Appendix C | (to P. 169). Early Athenian Sea Power
The earliest naval battle known to Thucydides was fought between the Corinthians and the Corcyraeans in 664 B.C.1568. The Dipylon ships are built with rams (fig. 45. a), which by itself sufficiently shows their warlike character1569. Some of them are depicted fighting, or with fallen sailors lying all around (fig. 45. c)1570, a fact which led Kroker1571 to date them after 664 B.C. If Kroker’s argument was sound, they would have to be dated later still, for it is highly unlikely that Athenian vases would depict for the local market a battle in which Athenians were not concerned1572. But even 664 B.C. seems too late a date for the vases. Seventh century Greek pottery everywhere shows Oriental influence. This is the case with typical seventh century Attic, which is known as Proto-Attic and Phaleron ware. Dipylon pottery may have lasted on into this century, but it belongs mainly to the eighth and ninth1573. A Geometric cup with a naval fight found at Eleusis1574 occurred in the lowest stratum of the Geometric graves and is dated by Poulsen fairly early in the style1575.
There is however no necessary discrepancy with Thucydides. Helbig1576 points out that all Dipylon fights seem to be duels between single pairs of ships. Most of these Dipylon warships are depicted on huge vases that took the place of tombstones, so that the single ship, or ship-duel, might be explained by the single sea-captain who lay beneath1577. But against this explanation must be set the single ships and single ship fights on smaller Dipylon vases and the naval duel on the vase signed by Aristonothos, probably an Argive potter of the first half of the seventh century (fig. 46)1578. One late Dipylon fragment (fig. 45. d)1579 shows a ship’s crew fighting warriors on land, and the vessel’s prow, in which Helbig sees the form of a horse’s head, is thought by him to indicate that it came from Caria or Phoenicia, where this kind of prow ornament is known to have been used1580. The horse’s head is not very distinct. Its identification is regarded as uncertain by Furtwaengler1581. At the best it is not decisive for Helbig’s inference. But he is probably right, when he sees in the Athenian ships of the Dipylon period a naval force intended to protect Attica against pirates1582, which may never have fought a pitched battle at all1583.
Some such state of things as Helbig outlined is required to explain the behaviour of the naval forces of the combatants in the early Aeginetan war. The war is described as occurring just after the Aeginetans had built ships and become masters of the sea1584. The fleet may have been the outcome of the shipbuilding recorded in the Hesiodic Eoiai, where it is said of the Aeginetans that they “were the first to fashion ships with oars on either side, and first to set up sails, the wings of the ship that crosses the sea1585.” The thalassocracy must have been local1586, and may well mean simply that Aegina had outstripped Athens, and become the leading member of the Kalaurian league, though possibly it is to be associated with the early Aeginetan settlement at Naukratis1587. The Athenians claimed to have sent only a single ship to Aegina. But this appears to have been the version of the official bulletin, with the incapacity apparently inherent in such documents for describing a serious reverse as such. “The Aeginetans said that the Athenians had come not with one ship but with many1588.”
That Athens too possessed a fleet is implied when Herodotus says that the Argives crossed to Aegina undetected1589. Yet there is no hint of a sea battle. Both sides have their explanation1590, but neither is very satisfactory. The state of things implied by Herodotus’ narrative of the Aeginetan war is remarkably like that pictured by Helbig for the time of the naval activities of the Dipylon ships.
One further point on this naval question may be noted, though it must not be pressed. Triremes are mentioned in connexion with the crossing of the Athenians to Aegina. This may be a mere anachronism1591. But there is nothing to prove that it is so. A state of things which includes fleets of triremes, but no naval actions on a large scale, suits admirably the early part of the seventh century, before the naval battle of 664 B.C. and after the invention of the trireme. The first triremes in Greece are said to have been built at Corinth, some time before 704 B.C., when Ameinokles constructed four for the Samians1592. Some of the Dipylon ships appear already to possess two banks of oars (fig. 45b)1593. Ships with two banks of oars appear on monuments of Sennacherib (700 B.C.)1594.
Triremes were used by the Pharaoh Necho (610–594 B.C.)1595. Both Sennacherib and Necho probably relied largely on Phoenician sailors and shipwrights. “We are told that the Sidonians were the first to construct a trireme1596.” All these statements fall in excellently with the notice of Thucydides. It is true that in the next chapter he says that Aegina and Athens possessed few triremes a little before the death of Darius (486 B.C.), and uses this fact to argue that Greek naval power only developed on a large scale from about that time. His facts are hardly to be questioned; but in his conclusions he appears to be misled by the fallacy (which he shares with so many moderns) that no development of first class importance could possibly be dated much earlier than his own age1597.
The troubles that overtook Aegina about the time of her break with Epidaurus probably included a war with Samos1598, in which the Samians “sent an expedition against Aegina, and did much harm to the Aeginetans, and received much from them1599.” In such a state of affairs Aegina would be doing her utmost to turn out ships on the up-to-date pattern with which Ameinokles was supplying the enemy.
The Dipylon ships are rightly associated by many modern scholars with the naukraric organization that is found existing at Athens at the end of the dark ages1600. The presidents of the naukraroi (or perhaps of the naukraries) are said by Herodotus to have been administering (ἔνεμον) Athens at the time of Cylon’s attempted tyranny, i.e. about 632 B.C.1601. The statement is challenged by Thucydides, who says that “at that time the nine archons conducted most of the business of the state1602.” Herodotus however is at the worst only being inaccurate. The naukraroi were very possibly “the authorities in charge of the siege (οἱ ἐπιτετραμμένοι τὴν φυλακήν)” of Thucydides and were probably responsible for the levy en masse, recorded by Thucydides himself (ἐβοήθησαν πανδήμει ἐκ τῶν ἀγρῶν), that led to Cylon’s discomfiture1603. Herodotus may have exaggerated the authority of the naukraroi to palliate the guilt of the Alcmaeonid archon who put Cylon’s followers to death1604.
Attica in the days of Cylon was divided into forty-eight of these naukraries, each of which had to provide a ship1605. The business of the naukraroi was however largely financial1606, so much so that later writers, who may have known them best from references to them in the laws of Solon, seem to have regarded them as exchequer officials1607, the more so as Cleisthenes replaced the naukraric organization by demes1608, which had no naval associations.
Even the etymological connexion of naukrary with ναῦς (navis, ship) has been called in question. Doubt is first cast on it by Pollux, who wrote his Onomasticon in the second century A.D.1609. Modern writers have proposed alternative derivations. Grote derives it from ναίω (I dwell), and explains the naukraroi as the principal householders1610, a reflex of the suffrage basis of the nineteenth century. Others1611 connect it with an obscure word ναύω, said by Hesychius and Photius to mean “I beseech,” and connected by Photius with ναός (temple). ναός and ναύω they connect with a dubious gloss of Pollux1612, which explains ναύκληρος (ship’s captain) by the rare word ἑστιοπάμων (householder, lit. hearthholder), and which they emend by reading ναύκραρος for ναύκληρος. As further Hesychius defines ναύκληρος (sic) as the president of a community (συνοικία) they connect the origin of the naukraries with the unification (συνοικισμός) of Attica by Theseus, symbolized by a common hearth1613.
These philological doubts have been met by G. Meyer1614, who argues that even assuming that ναός means “hearth,” compounds would require not ναυ- but ναο- or ναυο-. Phonetic analogies all point to a derivation from ναῦς (ship)1615. -κραρος is to be connected with κραίνω (make, complete) or perhaps with κραίνω meaning “I rule1616.”
Pollux’s uncertainty about the derivation simply reflects the uncertainty about the history of the naukraries that was prevalent in his days. No naval activities of the naukraroi are recorded by any ancient writer1617. But this proves nothing. Naukraries probably had a long history at Athens, like ship-money in England, and in the course of time lost their dominatingly naval character.
Gilbert indeed1618 doubted the existence of naukraries before the time of Solon, who is suggested as a possible founder by a Scholiast of Aristophanes1619. He suspects the evidence of the pro-Alcmaeonid Herodotus, and notes that he describes the attempt of Cylon and its suppression by the naukraroi as having happened “before the time” not of Solon but “of Peisistratus.” He argues also against the possibility of a pre-Solonian Attic fleet of forty-eight ships, since Solon, when he attacked Salamis, sailed against the island with nothing but a large number of fishing-boats and one thirty-oared vessel1620. He quotes Photius, who s.v. ναυκραρία says, “Solon having thus called them, as Aristotle states.” His views are not tenable. Even if Herodotus is trying to whitewash the Alcmaeonidae, it by no means follows that he is very far from the truth in his account of the naukraries. If he mentions Peisistratus and not Solon, it is simply because Cylon aimed at becoming not a lawgiver but a tyrant. A weak Athenian fleet in Solon’s time is no proof that the Athenian fleet had never been stronger. When Photius says “thus called” (ὀνομάσαντος), he may quite as well mean “used this name for” as “gave this name to”: if he intended it for the latter, all that follows is that he misunderstood Aristotle, as did also the Scholiast to Aristophanes, Clouds, 37.
De Sanctis has gone even further than Gilbert, and brings down the establishment of the naukraries, along with the attempt of Cylon, to the time of Peisistratus1621. He argues mainly from the naval developments under the tyrant, which, as seen already, are no evidence whatever against a much earlier date.
There is no reason to doubt the existence of the naukraries in 632 B.C. The question to be settled is how much further they go back, and what was the naval need that they were organized to meet.
A date not much before Cylon is argued for by Schoemann1622, who can find no earlier occasion for their institution than the seventh century struggle with Megara, by Duncker1623, who similarly explains them as instituted out of rivalry to the seventh century navies of Athens’ neighbours, by Philippi1624 who dates them 683 B.C. (institution of annual archons), and by Busolt1625, on account of their connexion with the financial classification and organization of the seventh century. As regards Schoemann and Duncker it has been shown above in Chapter VI how very unlikely it is that Athens started an elaborate naval organization in the seventh century. Busolt’s connexion of the naukraries with seventh century financial organization shows only that they then existed: it does not follow that they were then created. Whether or no Glotz is right in tracing them back to Homeric times1626, the balance of probabilities indicates that they go back to the period of the Dipylon pottery1627, and were organized for protection or reprisals against the raiders that then infested the Attic coasts, much as in England the Danegeld was instituted to deal with the pirates of a corresponding period in our own history. There may be something in the view that equates the naukraric organization with the council of Theseus1628, if by Theseus is meant the head of the Athenian state who established some sort of order on the waters and coasts of the Saronic Gulf after the overthrow of the Cretan civilization1629. To quote the words of two particularly sober writers1630:
After the breakdown of the Minoan thalassocracy Athens certainly took her part in policing the Saronic Gulf.... Her men of war are frequently depicted on Dipylon vases of the ninth and eighth centuries. In later times need of this protecting squadron may have grown less, when the navies of Megara, Aegina, Chalcis, and Eretria cleared the Aegean of corsairs. We may suppose that the naukraroi of the seventh century seldom saw active naval service1631.
The writers just quoted, following Helbig, imagine the ancient naukraries pursuing their naval activities as members of the Kalaurian league, and the latter, which lasted on as a religious body through classical times, as gradually taking a back place with the development of the other naval states they mention. Their picture however leaves out of account the chief fact known about the history of the league. Its original members were Hermione, Epidaurus, Aegina, Athens, Prasiae, Nauplia, and the Minyan Orchomenos. Then at the end of the list Strabo adds, “Nauplia used to be represented by Argos, and Prasiae by Sparta1632.” Strabo is here referring to a later period. It looks as though Argos and Sparta were intruders into the league, who sought membership to secure influence or a recognized position in the Saronic Gulf, just as in later times Philip of Macedon, for political reasons, set such store on recognition by the Delphic Amphictyony1633. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the two intruders secured their places in the league each at the time of his aspirations to Peloponnesian hegemony, Sparta in the sixth century, and Argos under Pheidon? All the known circumstances bear out this supposition, at least for Argos which alone at present concerns us. It fits alike the naval power of Athens in the dark ages, the eclipse of that power in the seventh century, and the expansion of Argos just at this period. Nauplia is said by Pausanias1634 to have fallen to Argos only at the end of the seventh century. But Asine, which lies further from Argos, is said to have been conquered by her a hundred years earlier1635. Beloch argues with some reason that the nearer city must have been conquered first. But there is no need to follow him in his passion for lowering dates, and bring down the time of the conquest of Asine. There is more reason for putting back the date of the fall of Nauplia, and thus bringing it into the period of Argive expansion under Pheidon1636.
Make this not unlikely modification in the picture just quoted from Mitchell and Caspari, and the early war between Athens and Aegina finds a satisfactory historical setting. Before the war Athens, Epidaurus, and Aegina are the leading states in the Saronic Gulf. As a result of it Athens is crippled at sea, and her place, and even more than her place, is taken by Argos. The evidence is admittedly scanty, but as far as it goes it points to the first Aeginetan war as marking the downfall of the naval power that Athens had enjoyed during the dark ages, or, as the legend puts it, after the fall of Minos, when the Kalaurian league and the navy of the naukraries were potent realities. The power that brings about this downfall is that of the Argive tyrant Pheidon.