A Culture of Freedom: Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe by Christian Meier

Author:Christian Meier [Meier, Christian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Ancient, General, Social History, Philosophy, Social Science, Archaeology
ISBN: 9780199588039
Google: xFBd80q4ePgC
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2011-09-21T19:00:00+00:00

Figure 12. Two Greek warships, second half of the sixth century BC.

According to Thucydides, the first major Greek naval battle took place around 660 BC between Corinth and Kerkyra (Corfu). Another was fought in the second half of the sixth century between Phocaean immigrants in Corsica and the Carthaginians and Etruscans, who wanted to end Phocaean piracy. The trireme had been invented in the seventh century, most probably by the Phoenicians. Among the Greeks, Corinthians were reportedly the first to build this sort of vessel, which featured three rows of oarsmen half sitting next to and half below one another. The design allowed for the concentration of a great amount of oar-power in a relatively short and highly manoeuvrable vessel. In the second half of the sixth century, the tyrant Polycrates of Samos and the island of Naxos came to dominate the seas. We do not know to what extent this was due to naval victories, but it seems likely that the use of force and violence would have played a major role.

‘No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons’, wrote Herodotus in the last third of the fifth century BC. ‘War is sweet for those who have not tried it’, sang Pindar, several decades earlier. ‘But anyone who knows what it is is horrified beyond measure in his heart when it approaches.’ The lamentations in the Homeric epics were similar in tone. Such insights, however, were of little use to people who were not mere spectators, but actually challenged to take part in wars, whether wars of defence or attack, or simply contests of strength against rival cities. Greeks knew that war was an evil. But they still instigated and fought wars—even if not at every possible opportunity—as long as wars could not be avoided and also because they were taken for granted as a normal part of life. After all, it is the same with many other evils, then and throughout world history. Lessons learned, assuming they are not too traumatic, tend to fade over time.

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