Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy (27 page)

His career had fallen in between the two supreme challenges to Athenian liberty, the Persian invasion and the Peloponnesian War. Phormio had been too young to fight against Xerxes and would soon be too old to participate further in the war against the Spartans. His antagonists had been unruly westerners, rebellious allies, and Corinthian colonists, with no chance to measure himself against the city’s principal foes. Phormio’s gifts had been squandered while he played minor roles in distant campaigns, and now, when Athens most desperately needed able commanders, it seemed his disgrace would keep him from coming to his city’s aid until it was too late.

One day a party of men approached his farm through the desolate landscape. They were not Athenians but Acarnanians, distant allies who had come to beg Athens for protection. During that second summer of the war, when the plague cut short the Athenian naval expedition around the Peloponnese, enemy fleets had ventured to sea with more than a hundred ships. Corinthians and other Spartan allies had made landings on the territory of Acarnania and other western allies. It seemed clear that the Peloponnesian fleet would return the following year to complete the job unless Athens sent a force to prevent them.

As general of that force, the Acarnanians wanted Phormio. He had been a hero in their country ever since the day long before when he arrived with thirty triremes, stormed a hostile city, and handed it back to its rightful Acarnanian owners. Local families had even named their sons Phormio in honor of the liberator. This party of Acarnanian envoys had arrived at Athens at summer’s end after a dangerous voyage, only to learn that the man whom they sought was now banned from office. So they had journeyed through Attica to Phormio’s farm, hoping to persuade him to abandon the Athenians and come west with them as a general at large, an honored guest who would take into his own hands the defense of their country. If Athens did not want Phormio, Acarnania did.

Phormio declined the offer. He told his visitors that as a dishonored man and a debtor, he would feel ashamed to face his men. This reply was not completely open. He saw in this unexpected offer a lever that might move the Assembly to reconsider his case. Phormio had no intention of spending his declining years as a soldier of fortune in the wilds of western Greece. Time was running out if he wanted to render any last great service to his city.

Meanwhile back in Athens a strong reaction had emerged in Phormio’s favor, perhaps simply because he was now in demand with other Greeks. To cancel his fine, the Assembly resorted to a ruse. The citizens appointed Phormio to decorate the sanctuary of Dionysus for an upcoming festival. One hundred minai of silver from public funds would be handed over to him to cover the cost. Of course Phormio took the money to the scrutiny board instead and paid his fine. He then fobbed off the god Dionysus with a cheap gift, inspiring a couple of comic verses from an anonymous playwright:

With Phormio’s debt cleared and his honor restored, the Assembly reelected him general in charge of a special mission: the defense of Acarnania and other western allies. His base would be Naupactus, a seaside town that had been given to a group of friendly Messenians during Tolmides’ circumnavigation of the Peloponnese. From there Phormio could blockade the Corinthian Gulf in both directions, preventing enemy fleets from rowing out, and Sicilian or Italian grain freighters from sailing in. He would face a combination of Spartan allies that had mustered one hundred ships earlier that year. How many triremes would the Assembly assign to him? Twenty. The plague had left Athens incapable of more.

In the first year of the Peloponnesian War the Athenians had launched a war fleet of 180 ships; in the second year, even with the outbreak of the plague, 150. In the war’s third year, Phormio’s 20 triremes would be the sum of the Athenian naval effort. This squadron was smaller than the vanguard of an Athenian fleet in their days of glory, but with Phormio in command its chances of survival were not as desperate as the numbers suggested. His flagship would be the
Paralos,
pride of the Athenian fleet.

During the winter Phormio left the Piraeus and led his little force around the Peloponnese to Naupactus. The town faced south across a broad oval of water, the westernmost reach of the Gulf of Corinth. Cold streams tumbled down from the hills to the flat reedy shore. To the west the coast curved south toward the Peloponnese, a long finger reaching out as if to touch the opposite shore. The cape at the tip of this finger, Cape Rhium of Molycria, guarded the gulf’s narrow entrance. The Messenian exiles at Naupactus gave a warm welcome to Phormio and his fleet. The harbor had room for twenty slipways but little more. The fortifications of Naupactus came right down to the beach and joined the harbor walls to create a complete defensive circuit.

The Athenians held their station unchallenged through the winter and spring. At about midsummer two messengers arrived at Naupactus almost simultaneously, both bearing bad news. From Acarnania came a desperate appeal: the Spartan admiral Cnemus had dodged Phormio’s blockade and landed an army that was about to attack the cities that Phormio had been sent out to protect. From the opposite direction Phormio received a report that a large fleet was ready to put to sea from Corinth and other Peloponnesian ports.

Phormio was caught in a dilemma. Without his help Acarnania might fall. He had already failed his friends by letting the Spartan ships elude him. But it was his first duty to block the gulf. The fleet launched by Sparta’s maritime allies was no doubt coordinated with the Spartan invasion under Admiral Cnemus. The close timing suggested an attempt to draw him away from Naupactus. Hoping that the Spartans would wait for their reinforcements before proceeding with their attack, Phormio told the unhappy Acarnanian messenger that he could not abandon his post.

The Athenians did not have long to wait. Within a few days they spotted enemy warships cruising westward along the gulf’s opposite shore. At once Phormio launched his full force of twenty triremes and rowed south to observe them. A closer view revealed an assemblage of forty-seven triremes with a flotilla of small support vessels bobbing in their wake. Only a few were fast triremes; the rest were heavily laden troop carriers. Phormio had no intention of challenging them inside the gulf. Instead he shadowed them as they passed between the capes and entered the open sea to the west. That evening the Peloponnesian fleet camped at Patras. Instead of returning to Naupactus, Phormio chose to bivouac on the opposite shore. He suspected that the enemy would attempt a night crossing, and he was right.

Several hours before sunrise the Athenians were again at sea, feeling their way southward across the dark water. The sea was flat, the air still. Ahead they could hear the sounds of an approaching fleet. But the enemy was already aware of their presence. By the time the two fleets made contact, the Peloponnesians had arrayed their forces in the same
kyklos
or wheel formation that the Greeks had used with such good results at Artemisium. The troop carriers formed a wide circle with their rams pointing outward, protecting the support vessels like dogs around a flock of sheep. Five fast triremes were also stationed inside the circle, ready to attack any Athenian that dared to break through.

After studying the enemy’s wheel, Phormio decided on an oblique and delayed attack. He intended to imitate the ploy used by Greek fishing boats when tackling a big run of tuna. Once alongside the huge fish, the fishermen would row quietly around the school, enclosing their prey within an ever-tightening circle of nets. Herded together, the jostling and terrified tuna inevitably started to leap from the water. As they landed in or near the boats, the fishermen clubbed them to death. Phormio had no nets, but he meant to go fishing nonetheless.

Following their general’s lead, the twenty Athenian triremes formed a single line and began a leisurely encircling maneuver, rowing around and around the perimeter of the motionless
kyklos.
At times a single trireme broke from the line to make a ramming charge at a Peloponnesian troop carrier. Convulsively the threatened ship would retreat deeper into the circle, and its companions on either side would pull back to close the gap. At the last moment the Athenian steersman veered away and resumed his place among the prowling triremes in the line. Little by little the Peloponnesian circle contracted. At last the Athenians drew the noose so tight that the oar banks of the troop carriers became enmeshed in a tangled ring.

Even now Phormio held off. He was waiting for the dawn, and the stiff easterly wind that blew every morning out of the Corinthian Gulf. It came at last, catching the Peloponnesian hulls and driving them against one another. Long poles struck planking as mariners tried to fend off neighboring vessels. Choppy waves kicked up by the wind added to the confusion of the colliding ships. In the rough sea the raw Peloponnesian rowers could not lift their oar blades clear of the water, and without steerage way the steersmen were helpless. An uproar of shouts, warnings, and curses drowned the orders of the officers. In the center of the chaos lay the five fast triremes, trapped between small craft and troop carriers.

When the confusion reached its height, Phormio gave the signal to attack. Each of the twenty Athenian triremes aimed for an enemy ship on the outer edge of the struggling mass. The flagship of one Peloponnesian contingent was struck in the first charge. Others followed as the Athenians settled down to the business of ramming every ship within reach. As the mass of ships broke up, those Peloponnesians who could get free fled back toward Patras. Before the morning’s work was over, the Athenians had captured twelve enemy triremes and most of their crews: more than two thousand men. At that point they abandoned the chase. With many more prizes they ran the risk of being outnumbered by their prisoners. Not one Athenian ship had been lost.

In Poseidon’s sanctuary on Cape Rhium the Athenians raised their victory trophy and sang their paeans. The battle of Patras was Athens’ first major success at sea since the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. An extra measure of thanks seemed due to the sea god, so Phormio ordered his crews to haul one of the captured triremes onto the consecrated ground. Near it a stone was inscribed with a dedication to Poseidon and the Athenian hero Theseus. Good news from Acarnania capped the celebrations. The invading army led by the Spartan admiral Cnemus, deprived of the reinforcements sent by sea, had been defeated. For the moment Athens’ western allies were safe.

The contest for control of the western seas continued. It was not in the nature of the Spartans to yield so easily, however poorly their allies fought. Scouts brought Phormio word that in the harbors of the Peloponnese shore the troop carriers that had survived the battle of Patras were being refitted by the shipwrights as fast triremes. Sure that he would have to fight again, Phormio sent a messenger to Athens with an appeal for more ships.

The Athenians at home had their own preoccupations. Since the outbreak of the plague the previous summer, the greatest naval power in the Mediterranean had been unable to man a large fleet. Between two and three hundred triremes lay empty in the Navy Yard, lifeless pods of timber without their crews. The outlook on land was even bleaker. The Peloponnesian army was besieging Athens’ closest ally, Plataea, yet the Athenians could do nothing to help. The treasury was at low ebb: a naval mission to collect tribute money in Asia Minor ended in the death of the commander. In this hour of crisis the entire city was held in suspense by the imminent loss of its wisest counselor. Pericles had contracted a lingering form of the plague and was slowly dying. Most citizens could not remember an Athens without that calm Olympian figure at the helm.

Phormio and his troubles in the Corinthian Gulf seemed small and far-off. The Assembly could do no more than send him another twenty triremes, and even those could not be spared immediately. On their way to Naupactus the squadron would have to stop at Crete and join with local forces in the assault of Cydonia. Only then could they proceed around the Peloponnese to their rendezvous with Phormio. It seemed uncertain that they could reach him before the Spartans launched another attack. Bearing nothing but bad news, the messenger returned to Naupactus.

At Sparta reaction to the battle of Patras was very different. Admiral Cnemus’ report on the Peloponnesian defeat angered the ephors and other leaders who were directing the war against Athens. They could see only one explanation for the humiliating loss.
Malakia!
The allies had been soft! In their fury the Spartans sent out three distinguished commanders to advise Cnemus. The group included a valiant young soldier named Brasidas, who had already scored one victory against an Athenian expeditionary force. For the moment Acarnania was forgotten. Phormio and his blockaders must be destroyed. The advisers delivered new orders to the admiral: muster more ships; prepare the crews for battle; and this time do
not
let a few Athenian ships drive them off the sea.

Fresh levies of ships from league members soon raised the Peloponnesian total to seventy-seven. Phormio would face the combined naval forces of eight states: Sparta, Corinth, Megara, Sicyon, Pellene, Elis, Leucas, and Ambracia. The ships assembled at a place called Panormus, near the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf. From the high citadel at Naupactus, Phormio’s lookouts had a clear view of Panormus, five miles to the south across the broad oval of open water. The enemy fleet outnumbered them almost four to one and was backed by a land army that had marched up to reinforce it. Almost overnight a city of mariners and armed men had sprouted on the coast of the Peloponnese.

It was contrary to Phormio’s beliefs—and his orders from the Assembly—to yield control of the sea. He had been ordered to guard the entrance to the gulf, and like Leonidas at Thermopylae, he would make his stand where obedience to those orders required. Launching his twenty ships, Phormio moved down to Cape Rhium to show that he meant to fight. Pebbles and shingle covered the shoreline within the gulf, denying him a landing place. So he rounded the cape and set up camp on a sandy beach near the sanctuary of Poseidon, facing west toward the distant isles of Ithaca and Cephallenia. The twenty triremes sent from Athens had still not appeared. His only supporters were a few hundred Messenian hoplites from Naupactus. They would protect the camp while the Athenians were at sea and aid any Athenian trireme driven to shore during a battle.