Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy (21 page)

The journals kept by Hippocrates and his followers provide glimpses of the dangers that beset Greek mariners of their time. “On Salamis, the man who fell on the anchor received a wound in the belly. He had great pain. He drank a drug but there was no evacuation below, nor did he vomit.” It was not merely blistered hands and sore rumps that afflicted the rowers of the navy. Despite the fleecy rowing pads that aided their legwork, Greek oarsmen suffered a particular occupational malady from the hard service on the wooden thwarts: fistula of the anus.

If the rower put off treatment, the fistula might penetrate the wall of the rectum. Now the matter was serious. Once the physician had taken the measure of the problem, the fistula was treated over a period of days with linen plugs and suppositories made of powdered horn. Other medicines included root of hartwort pounded fine, water mixed with honey (a good antibacterial agent), burnt flower of copper, fuller’s earth, and alum. The rectum of the miserable rower was anointed continually with myrrh until the fistula healed over. Without a doctor’s care the prospects were bleak: “Any patients that are left untreated die.”

Hippocrates’ disciples brought the same orderly, intellectual approach to medicine that was revolutionizing many other fields at that time, from history to urban planning. They studied the patterns of winds, rain, and stars as assiduously as any mariner, for it was a tenet of their belief that the weather and the seasons had a powerful influence on health and sickness. In eastern Greek cities the arts and sciences had withered under Persian rule. Now the liberal outlook of the Athenians was bringing about a scientific renaissance. Ease of travel throughout the maritime empire helped the rapid spread of new ideas and techniques.

As the role of the navy and maritime trade expanded, the Piraeus became a great city in its own right. To create a home worthy of the Athenian navy, the Assembly hired the world’s first professional urban planner, Hippodamus of Miletus. He too was an eastern Greek, but Hippodamus’ patrons were not individuals seeking cures; rather they were entire populations desirous of new cities. Athens was willing to pour out vast sums on such itinerant consultants, be they prophets, astronomers, architects, or engineers. Hippodamus’ home city of Miletus had been rebuilt on a grid plan after Xerxes’ troops razed it to the ground. The success of this huge reconstruction project encouraged Hippodamus to travel around the Mediterranean to spread the gospel of modern urban design. As befitted a pundit much in the public eye, Hippodamus cut a colorful and eccentric figure. His hair was long, his coiffure expensive. Even his clothing was peculiar. Winter and summer, he wore the same odd costume of cheap fabric.

No mere surveyor of streets, Hippodamus was in fact a utopian theorist. His quest led him in search of a physical setting for the perfect human community: social, spatial, and spiritual. Along with his own mastery of philosophy, meteorology, and architecture, Hippodamus seemed to see threefold divisions everywhere. In his ideal city the population would be divided into three classes: craftsmen, farmers, and warriors. Land should also have its tripartite division: sacred, public, and private. Hippodamus even proposed that juries should be able to choose from not two but three possible verdicts: guilty, not guilty, and not sure. How his heart must have leaped when he caught his first glimpse of the three natural harbors at the Piraeus!

THE PIRAEUS

Behind the harbors, however, lay a difficult site, one with no springs and little flat land. It would be no easy task to impose order on the land within Themistocles’ circuit of fortifications. In addition to the rough and waterless terrain, the site was already encumbered with various fortifications, shipsheds, shrines, roads, and an ancient fishing village that had stood on the Piraeus promontory for thousands of years. Extensive areas, however, were still virgin terrain. The site even provided its own building stone. Quarries at the seaward end of the promontory would provide porous yellowish-gray limestone and soft marl. It was not a glamorous stone like the white marble from Mount Pentelicus, but it was serviceable and convenient, like the Piraeus itself.

The old city of Athens had grown organically through the centuries, its streets and neighborhoods radiating out from the Acropolis like blood vessels from a heart. Private homes, shrines, public facilities, and industrial workshops all jostled side by side along its twisting lanes. The confusion had its defenders. Many Greeks believed that a town plan
should
be illogical and hard to follow. If the streets were straight and orderly, then enemy invaders who broke into the city would be able to find their way around as easily as the residents. Certainly the mass of Athenians had stoutly resisted Themistocles’ suggestions for change when they rebuilt the city after Salamis. The Piraeus, child of modernity and enlightenment, would be different.

Hippodamus’ assignment was described as dividing or cutting up the Piraeus. First he chose as his axis the long saddle of land that ran from the foot of Munychia Hill, the acropolis of the Piraeus, southwest to the Akte Hill and the quarries. On either side of this central spine Hippodamus marked out the boundaries of the sacred, public, and private areas. Inscribed boundary stones proclaimed the function of each zone. There were also markers for the sanctuaries of the gods, the quarters for foreign merchants, and even the station where one could catch a ferryboat to Salamis or one of the other islands.

In the center was the Agora, with its own council house and public offices. On the expanse of level ground north of Zea Harbor Hippodamus laid out this civic center, ever after known as the Hippodamian Agora. Near the edge of Zea Harbor the Agora widened out into an open area where the crews of triremes could assemble at the start of a naval expedition.

Cross streets connected the Cantharus port on one side of this ridge to the Zea naval harbor on the other. Marking off the streets, Hippodamus embedded a mathematical ratio of 3:5:9 into his grid. Alleys around blocks had a width of 15 feet, main streets around districts a width of 25 feet, while the major arteries were a majestic 45 feet wide. All were straight. The Athenians were so well satisfied with his work at the Piraeus that they later entrusted to Hippodamus the task of laying out a new colony called Thurii in southern Italy.

Uniformity of housing reinforced the message of democracy and equality. Hippodamus divided each residential city block among eight dwellings, all of which were only variations on a uniform “Piraeus house.” The long and narrow lots, 40 feet by 70 feet, accommodated in one half a flagged courtyard equipped with outdoor ovens and a deep bell-shaped cistern to provide the household’s water. The house itself included a family room with a hearth, with bedrooms on an upper floor above it. No one in the Piraeus was ever very far from the water. Thanks to the sloping terrain, the houses rose in tiers like the seats in a theater. Almost every roof or upper story commanded a view down to the nearest harbor and out to the blue sea beyond.

The
andron
or men’s meeting room opened directly off the courtyard. Here the master of the house entertained his friends. The
andron
in a Piraeus house was designed to accommodate seven couches around its square perimeter: two couches on three sides and one sharing the fourth wall with the door, which was placed in the corner. After dinner, when the sun cast a shadow longer than a man was tall, was the time for wine. The
symposion
or drinking together was the crown of every Athenian feast. To accompany the flow of stories, speculations, and poetry, a fleet of earthenware pots were carried into the banqueting room. All had been fired a distinctive glossy black and red, and all were made in Athens of good Attic clay. Familiar mythical scenes were painted on the vessels. One cup showed Odysseus tied to the mast of his ship, listening to the songs of the Sirens. But there were contemporary scenes, too, celebrating the exploits of the men who would be drinking from these very cups: warriors rowing across the sea to battle; warships cruising in convoy; archers shooting from ships at sea; pirates stealthily attacking unsuspecting freighters. The most beautiful of these ship paintings showed long sleek galleys rowing around the inner surface of a pot. When the vessel was brimming with wine, the ships appeared to be floating on its surface: warships reflected in a sea of wine, reflecting the “wine-dark sea” of the beloved poet Homer.

Sometimes the host of the party provided sexual pleasures along with wine, music, and conversation. The men might also seek more straightforward relief, free from civilized frills, at one of the many brothels in the Piraeus. Exercising untrammeled sexual freedom carried few consequences for Athenian citizens. Sexually transmitted diseases were as yet unknown, and few societies in history have granted to free adult males such extremes of sexual license.

It was perhaps inevitable that Athenian men, who enjoyed thinking, talking, and joking about sex when they were not actually engaged in it, should have at times viewed sex organs and sex acts as extensions of their experiences at sea. A woman’s vagina could be described as a
kolpos
or gulf, like the Corinthian and Saronic gulfs, where a happy seafarer could lose himself. As for the penis, a modest man could claim to have a
kontos
or boat pole, an average man a
kope
or oar between his legs, and a braggart a
pedalion
or steering oar. Inevitably too, the erection poking against an Athenian’s tunic was referred to as his “ram.” Sexual intercourse was likened to ramming encounters between triremes, but the men did not always take the active role. The popular Athenian sexual position in which the woman sat astride her partner gave her a chance to play the
nautria
or female rower, and row the man as if he were a boat. A man who mounted another man might claim to be boarding him, using the nautical term for a marine boarding a trireme. Sexual bouts with multiple partners were sometimes dubbed
naumachiai
or naval battles.

These were private pleasures. But with its lively market, religious festivals, and two open-air theaters (Athens itself only had one), the Piraeus also provided public entertainment throughout the year. A colorful element in the life of the port city was the presence of shrines and temples to foreign gods. Each one served as a religious center to a group of expatriate merchants who had come to roost in the Piraeus. In honor of their northern goddess Bendis the Thracians held relay races on horseback, with a burning torch passed from rider to rider. Egyptian merchants carried Isis with them from the banks of the Nile, just as the traders from Asia Minor brought Cybele the Mother Goddess and the Syrians imported Astarte. The Phoenicians introduced to the Piraeus not only the cult of Baal but also a mysterious divinity with the body of a man and a head like the prow of a warship, complete with ram. On the tombstone of a Phoenician resident of the Piraeus, this strange ship god was shown wrestling with a lion for possession of the corpse.

In the maritime world of the Piraeus a happy tolerance reigned among all religions, and the idea of killing a man for worshipping the wrong god was unknown. Only godlessness and impiety were condemned. In Athens ideological strife was a feature of the philosophical schools, not the temples. So popular were the foreign festivals that Athenians often walked the four miles down to the Piraeus to watch some new and exotic celebration in the streets.

The democratic spirit of Athens and its navy found its fullest embodiment in the sacred trireme
Paralos.
The name was mythical: the sea god Poseidon had fathered a hero called Paralos (“Man of the Shore”) who was credited with inventing the galley or long ship. Each year the crew of the sacred trireme, who were known as the Paraloi, held a festival and offered sacrifices to his memory. The ship’s name was continually passed on through the years as one sacred trireme retired and a new vessel took its place. It was also the only masculine name in the fleet: all other Athenian triremes had feminine names and were referred to as “she.” Ardent democrats to a man, the crew of the
Paralos
opposed any proposals that smacked of oligarchy or tyranny. Pericles chose to show his commitment to the navy by naming his second son Paralos after the ship and the legendary hero.