Posted on 08/10/2018 8:24:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
At least in the Athenian Navy the rowers were free men. Men of the lower classes who couldn’t afford the hoplite panoply but free men. Very well trained, expert towers who could maneuver the Athenian ships like human powered torpedoes, as the Persians discovered.
See
That was the illustration in the article; I lifted a caption for it out of the article itself explaining it.
Sure, but the sharks would eat them first.
Piracy was only an issue where there were other ships. As Greek colonization spread, piracy spread, carried out by the local gentry using their local watercraft, whatever they may have been. During the Roman Empire piracy got wiped out and was kept that way for centuries, thanks to their navy and their naval bases, including one in the Black Sea.
Not by much. He was born circa 470 BC.
I was fairly certain that you knew that the ship was a Trireme the post was more for the benefit of others
Some badass machines of the day.
Be fun to row in one, even in regards to the following, where Aristophanes, in his comedy play The Frogs, refers to the common habit of the upper banks of oarsmen “farting in the face of those below”
I may have tracked down the craft in the photo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7da52cJLwW8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INGl8LB9Zxo
Those warships were amazing pieces of engineering, and the reproductions made in recent times are just best guesses. I’m pretty impressed with the ancient merchant ships as well.
The late Lionel Casson described the ancient arms race as the later Greek and Hellenic city states built larger and larger vessels, to the point where they really couldn’t be moved by manpower any longer. The biggest one was such a tourist attraction, when the Romans conquered Greece, they towed it to Italy and up the Tiber and apparently charged admission. :^)
“Was that a ribbet?” ;^)
Aeschylus, the first known writer of Greek tragedy, defended Athens at the battles of Marathon (hoplite), and Salamis (in the rower’s bench), some years apart.
Bkmk
The Spartans took a big chunk of cash from the Persians and used it to build a rival navy, then hired the rowers at a much higher rate than the Athenians could pay. Ended the Peloponnesian War in a trice. They should have had a Reserve Clause.
Yes I have read Thucydides & VDH’s book on the subject “A War Like No Other”. Rowers showed as much loyalty as Alcibiades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyXZvnChcmw
This series of about ten episodes describes how alexander sailed over waters that are now dry land to lands on the Oxus river. His troops made it through the lands being fought over oow in Afghanistan, turkministan and uzbeckistan.
You can see the actual Jason’s golden fleece in use tiday and the truly ancient mines for Lapiz still being mined today
Weren’t the Athenian rowers part of a collegium\guild or whatever the Greek equivalent was?
I don't blame Alcibiades -- he knew what Athenian creeps had done to Themistocles and Socrates and so many others, and got out of town before the same was done to him.
Thanks bert, will have a look in a bit.
Cybernetics — Rowing In The Athenian Navy
November 27, 2000
Rob Colburn
http://www.row2k.com/features/32/Cybernetics-—Rowing-In-The-Athenian-Navy/
Yes, no much for the glorious Athenian democracy! No wonder the Founding Fathers was so suspicious of democracy.
30 years ago or so Avalon Hill had a bookcase game out on tactical classical naval warfare called Trireme. I played it once or twice it really did give you a sense of the tactics.
It seems to me that the use of enslaved rowers for naval combat is much more the stuff of Hollywood then was actually done. The only ones that I think I know for sure that did it were the Romans, Imperial Spanish, (Not sure about the other Mediterranean powers - Venice, Genoa, etc.!) & the Ottomans. I am not convinced the Romans did it as much as its commonly portrayed.
Our Founders weren't. There were monarchists among the Framers, pretending they supported democracy, but they didn't prevail. The Athenians were in the same boat -- they had that ridiculous ostracism practice, which was a method by which, in a classical version of socialism, no one could distinguish themselves, provided enough phony ballots could be stuffed. A cache of pre-inscribed "ballots", ostraca with Themistocles' name, was found in modern times, dumped in an ancient drain or something. The practice was to stand at the area where people were to enter the meeting area (since it was done village-style, citizens in attendance were able to vote) and hand them out. Those who couldn't read were told it was whomever they asked for.
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