By Reviewed by John French
"Lords of the Sea"
John R. Hale
Viking, $29.95
'Lords of the Sea" is a good read if you are a Philhellene like me. The author, John R. Hale, studied at Yale and Cambridge universities in preparation for an archaeological career that included underwater research into ancient ships. His focus is the trireme, a type of naval vessel invented by the Athenians that surpassed any other warship of the time. During a period of more than 150 years, ending in 322 B.C.E., the trireme made Athenians the masters of the eastern Mediterranean sea, except during those recurring periods when the Athenian Assembly took leave of its senses.
Even though the trireme is central to the book, it is not the star. (Indeed, I recommend any prospective reader skip the tedious chapter on how the trireme was built.) The real heroes and villains are the Athenians and their allies and enemies. Many are familiar. In engaging prose, Hale reacquaints us with Miltiades and Themistocles, who stopped the invading Persian hordes at Marathon and Salamis; the remarkable philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who played their parts as citizens for good or ill; the immortal playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, who influenced Athenian opinion; and the political leaders, like the brilliant Pericles and the scheming Alcibiades, who carried Athens to the heights of glory and dashed it to defeat.
But the ordinary, anonymous Athenians deserve most of the credit and blame for both good and bad outcomes. They were the proprietors of the first true democracy. They could unite vigorously behind a worthy cause or they could peevishly, to their great harm, send an able general into exile or dispatch a punitive expedition against a wavering ally. Their democracy struggled unsuccessfully for balance. They purported to worship the Golden Mean in human behavior but frequently went to extremes.
Sophocles wrote:
"Where there is hubris and self-will, know this: the city, after a fair voyage, in time will plunge to the bottom."
A few years ago, I read a book titled "Are We Rome?" A better question might be: Are we Athens?