The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy
Today is Preakness Day, always a big day here in Louisville, when local folks like me watch the race at Pimlico to see if the Kentucky Derby winner (this year, Mine That Bird) can take the next step toward a Triple Crown win. Instead, this year, I watched with the coxswain of our Louisville Rowing Club [...]
The book now titled LORDS OF THE SEA: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy owes its existence to a chance encounter with Professor Donald Kagan of Yale on an icy sidewalk in New Haven, during the winter of 1969. I was a freshman in Kagan’s Introduction to Greek History [...]
Today was publication day for the book LORDS OF THE SEA: a craft that has been eight years in the making. It was in April 2001 that editor Wendy Wolf of Viking press in New York contacted me, and asked if I would be interested in writing a history of the Athenian navy. I had [...]
“I cannot tune a harp or play a lyre,” said the Athenian soldier-statesman Themistocles, “but I know how to make a small city great.” His vision set Athens on a course towards greatness when Themistocles persuaded his fellow citizens to build a fleet of 200 warships known as triremes - long galleys propelled by triple banks of oars. This navy, originating in the years 483-480 BC, was one of the finest fighting forces in the history of the world, and became the model for all other national navies to come. The Athenian navy fought for Greek liberty against the invading Persians, established the city’s radical democracy, built a maritime empire, launched the famous Golden Age of Pericles, Socrates, Plato, and the Parthenon.
The Golden Age began on a September day in the year 480 BC, when Themistocles lured the unwary armada of King Xerxes of Persia into the narrow straits between the island of Salamis and the Greek mainland. The sea battle between Greeks and Persians lasted all day, and resulted in a crushing defeat for the Persian fleet, the largest naval force ever assembled. The battle remains one of the key turning points, not only in the on-going conflict between East and West, but in all of world history.
John Hale’s book LORDS OF THE SEA (Viking 2009) presents, for the first time, the definitive history of the epic battles, the swift and dangerous ships, the indomitable will of the Athenian people, and the stories of great leaders, from visionary strategists to seductive rogues, who established Athens’ supremacy. The naval engagements of the Persian, Peloponnesian, and Macedonian wars are interwoven with tales of Athenian life and culture on shore. During its century-and-a-half of greatness, Athens was a city wedded to the sea, and its achievements, its triumphs and its tragedies, can only be understood in the light of the Athenians’ own role as master seafarers.
“I have never felt so much that I was in ancient Athens as when I was reading this book.” Donald Kagan, author of THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
