Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy (9 page)

Once the Persian forces had entered Europe, the desperate Athenians sent two envoys to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Though only a small village on the slope of Mount Parnassus, Delphi was venerated by the Greeks as the center of the world and the navel of Mother Earth. Its famous temple was sacred to Apollo, god of light, inspiration, and prophecy. Enclosed within its crypt was a fault in the rock, and through this fissure emerged a sacred spring and a mysterious vapor. The Greeks believed that the Delphic Oracle had been a source of wisdom and guidance throughout history, from the time of the universal deluge through the heroic age of the Trojan War and on down to the present. Apollo delivered his oracles through the mouth of a local woman called the Pythia, who sat atop a bronze tripod above the fissure. The exhalation rising from the fissure in the inner sanctum endowed her with prophetic power. In her trances she spoke as the medium of the god.

At dawn on the seventh day after a new moon, the two Athenian envoys climbed the switchback trail up the mountainside and took places of honor near the head of the long line. On the front of the temple were written the words “Know Thyself.” The oracles were often cryptic—not straightforward predictions but tests of self-knowledge and insight. As Xerxes was approaching Greece, the Delphic Oracle had warned the Spartans that their country could be saved but that a Spartan king must die. Now it was the turn of the Athenians. The two envoys passed through the tall doorway into a shadowy space lit by the glow of an eternal flame. Descending a ramp, they plunged into the perpetual twilight of the inner sanctum, seemingly deep within the earth. Straight ahead gleamed the gold cult statue of Apollo; to their left they could dimly see the Pythia in her alcove. The envoys recited the question from the Assembly: What course of action should the Athenians take at this time? The woman’s deep voice answered, chanting in verse like a Homeric bard.

Apollo was angry. Why were these Athenians lingering at Delphi? They must abandon their city and flee to the ends of the earth. Ares, god of war, was advancing toward Athens in an Asiatic chariot, with fire and destruction. He would bring down towers and temples. Images of the gods would sweat and shake. Black blood would run down the rooftops. At the end of the nightmarish prophecy, the god ordered the wretched Athenians out of his shrine. Climbing back into the daylight the envoys debated what they should do. While they hesitated, their Delphian sponsor urged them to enter the temple again, this time as suppliants carrying olive branches, to ask for a better prophecy. The Athenians took his advice, and their persistence was rewarded with a second oracle that held out a glimmer of hope.

Demeter was goddess of wheat, and according to the Greek farmer’s almanac, her times of scattering and gathering would be either autumn or early summer. Salamis was, of course, an island off the coast of Attica, but it was also the name of a Greek city in Cyprus where the Ionians had won a sea battle against the Phoenicians during the Ionian revolt. Did Apollo mean to guide the Athenians to Salamis, or to warn them away? As for a “Wooden Wall,” such a structure was typically a palisade erected around a military camp, but there were other possibilities. The second prophecy at least contained some hopeful ambiguities to counteract the dire warnings of the first. Somewhat encouraged, the envoys secured a transcript of the Pythia’s words and departed.

Back in Athens, the words of the two oracles were made public and an Assembly was convened to debate them. If the Athenians obeyed the oracle to the letter, they would flee their land, avoid all contact with Xerxes’ forces, and found a new city far away, at “the ends of the earth.” Some professional diviners and older citizens indeed urged the people to abandon hope and emigrate. According to their interpretation, the gods had promised to protect their own temples behind the thorny hedge that encircled the Acropolis. This, they claimed, was the Wooden Wall of the prophecy.

The Pythia had given no prediction of ultimate victory, no reference to the sea or ships, no suggestion that the Athenians should fight as far forward as possible or indeed fight at all. Nothing could have been more disastrous for Themistocles and his aggressive naval policy than a sudden Athenian resolution to “turn their backs” on the Persians. It would be up to Themistocles himself to bend the prophecy to his purpose.

And when the Assembly met to debate the oracle’s meaning, he did just that. The Wooden Wall was not the palisade around the Acropolis, Themistocles said, but the navy. Its triremes, by now numbering two hundred, would be a wooden bulwark for the people’s defense. Apollo had revealed that this floating Wooden Wall would endure and bring benefits for generations to come. The Athenian citizens should man their ships, not to flee, but to face the Persians at sea.

His interpretation won over the majority. Seizing the moment, Themistocles pushed through the Assembly a series of emergency measures. All citizens regardless of class would man the triremes, most of them as rowers. The Athenians would not wait for the vote of the other allies but would act on their own. At Themistocles’ urging, they voted to send their own ships north to Artemisium, inviting all other Greeks to share the danger with them. The navy’s mission would be to keep the Persian fleet from reaching Attica and the interior of Greece for as long as possible. This bold communal decision set the capstone on all Themistocles’ efforts.

Evacuation of noncombatants was an essential condition for mobilizing the fleet. Themistocles could not expect all the the men of Athens to confront the Persians far from Attica if they were leaving defenseless hostages to fortune behind them. So at Themistocles’ recommendation the Assembly accepted the invitation of the city of Troezen in the Peloponnese to send their families there for refuge. Troezen claimed to be the birthplace of the Athenian hero Theseus and felt close ties to Athens. Meanwhile the flocks and herds of Athenian landowners and herdsmen would be shipped to offshore islands.

Once the able-bodied citizens were packed together within the Wooden Wall and their families safely evacuated to Troezen, the Athenian elders would set up a government-in-exile on the island of Salamis. This base, while still on Athenian territory, would remain secure so long as Athenian triremes could hold off the Great King’s armada. As for Salamis, Themistocles managed to convince the Assembly that the oracle would not have called the island “divine” if it were going to bring harm to Athenians.

Athenians lived lightly upon the land. Their homes were simple, their possessions few and mostly portable. With Attica in a turmoil of triremes and ferries, tears and farewells, uprooted households and migrating livestock, Themistocles returned to the Isthmus. There he informed the Spartans and the other allies of his city’s decisions and challenged them, on behalf of Athens, to “share the danger” of a naval campaign.

One class of Athenians obstinately opposed the naval mobilization: the horsemen. They balked at the idea of serving alongside lower-class citizens at the oars of the triremes. Athens’ horsemen had officers of their own, namely the two hipparchs or cavalry commanders, and they were ready to defy Themistocles and the Assembly itself. The crisis was resolved by the son of Miltiades, a patriotic young Athenian named Cimon. Though he was not yet thirty, his winning character had already made him a leader among the horsemen. Cimon felt no loyalty to Themistocles, but he loved his city. Roping in a band of friends, he led them on foot up to the Acropolis. At the great altar on the summit, Cimon ceremonially dedicated his bridle to Athena and left it in the goddess’s safekeeping. Then he and his comrades joined the rank and file down at Phaleron. Inspired or shamed by their example, the rest of the horsemen followed them to the ships.

Meanwhile Themistocles’ efforts at the Isthmus were not prospering. The allies refused outright to serve in a fleet led by Athenians. To the Dorians of Aegina, Corinth, Megara, and Thebes—and of course to the Spartans most of all—the Athenians and their fellow Ionians seemed a lesser breed of Greek: dangerously volatile, restless, and presumptuous. In the face of these sullen antagonists, Themistocles’ dream of an Athenian naval command melted away. Athens would contribute more than two-thirds of the ships, but the admiral of the Greek fleet would have to be a Spartan.

More than a month after midsummer, as the sour debates dragged on, messengers from the north arrived at the Isthmus. They reported that Xerxes was on the move at last. The Persian army was marching south past Mount Olympus while the fleet prepared to cruise down the coast. In less than half a month the Persians could be expected to reach the gates of central Greece at Thermopylae. If the Greeks intended to oppose the Persians anywhere north of the Isthmus, they must take immediate action. The news succeeded where Themistocles’ arguments had failed. Quickly they resurrected the plan to hold the invaders at Thermopylae and Artemisium. On land, they would avoid the risk of a major battle in open terrain. At sea, the Greek ships would make an all-out effort to destroy Xerxes’ fleet.

In keeping with this strategy, the council of allies accepted Athens’ unprecedented and unilateral decision to commit all of its manpower to the navy. No Athenians would fight on land, though their ten thousand hoplites would have been a welcome addition to the Greek phalanx. King Leonidas of Sparta led a small advance force to hold Thermopylae until the main Greek army arrived. Meanwhile a Spartan named Eurybiades was appointed
navarchos
or admiral of the allied fleet, even though Sparta had practically no navy. At once the deputies at the Isthmus notified their cities of the plan and instructed their fellow citizens to send ships to join the fleet under Eurybiades and men to join Leonidas. The main Peloponnesian army, however, would first muster at the Isthmus.

ROWING THE TRIREME

Back at Athens, Themistocles broke the news to the Athenians that they would not after all lead the naval effort. For the sake of the cause of liberty as well as survival, the Athenian people yielded to Themistocles’ persuasion and waived their claim for the time being. Another difficulty now arose, for only part of the fleet was ready to launch. Athens’ shipbuilding had outstripped its manpower, and the city could not man its two hundred triremes. Had it been conceivable to conscript slaves as rowers, the ships could all have been filled, for there were thousands of slaves in Attica. But on a ship of war an oarsman was a combatant, and the men who fought for a city-state should be free, like the citizens themselves. So to fill the remaining ships, the Athenians turned twenty of the hulls over to Greeks from Chalcis, a town on Euboea, and to eager volunteers from Plataea, though these inland allies scarcely knew one end of an oar from the other. With these reinforcements, the first wave of ships bound for Artemisium would number almost one hundred and fifty. The rest would follow later.

The morning of departure came. All along the beach at Phaleron, men dragged the black ships down to the water’s edge to set them afloat. The crews swarmed up ladders propped against the towing bars. The hollow belly of each trireme was soon packed full with the bodies of rowers. Marines, archers, and lookouts took their places on the forward deck above the ram; the steersman and his assistants manned the stern. When all had boarded, the wealthy citizen who served as trierarch or commander of the trireme poured wine into the sea as a libation to the gods. Then at the coxswain’s command the rowers bent to the first stroke.

With the Acropolis dwindling in the distance, the Athenians joined a great stream of ships all bound for the north, including triremes from Sparta and the other cities of the alliance. On board the Spartan flagship rode the admiral Eurybiades with his herald, trumpeter, prophet, and other attendants. The fleet rounded Cape Sunium with its temple of Poseidon, passed the Laurium hills, and continued onward to the plain of Marathon and the frontier of Attica. Ten years had elapsed since an Athenian army had succeeded in driving King Darius’ forces back to their ships at Marathon Bay. The men in the fleet hoped for the same success in facing the Persians now. Leaving the historic battlefield astern, the Greeks entered the long winding gulf that separates the island of Euboea from the mainland. Ahead lay Thermopylae and Artemisium. The great adventure, the greatest that any Athenian would ever know, had begun at last.