Paul Cartledge
View from the Rowing Bench
Lords of the Sea: The Triumph and Tragedy of Ancient Athens
By John R Hale
Gibson Square 395pp £17.99 order from our bookshop
In June 1993, to mark the notional 2,500th anniversary of the birth of democracy, a reconstruction of an ancient Athenian warship paid a symbolic visit to the Palace of Westminster: the Mother of Democracies meets the Mother of Parliaments. Possibly. At any rate, those of us who stood that day upon Westminster Bridge could feast our eyes on an avatar of one of the ancient Greek world’s most remarkable manufactures: the trireme, or three-banked oared warship, a glorified racing eight (but with over twenty times that number of oarsmen) and guided missile ramming-machine, as reconstructed according to British plans and finance and Greek craftsmanship. It was several hundreds of these weapons, in the hands mainly of Athenian citizens, that triumphantly gored and floored a many times larger Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BC, thereby saving a pioneer version of democracy or even, on one view, Western civilisation itself. Tragedy followed much later, in defeat at sea for Athens first by the Spartans (twice over, and with Persian money…), then by some of Athens’s own allies, and finally, decisively, by the Macedonian kingdom then ruled by the immediate successors of Alexander the Great. (The reconstructed trireme is perhaps rather humiliatingly named Olympias, after Alexander’s mother.)
Despite its rather emotive title, John Hale’s debut book is a largely even-keeled retelling of Athenian naval history from 483 to 322 BC. It is based, not always quite as solidly as the author strives to suggest, on ancient literary sources such as Thucydides (but also Cornelius Nepos),
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There is a difference between a doctor who writes medical treatises and a doctor who writes absurdist fiction. Do we want our heart surgeon to be an anti-realist?'
Joanna Kavenna peruses Iain Bamforth's 'Scattered Limbs: A Medical Dreambook'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/trust-me-philosopher
How did Uwe Johnson, the German writer who was friends with Hannah Arendt and Max Frisch, end up living out his days in the town of Sheerness, Kent?
https://literaryreview.co.uk/estuary-german
You only have a week left to take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/