Big Idea Daily | Lords of the Sea

“The Athenian navy first floated into my consciousness on a winter afternoon in 1969, when I encountered Donald Kagan walking down College Street in New Haven.

 

Across the snowbound expanse of the Yale campus his prizefighter’s stance and rolling gait were instantly recognizable. I knew him well as the formidable professor of my Introduction to Greek History course but had never worked up the courage to speak to him. On the first day of class Kagan had marshaled the front row of students into an improvised phalanx of Greek warriors, with notebooks for shields and pens for spears, to demonstrate military maneuvers. Though like me a new arrival, Kagan had already ranked as a colossus among the faculty. I tacked across the icy sidewalks to let him pass, but he stopped, asked my name, and inquired what I was doing at Yale. I stammered a few words about majoring in archeology and rowing for the freshman crew. Kagan lit up at once. ‘Ha! A rower. Now you can explain something to me. In autumn 429, after Phormio beat the Peloponnesians, they sent their crews overland to launch a sneak attack on the Paraeus. Thucydides says each rower carried his own oar and cushion. But why on earth should they need cushions? They certainly didn’t have very far to row.’

 

We talked for an hour of ships and oars and naval heroes, oblivious to the cold. I fished up a recollection of rowing pads that had been used by nineteenth-century American rowers so that they could work their legs during the stroke. Kagan enlarged upon the tactical genius of the little-known Athenian commander Phormio. He went on to speak of the many unexplored issues that obscured the story of the mighty navy of Athens, bulwark of liberty and engine of democracy. As the great man got under way again, he told me that I should investigate Athenian history from the vantage point of a rower’s bench. It was an assignment, I found, for life.”