But, if commercially inferior to some other states, Athens maintained the highest rank among the naval cities of the ancient world, though it is difficult from such records as still exist to determine either the size or the number of the vessels belonging to her or to other Greek states.[182]
The size of her ships as described by Herodotus.
The superiority of Athens was, however, due to political rather than commercial causes; and her people were chiefly famed for their daring and prowess as warriors at sea. To the Athenians, Greece was mainly indebted for her freedom from the Persian yoke. It was the Athenian fleet that resisted successfully the gigantic navy of Xerxes; and the description of this fleet, by Herodotus, is almost the only information we possess with regard to the size of Greek ships, and of the relative maritime power of the different Greek states. Describing the naval force which defeated the Persian fleet off the promontory of Artemisium, Herodotus states:[183]—“The Greeks engaged in the sea-service were these. The Athenians furnished one hundred and twenty-seven vessels to the fleet; but the Platæans, from a spirit of valour and zeal, though inexperienced in the sea-service, assisted the Athenians in manning the ships. The Corinthians furnished forty ships, the Megarians twenty; the Chalcideans manned twenty, the Athenians having furnished them with ships; the Æginetans eighteen; the Sicyonians twelve; the Lacedæmonians ten; the Epidaurians eight; the Eretrians seven; the Trœzenians five; the Styreans two; and the Cêans two ships, and two penteconters; the Opuntian Locrians also came to their assistance with seven penteconters.” Of the individual size of these vessels no mention is however made; but speaking, in another portion of his history, of the preparations made to resist the invasion of Xerxes, Herodotus[184] says: “Now the Grecians from Thrace, and the islands contiguous to Thrace, furnished one hundred and twenty ships; with crews in number amounting to twenty-four thousand men,” equivalent to two hundred fighting-men a ship. The same author further remarks,[185] that “Clinias,[186] son of Alcibiades, at his own expense, joined the fleet with two hundred men and a ship of his own:” on the other hand, Xenophon states that the Athenians in this celebrated war put on board a fleet of a hundred sail only one thousand marines, and four hundred archers, which is only fourteen men to each vessel, besides the rowers.
B.C. 481.
The fleet of Xerxes, Herodotus adds,[187] amounted to twelve hundred and seven triremes, carrying two hundred and forty-one thousand four hundred men, or two hundred men to each vessel, exclusive of Persians, Medes, and Sacæ, who served as marines, thirty to each ship, in addition to the crew. The vessels must, therefore, have been larger than those of the Athenians, described by Herodotus and Xenophon. But besides the twelve hundred and seven triremes, Xerxes is said to have brought with him three thousand transports and penteconters, with many light boats, and long horse-transports, so that his whole naval force must have consisted of four thousand two hundred and seven vessels of one sort and another: a number almost as inconceivable as the reputed catalogue of his combined land and sea force, even though he brought, as was said of him, “all Asia in his train.”
This vast fleet had the misfortune to encounter a great storm on the coast of Magnesia, in which four hundred vessels, besides store ships, were totally wrecked; and so great were the spoils from the derelict ships that, according to the testimony of Herodotus,[188] one Ameinocles, who owned the land on the coast, became immensely rich from the quantity of gold and silver Persian cups which were afterwards found. Having described the coast of Magnesia, Herodotus says:[189] “The ships of the first row were moored to the land, while the others behind rode at anchor; and as the beach extended but a little way, they had to anchor off the shore in eight rows. Thus they passed the night, but at daybreak, after serene and tranquil weather, the sea began to swell, and a heavy storm, with a violent gale from the east, which those who inhabit these parts call Hellespontias, burst upon them. As many of them, then, as perceived the gale increasing and were able from their position to do so, avoided the storm by hauling their ships upon the beach, and both they and their ships escaped. But such of the ships as the storm caught at sea were driven ashore; some near the place called Ipni, “the Ovens,” at the foot of Pelion, others on the beach; some were dashed on Cape Sepias itself; some were wrecked near the cities of Melibœa and of Casthanæa. The storm was indeed irresistible.”
Hauling the ships on shore seems to have been customary in those days; for, in another place, (when referring to the ship-canal Xerxes[190] had ordered to be cut to the north of the headland of Athos,) Herodotus[191] remarks that “it was possible, without any great labour, to have drawn his ships over the isthmus.”
Discrepancy between the different accounts.
It is not easy to account for the discrepancy in the statements about the number of men each of the vessels carried, or to comprehend the facility with which they were drawn up on a beach in the face of an approaching storm, or how they could, as Herodotus suggests, have been transported across the isthmus. Possibly Herodotus was misinformed as to the number of men in each of the vessels. Curiously enough, the descriptions preserved of the fleets and maritime exploits of Cyrus, and of other great conquerors, partake of the same character as these recorded of Xerxes, and are equally inconsistent, when we look to the capacity of the vessels as compared with the apparent ease with which they could be moved about on dry land. Although the ancients had capstans, of which Herodotus speaks, and were conversant with pulleys, and with the best mode of transporting, by means of manual labour, aided by blocks and rollers, heavy weights across land, it is difficult to understand how any vessels competent to convey between two and three hundred men each, could, just as a storm was coming on, have been hauled high and dry upon a beach with sufficient speed.[192]
A vessel of size sufficient to take that number of men even for a short distance and across a smooth sea, must have been, according to the present mode of measurement, of at least seventy tons register. But no vessel of that tonnage, or of three-fourths that size, could be drawn up on a beach, much less across an isthmus, with the facility the narrative of Herodotus presumes, unless the ancients had methods for transporting their vessels on shore of which no accounts have been preserved. A vessel of fifty-five tons register might hold between two and three hundred men, and transport them, in a calm, across the smooth and narrow waters of the Hellespont; but to attempt to make a voyage of no greater distance than from Constantinople to Athens, in the craft of those days, measuring fifty-five tons, with so many men on board, would be attended with very considerable risk, and, this too, without taking into consideration the convenience of the troops, or the space required for their stores and accoutrements.