdoms on a minor scale, and also in Phoenicia small states centered on Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and other ports. This era was the only period in ancient history in which the kingdom of David and Solomon could temporarily flourish. Civilization in the Aegean had totally disappeared, and even farmers were replaced in many areas by nomads. A new framework of life, nonetheless, was almost unconsciously arising, especially at Athens but also at other sites, which was to produce that political and cultural outlook we call Hellenic in distinction from the far different patterns of Mycenaean times.

  By the eighth century the chaos of external invasions and internal disruptions had been overpassed, and progress became steadily more rapid and diversified in many significant aspects. In the age of expansion to 500 B.C., the focus of this chapter, the political, economic, and technological bases for potential thalassocracy were solidified in several stretches of the Mediterranean.

  Commercially, Aramaeans, who used camels instead of donkeys, reopened lines of trade from Syria inland to Mesopotamia by the eighth century. With them came a host of luxury items in ivory, gold, and other metals produced by craftsmen in Phoenicia and Syria-not artistically of a high order though drawing in part on Egyptian prototypes yet skilled and attrac tive. As a consequence to some degree of the economic unification of the Near East, Assyrian monarchs created a large empire, though they had no interest in the sea beyond recording the submission of Cypriote rulers in boastful reports to their protective deity Ashur.

  Equally important changes took place in the Mediterranean basin itself which swiftly bound together all its shores commercially and culturally. This was the result of Phoenician and Greek colonization in the eighth and following centuries.'

  The Phoenicians had established themselves in Cyprus before 800 and pushed on westward, largely along the African coast, to the western part of Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain; their main strength, however, was in the area of modern Tunisia. Here Utica was reported to have been founded in the eleventh century and Kart-Hadasht or New Town, which we know as Carthage, was conventionally set at 814. But thus far probings at Carthage have produced no evidence of settlement before the later eighth century.2

  Greek colonization in the western Mediterranean was probably as early as that of the Phoenicians. The first Greek outpost was established by Euboeans at Pithecusae on the island of Ischia to tap the metal resources of Etruia; a mixed population of Phoenicians and Syrians also inhabited this settlement.3 Then followed a great outpouring in south Italy, easter
n Sicily-where Syracuse was founded in 733-and southern France, especially at Massalia. Orthodoxy always distinguishes the two waves of western expansion by labeling Phoenician centers as trading posts and Greek colonies as purely agricultural, intended to export discontented elements of the homeland states, but this is too simplistic. The inhabitants of Carthage drew much of their wealth from the orchards and wheatfields of the hinterland, and it has become clear that while Greek settlers always had an eye to agricultural possibilities they were often preceded by the arrival of Aegean traders and that they spread among native populations Greek wares as "intermediaries between the professional traders and markets of Greece and a quite different economic pattern among their barbarian neighbours."4 The colonists themselves desired objects manufactured in Greek workshops and thus fostered the rise of true urban centers at Corinth, Athens, and elsewhere by 600.5

  Whereas the Aegean in 1000 had been an isolated enclave with very limited contacts to the Near East and its inhabitants had no real knowledge of surrounding seas-as the legendary travels of much-suffering Odysseus attest-commercial connections between colonies and homeland now produced a spiderweb of ties; every pressure or intrusion from outside affected to some degree the whole of the Greek world. "Greece lies scattered in many regions," as a later orator rightly observed.6 Interest in the sea also naturally evolved. Odysseus could dream of taking his oar so far inland that people would not know what it was; there he might dwell in peace. Late in the eighth century Hesiod gives some advice on the proper season for trading by sea "though I have no skill in seafaring nor in ships," but boasts that his only trip by sea was from mainland Aulis to Chalcis (the modern bridge here is 164 feet long). As the later poet Aratus looked back he well expressed this point of view:

  By 600, however, Alcaeus had created the lasting metaphor of "the ship of state," and the sea became more deeply imbedded in Greek awareness, though it must be observed that most Greeks never went to sea and feared its dangers.9 Those who did venture abroad supported an ever more lively and vital commerce in textiles, timber, bulk metals and manufactured wares, agricultural products, slaves, and pottery-not an extensive range, true, but then Greek industrial life was of a very simple order that did not need many of the raw and finished items moving in trade nowadays. By 500, even so, cities such as Corinth, Athens, Miletus, and other coastal ports were dependent at least in part on seaborne grain, coming down the Hellespont from south Russia, Sicily, and also from Egypt.10

  When terms such as commerce and trade enter our text we touch on a major area of debate among students of ancient economic life, especially in its early stages. A view that commands wide assent argues that at this point one should think in terms of "gift exchange" among aristocrats, after Marcel Mauss's famous Le Don, rather than deliberate trade for profit. In the rise of prehistoric sea voyaging this interpretation may have its merit, but by early in the first millennium a variety of evidence suggests that it is too restrictive. In the Odyssey Phoenician merchants are busy in the Aegean, and Odysseus himself pretends to be a trader seeking profit (kerdos).11 The vigorous expansion of Greek seafaring in the eighth and seventh centuries is unlikely to have occurred unless the traders of the era expected gain to compensate for the risks of piracy and storm. Herodotus casually comments thus on Colaeus of Samos, who was blown to Tartessus in Spain but turned the misadventure into producing a great profit.12 With respect to another very common argument, that trade of any type was restricted to luxuries, the evidence for movement of many forms of raw materials-wool, timber, metal, grain, and so on-is irrefutable.

  The Father of History also has an amusing tale of Carthaginians dealing with a native population somewhere on the Atlantic coast of Africa; they laid out objects on the shore, and the natives came down with gold. If the Carthaginians did not consider the exchange fair they so indicated, and only when both sides were satisfied could trade take place.13 As this story suggests, there was in simple conditions no standard measure of value; instead the Homeric world evaluated objects in heads of cattle (as when Glaucus and Diomedes exchanged gilded for bronze armor, "the price of a hundred oxen for nine"), cauldrons, iron spits, and similar objects.14 By 600 Greek states were commencing to adopt the Lydian innovation of stamped and uniform nuggets of precious metal, true coins, a development that spread like wildfire over homeland and colonies alike and did at last produce an easily assessed standard of valuation.

  Economically, to sum up a very general treatment of major advances, a foundation for potential thalassocracy had been laid by 500 in an awareness of the importance of seaborne commerce. The growth of trade and industry as well as the appearance of true markets in the nascent cities for the sale of agricultural products much increased the wealth of the Greek states, and the use of coinage in silver made that wealth more easily tapped for the construction of costly warships.

  No significant changes took place in the sailing ships that carried this trade. Vessels remained small, built on trim lines like the modern caiques of the Aegean and equipped with one mast and a square sail of hides stitched together.15 Tacking accordingly could be executed only in a limited degree, and ships tended to hug the coasts so that they could run ashore to escape a major storm-though the evidence of shipwrecks shows that they were not always successful. By 500 there were far more sailing ships and the infrastructure of trade was being improved. Moles and other harbor works were constructed at major ports, though Athens still used the open roadstead of Phalerum for its exports of pottery; at the isthmus of Corinth a slipway (diolkos) had been built by 600 so that cargoes could avoid the dangerous voyage around the southern promontories of the Peloponnesus, probably mainly marble west to Delphi and timber eastward to the states of the Saronic Gulf.16 Shippers could also now make use of coastal guides, written by Hecataeus and others.17

  The remarkable development in marine architecture concerned warships. In the early centuries of the first millennium the standard galley was the pentekonter, so called because it had 50 oarsmen, 25 on a side. This vessel had its main utility in piracy and in coastal raids; it also had advantages for long voyages into unknown waters, where the manpower of the crew might help to protect a vessel against local threats.18 In the Odyssey the hero sacked a Thracian city, "killed the men and, taking the women and plenty of cattle and goods, divided them up."19 Athenian vases of the eighth century depict galleys bent on similar missions, and dedications of booty gained in raids began to appear in Greek sanctuaries.20

  The important alteration was the addition of a bronze ram at the prow of a pentekonter. Although a Corinthian vase early in the seventh century may depict a ram, the first literary reference to its use in battle is in 535 off Alalia.21 Full use of the ram re quired an increase in the power with which a galley was propelled, but this presented problems. The great Athenian ship storage buildings of the fourth century allowed for galleys no more than 35 by 8 meters,22 and it was not technically possible to construct purely wooden vessels that were much longer-in heavy seas, when a ship might be supported only on prow and stern by waves, the midship section could take only a limited amount of stress. The solution seems to have been reached in Phoenicia; an Assyrian relief of c. 690 already shows a Phoenician ship with a ram and two banks of oars.23 Thucydides ascribes the first appearance of the new type in Greece to a Corinthian shipwright in the seventh century, a view which accords ill with the fact that such warships entered service only in the later sixth century; the first literary reference to the trireme occurs in the satirical poetry of Hipponax, conventionally dated c. 540. According to Thucydides, most Greek fleets before the Persian wars were composed of pentekonters.24

  Essentially, the solution consisted of fitting three oarsmen in the space allotted to one on a pentekonter. This produced the trireme or in Greek triere, the major galley of the classic period, with a crew of 170 oarsmen plus a deck crew and marines numbering about 30 as a rule.25 Just how the rowers in each group of three were arranged has been the subject of a long debate. Down
into the twentieth century classical scholars visualized the rowers as stacked one above another; in a version of Ben Hur filmed in the 1920's the galley was so constructed, with the result that a launch out of sight of the camera had to tow it, for the rowers could not manipulate their oars, necessarily of very different lengths. More recently, a system that tucks the oarsmen into groups ranging inboard and only slightly higher in each tier has been generally accepted as being practicable and also fitting the ancient evidence. To reduce the weight as much as possible the trireme had no ballast (so that it would float even if holed in battle); a galley could capsize if all the crew ran to one side of the vessel.26 Normally it carried a very limited amount of food and water; Thucydides notes as an exception the fact that the Corinthian fleet off Corcyra in 432 had three days' food.27

  A trireme is better compared to a racing she]] than to a battle ship. Its crew could reach a speed of seven knots for short spurts, but fleets usually cruised at no more than two knots, then often aided by one big sail that could be lowered in battle.28 The bottom oarports were not far above the water line, though they could be fitted with leather masks;29 if bad weather arose, warfleets had to make for shore, and always they remained close to land so that they could rest and feed their crews in greater comfort at night. In antiquity a blockade of an enemy port was not easy unless the blockaders had a friendly base nearby; during the civil war between Caesar and Pompey the admiral Bibulus sought to contain Caesar's reenforcements under Antony at Brundisium, but his crews had to drink dew to get their water and the blockade failed. When Antony did slip out, Pompeian galleys gave chase to the sailing ships, but "suddenly the wind sprang up stronger than before, filled their great sails unexpectedly, and enabled them to complete their voyage without fear. The pursuers were left behind and they suffered severely from the wind and waves in the narrow sea and were scattered along a harborless and rocky coast."30 Warships, in other words, could not go faster than sailing ships with a good wind, though we do hear from time to time of their preying on merchantmen.31