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Athens' Peacetime Navy in the Age of Perikles Eddy, Samuel K Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Summer 1968; 9, 2; ProQuest pg. 141 Athens' Peacetime Navy in the Age of Perikles Samuel K. Eddy N THE eleventh and twelfth chapters of his biography of Perikles, I Plutarch gives some details of the policies developed by the Athenian statesman to relieve the plight of the poor of Athens. Some men, he says, were sent as settlers to the newly-created klerou­ chies in the empire. Others, both skilled and unskilled workmen, were employed in constructing the great monuments rising on the Akropolis and in other parts of Attika. Perikles also, Plutarch says, (11.4), caused sixty triremes to be manned and equipped for eight months of each year for the purposes of giving pay to the crews and of training them for war. I shall undertake to show that this number is wrong and that it should be emended to sixteen. I wish also to discuss how the sixteen ships may have been used and what implica­ tions such a standing navy has for our understanding of the financial history of Athens. There is no reason to doubt that the essential point in Plutarch's statement is correct, that is, that the Athenian demos did receive naval training. The contemporary Old Oligarch says they did (1.20) and Thucydides makes Perikles say the same thing (1.142.7-9). Training was necessary both for the steersmen and for the simple oarsmen, who had to row in strict unison while seated in close quarters on board ship.1 Learning to row at the different speeds ordered by the keleustai, handling the long, heavy oars while changing from <Call ahead" to Hall astern," and bringing all the oars on one side rapidly inboard to practice the side-swiping tactic sometimes used against an enemy-all this required a certain skill which only practice could give. Where Plutarch found this information is impossible to say. But, as an honest man, he will have found it somewhere, for he did not invent his facts, but depended on his considerable reading to 1 The oarage of a trireme is accurately described by J. S. Morrison, "Notes on Certain Greek Nautical Terms," CQ 41 (1947) 122-35, and by L. Casson, The Ancient Mariners (New York 1959) 93-4. 141 142 ATHENS' PEACETIME NAVY IN THE AGE OF PERIKLES supply them. He read, we know, the Atthis of Hellanikos, a contem­ porary of Perikles, Krateros' collection of Athenian decrees with its learned commentary, and Philochoros' A tthis , and, perhaps, his Attic Inscriptions toO.2 One or more of these sources no doubt con­ tained some such detailed information-based on an Athenian de­ cree of the Boule and Demos-on the fleet as Plutarch gives us. Philo­ choros was capable of recording events with great exactitude. He tells us that in 445/4 the Athenians received a gift of 30,000 medimnoi of grain from Egypt, which was shared between 14,240 citizens.3 While Plutarch's basic information is correct, therefore, the number of ships must be corrupt. Modern scholars who have commented on this passage have con­ tented themselves with a few simple observations, that, for example, the ships went out for only eight months because sailing during the winter was difficult.4 Others have computed the number of men or the sum of money required for such a fleet. Perrin estimated that the crews of sixty ships would have amounted to 12,000 men. Bockh and Gomme calculated their cost at 480 talents a year.s But none of these scholars took the next step of comparing these figures with what is known of Athens' total population or income. Had they done so, I believe, they would have seen that the number sixty is impossibly high. Let us examine the financial aspect first, and proceed to do so by estimating the cost of manning sixty ships in the most conservative way. Let us allow that one crew amounted only to 191 men drawing pay, instead of following the usual rule-of-thumb number of 200. There would be a trierarch (who will not have been paid), six ship's officers, ten marines, a flute-player (a slave, perhaps, and not paid wages, but still an expense), possibly four sailors to handle the sails B Hellanikos: Pluto Alc. 21.1; Krateros: Pluto Aristid. 36.2; Philochoros: Pluto Nic. 23.5. 8 For Philochoros' reputation see L. Pearson, Local Historians of Attica (Philadelphia 1942) esp. 109,123, 135; and F. Jacoby, Atthis (Oxford 1949) passim. The grain is from FGrHist 328 F 119 = Schol. Ar. Vesp. 718. These figures have been generally accepted, as by A. W. Gomme, The Population of Athens (Oxford 1933) 16-7. , As R. Flaceliere and E. Chambry on this passage in the BuM ed. (Paris 1964). 5 Crews: B. Perrin, Plutarch's Cimon and Pericles (New York 1910) 226. Cost: A. Bockh, Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener 3 I (Berlin 1886) 357; A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commen­ tary on Thucydides II (Oxford 1956) 42 (hereafter cited as GOMME, Comm.). K. J. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte 2 II (Strassburg 1916) 331, put it as 240 talents, since he allowed pay of only three obols a day instead of a drachma. SAMUEL K. EDDY 143 and steering oars, and 170 oarsmen.6 A fleet of sixty ships will have required 10,200 men to row, 600 epibatai and 660 other ranks, a total of 11,460 men. If each one received a drachma a day, which most authorities agree was the rate of pay at this time,7 the cost per diem will have been 1 talent, 5,460 drachmas, very nearly two talents. The minimum cost for eight months will have been something like this. Eight lunar months amount to 236 days, allowing for four full months of thirty days and four hollow months of twenty-nine. Let us suppose, too, that the crews were not paid on everyone of those days, because the ships had to be in port for upkeep or repair, because some reli­ gious festival was in progress, because the Assembly was holding some important session, or for some other reason. Thus, perhaps a third of this time, around 76 days, should be subtracted from the 236, leaving 160 days of active service for which pay was given. Of course, the actual number of days without pay may well have been much less. At 1 talent, 5,460 drachmas a day for 160 days, the cost would be 305 talents, 3,600 drachmas as a minimum figure for sixty ships. The true figure no doubt lies between this and the 480 talents of B6ckh and Gomme. In 432/1, the annual income of Athens, from both domestic and foreign sources, was about 1,000 talents.s When Perikles inaugurated the training program, however, the income of the state was certainly less. Miltner thought that the program, as a democratic reform, would have been begun about 453-450 B.C.,9 and this may be right, but I should be inclined to put it right after the Peace of Kallias or even after the Thirty Years Peace of 445, by which time the founding of the great series of klerouchies was coming to an end, and there were prospects for a lengthy period of peace. That was just the time to start regular paid training. The exact date, however, does not matter -the system was certainly in operation by 445/4, and Athens' revenue was certainly less then than in 432/1. We know of two considerable items of income which did not exist in 445/4. One was the annual installment of 50 talents paid as war indemnity by Samos from 439 on, and the second was the revenue, whatever it was, that came in 8 For crews of triremes see F. Miltner in RE 16 (1935) 2030-1 S.v. NAUTAI, and A. Koster and B. Veith, Heerwesen und Krieg~fuhrung der Griechen und Romer (Munchen 1928) 188-91. 7 A. Bockh, op.cit. (supra n.5) 1.340-2, 357, collected the evidence; Gomme Comm. II 42,46-7, 275 gives it a recent discussion. S Xen. Anab. 7.1.27. 9 In RE 19 (1937) 759 S.V. PERIKLES 1. 144 ATHENS' PEACETIME NAVY IN THE AGE OF PERlKLES from Amphipolis after 437. The authors of ATL think that it was in the neighborhood of 70-75 talents, but this strikes me as too high, at least for 432/1, when Amphipolis had been settled for only five years. A third source of income, the phoros of the allies, in the early 440's varied between 360 and 375 talents; about 443 it rose to around 390 talents and then remained approximately constant.10 Therefore, if we take these three items together as 125 talents (50 from Samos, 60 from Amphipolis and 15 more of tribute), Athens' income at the time the training program was begun and was budgeted for was around 875 talents. The cost of the Annual Squadron, as I shall call it, would have been more than a third of this on the lowest possible estimate, or more than half on the highest, if it comprised sixty ships. We must, therefore, consider the yearly charge for the Annual Squadron along with what is known of other expenditure at Athens at this time. The non-naval outlay was certainly considerable. Work was in progress on numerous temples and costly monuments. The Parthenon required about 500 talents to complete, and the Propylaia about 200.11 Pheidias' gold and ivory statue of Athena consumed the enormous sum of 750 talents.a Not all of the money for the em­ bellishment of the Akropolis came from public funds, since a certain amount was contributed by private individuals.ls But such contri­ butions will have been relatively tiny, so that we can count the whole cost as an expense of the state, remembering that we do not know how much was spent for things like landscaping.

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