Seafaring on the Ancient Mediterranean: New Thoughts on Triremes and Other Ancient Ships by Alec Tilley

the hills on the road to Athens where the Athenians’ much smaller force stood a good chance of holding off the superior Persian numbers. There, using not only hoplites but all the fighting men available to them, they were successful and compelled the Persians to turn and retreat back to their ships lying off the beach at Marathon; the Persians, leaving a meagre rearguard on the beach, then sailed around to Phaleron. The second battle took place when a force of Athenian hoplites under Miltiades attacked this rearguard and totally overwhelmed it. Schreiner bases this theory of two battles largely on miscellaneous nuggets of information extracted from later ancient writers, in many cases disregarding other nuggets in them which do not support the picture he seeks to present. His theory, solving many of the problems in Herodotus’ account, is certainly plausible—but can hardly be considered definitively proven. What particularly exasperates Schreiner is that no credit whatsoever is accorded in any ancient account, and consequently by modern authorities, to a presumable part played by the Athenian fleet in defeating the Persians, an omission he tends to attribute to the ancient bias in favour of the hoplites, who were drawn from the ranks of the wealthy and well-born, and against the rowers of the fleet, who were drawn from the lower classes. There is clear evidence that by 490 BC Athens boasted a contingent of 70 triremes; Schreiner argues that these ships must have played some role, very likely in compelling the Persian fleet to give up any idea of launching an attack on Phaleron. The idea is imaginative, and persuasive, but, again, can hardly be considered definitively proven. Schreiner’s second major point is to demonstrate how these ships came into existence. Tradition has it that the Athenian politician Themistocles was responsible for the creation of an Athenian fleet by persuading the city to pass a bill that devoted an unexpected financial windfall to building ships, which bill is usually dated to 483 BC and explains how Athens got the ships that fought in the Battle of Salamis in 480. Schreiner argues that Themistocles was responsible for not one but two naval bills, the first in 493, which produced the ships that confronted the Persian fleet at Phaleron, and a second, dated 483, that produced the ships that fought at Salamis. In presenting his arguments Schreiner has to make his way across minefields of scholarly controversy. He provides a massively-documented text, citing in extensive footnotes the array of authorities who have discussed each and every one of the points he raises. He argues with conviction—but one thing we may be sure of is that the controversies will continue, and that his conclusions will be argued against with similar conviction.