376 Book Reviews / Medieval Encounters 13 (2007) 363-384

John H. Pryor and Elizabeth M. Jeffreys, Age of the Dromon: Th e Byzantine Navy, ca. 500-1204. Leiden: Brill, 2006. 832 pp. $213.00 (cloth).

Over the years, a great deal of ink has been spilled concerning the origins and characteristics of the Byzantine war galley known as the dromon. Vir- tually all of these works have assumed that the dromon developed as a particular type of warship at the end of the Roman Empire and persisted unchanged, both in construction and its employment, until its disappear- ance in the eleventh century. John H. Pryor and Elizabeth M. Jeffreys set out to attack these assumptions with a thorough and detailed literary and textual analysis of all the primary sources relating to the dromon that has not been undertaken hitherto. As the authors clearly state, this work is not an institutional history of the Byzantine navy or its themes, but a study of the ship itself, along with its crew and weapons as well as the tactics employed by the Byzantine navy. Th e authors start with an overview of the operational history of the Roman and Byzantine navies from the Late Roman Empire until the Fourth Crusade. In this rather thick chapter, the authors detail the various opera- tions and battles of the period. In doing so, they deliberately use the names of the various ship types as they appear in each of the sources relating to each operation. It soon becomes clear that far from there being a uniform terminology for ship types, the sources are a quagmire of inconsistent usage of names as well as of archaic terminology inserted by writers who were more interested in impressing their patrons with their erudition than pro- viding an accurate description of the event or ships. However, it does become evident that the first usage of the term “dromon” from the fifth to eighth centuries did not refer to the large bireme galleys of the ninth and tenth centuries, but to swift monoreme galleys of only fifty oars. Unlike in the earlier liburnae, the rowers in the dromons were completely covered by a protective deck. But the design of dromons of this period was not static but evolving. Design was affected by the change from the traditional shell- first construction of the Greco-Roman period to hulls built frame first. Th is in turn influenced the change from the waterline ram deployed as a ship killer to the development of the spur which was designed to break oars and disable the opponent, which in turn changed the tactics employed by fleets in combat. Other than some iconography, there are few sources and much has to be deduced from nautical and experimental archaeology. Th e first detailed information concerning dromons and their employ- ment by the Byzantine navy is found in a group of naval treatises and

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/157006707X195075

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documents from the ninth and tenth centuries. Th ese form the basis for the discussion of the construction characteristics of the dromon and the horse transport called chelandia, and are all found transcribed and trans- lated in the appendices. Th e primary sources are three naval treatises by Leo VI, Syrianos Magistros, “the Anonymous,” and the inventory for the expeditions to Crete in 911 and 949. Th e appendices also include later redactions of the Naumachika of Leo VI by Ouranos and several Muslim authors. All the treatises have borrowed heavily from earlier works, some of which are now lost. More importantly, the close textual analysis of the works show that often they included archaic nomenclature for construc- tion techniques or tactics that had long fallen into disuse by the time of their writing. A clear example of this is the references in the work of the Anonymous to Greek tactics that had passed away centuries earlier with the abandonment of the waterline ram. Th is comparative analysis of all these sources is the first of its kind and is a major contribution in itself. It clearly demonstrates that the material in these works has to be approached with circumspection, which has not always been the case in the past. Besides the primary sources, the authors also rely heavily on the results from nautical and experimental archaeology, particularly the observations from the trials of the reconstructed Greek triremes Olympias and Olym- pias II. Th e picture that emerges of the tenth-century dromon is of a highly specialized bireme that had evolved from the earlier lighter monoreme. While the primary warship of the tenth century, it was far from being the zenith of galley design, as it sometimes has been portrayed. Th e bireme configuration limited storage for water and provisions, which in turn lim- ited the range and endurance of the vessel. Moreover, having the lower bank of oarsmen covered by a deck not only prevented these men from participating easily in the boarding melees that frequently took place but also produced stifling conditions below deck that would sap the rowers of their strength. Th is had an effect on the horse transports as well. Th e chel- andriae could transport horses safely only for short periods, and frequently the horses had to be taken overland great distances to meet the fleet at a location near the operation for loading instead of being transported directly to the landing point by the fleet. Th e vessels could only operate in relatively calm conditions, in part dic- tated by the Byzantine terror weapon, Greek fire. Greek fire was hardly the weapon of mass destruction, as it has sometimes been portrayed. Close examination of the sources, coupled with recent experimental archaeology, demonstrates the rather limited range of the weapon and specific situations

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