Sea Travel in Ancient Greece: Navigation Tools, Routes, Pirates

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SEA TRAVEL IN ANCIENT GREECE


places Greek traveled to by sea

The Greek built some roads graded for wagons and chariots. However ships were the primary vehicle for moving goods. The waters around Greece were relatively placid, facilitating sea travel, and harbors were plentiful while land transport presented challenges. There were overland roads but most were basic and unsuitable for the transportation of large cargoes and in many cases even wheeled vehicles. Wheeled vehicles were more commonly used for transportation from ports to cities. Few Classical Greek cities were located right on the water because of worries about piracy and hostile raids. Even a city that traded extensively still had to transport cargo to and from its port.

Xenophon described a "long day" journey by an oared vessel of 140 miles between Byzantium to Heracles on the southern shore of the Black Sea. The long day was believed to be 16 hours traveled at seven or eight knots an hour.

According to Reuters: A large number of olive stones found in a 2,400-year-old ancient shipwreck appear to indicate that olives were one of the main components of the diet of sailors in the ancient world, researchers at Cyprus’s antiquities department said. The shipwreck, discovered in deep waters off Cyprus’s southern coast, was of a ship dated to around 400 B.C. and carried mainly wine amphorae from the Aegean island of Chios and other north Aegean islands, Excavation which started in November 2007 determined that the ship was a merchant vessel of the late classical period. [Source: by Michele Kambas, Reuters, August 2010]

Fear of the Sea in Antiquity

Apprehensions about the sea was not exclusive to Biblical stories like Jonah and the Whale. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: The ancient Romans, too, appeared anxious about the presence of sea monsters in the Mediterranean. In fact while they were enormously fond of swimming in their famous baths, local rivers, and man-made plunge pools, the Romans were less interested in swimming in the sea. They were terrified of it. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 28, 2018]

There are all kinds of legitimate reasons to be afraid of the sea that don’t include fierce aquatic creatures. Pirates were a real threat, and the lack of technology and communications systems we enjoy today meant that shipwrecks were a common, costly, and deadly affair. Anxieties about these are a common current throughout ancient literature. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew are shipwrecked and everyone but the protagonist is killed. In the same way, the shipwreck scene — in which the hero or heroine is shipwrecked and washes up in a foreign land — is one of the pivotal plot devices of ancient Greek Romance novels (the harlequin novels of their time).

It's easy to see why people were afraid of the sea, but it was the sea monster (cetus) that captivated the imagination of ancient artists and writers. As Aeschylus put it, “The arms of the deep teem with hateful monsters.” Variants of these curly-tailed serpentine sea monsters are found in all over ancient artwork, often being ridden by sea nymphs but occasionally being killed by heroes like Herakles. Until now the preoccupation with these strange, presumed mythical creatures was, simply put, odd.

Sea Routes in Ancient Greece

It was originally thought trade vessels hugged the coast within view of land and that Homer’s descriptions of open seas voyages and battling fierce storms was pure fantasy. Evidence for this was the fact that most shipwrecks were found near the shore. But now it appears that ships regularly crossed the open Mediterranean out of site of land from Italy to Carthage in Northern Africa. These routes saved time and earned merchants sizable profits but some times ships was sunk in storms.

Evidence of this includes a Greek shipwreck, dated to 300 B.C., found in 10,000-foot-deep water in the middle of the eastern Mediterranean about 200 miles southwest of Cyprus. Surrounded by about 2,500 amphorae used to carry wine, the ship is the deepest ancient shipwreck and is believed to have been carrying wine from Rhodes to Alexandria. It was found by a team searching for a sunken Israeli submarine. The island of Rhodes controlled much of the sea trade in the eastern Mediterranean until the Roman era.

Navigation in Ancient Greece

20120222-Building_ship.jpg
building a ship
Many ancient mariners navigated by looking at the coast. Most vessels were designed for hugging the coast. Navigation at night was done using stars such as the North Star as a reference point. One of the great problems with venturing southward along the African Coast was that once mariners passed below the equator, the North Star, the main reference point for celestial navigation, was no longer visible.

Larry Freeman wrote in his Astronomy & Navigation Page:“ Sight Navigation: The earliest naval navigation consisted of following the coastline, watching for features on land that would mark their location (landmarks.) When these navigators lost sight of land, it was very likely they would could not find land again and would die. When fog came in, they could not sail close to land or they would run aground; nor could they sail too far from land or when the fog lifted they would be lost at sea. Also a storm could have the same effect. [Source: Larry Freeman's Astronomy & Navigation Page]

Sailing the latitude: By sighting on the North Star (Polaris), and measuring the angle to it from the horizon, navigators could tell how far in the north south direction (latitude) they were. If they knew the latitude of a location and whether the location was east or west of them, they could sail north or south to the latitude and then go east or west as required to reach the new location. This did require occasionally to see the North Star to determine their latitude and adjust their course accordingly.

Astrolabe: The astrolabe an instrument was invented by the Greeks to measure angles and was used to measure the angle to Polaris. It looked like a couple of school protractors fastened together at the center, so you would have a full circle instead of a half circle, and then putting a sighting rod pivoting at the center.

Astrolabes

Astrolabes — astronomical calculators used to solve problems relating to time and location based on the positions of the Sun and stars in the sky — were invented by the Greeks and improved by the Arabs. The only thing the Greek mariners needed to measure their latitudinal position was a sighting device that measured degrees above the horizon of either the sun or the north star. The north star was the easiest to measure because adjustments did not have to be made for the season like they did with the sun. The simple measuring device was made of two rods, hinged at one end. Held sideways, the bottom rod was leveled to the horizon and the upper one was pointed at the sun or star. The angle between the two rods yielded the angle of inclination of the sun or star, and with tables the latitude could be ascertained. More sophisticated astrolabes evolved from these devises.

The Astrolabe enabled ship pilots to calculate latitude using the sun and stars. This in turn enabled the early explorers to venture out into the open sea without worrying about getting lost. Before the invention of the astrolabe most navigators stayed close to the shore so they could see where they were going. Longitude was more difficult to figure out. [Source: Merle Severy, National Geographic, November 1992]


AD 5th century Byzantine astrolabe

The astrolabe allowed mariners to use the sun and stars other than Polaris to determine latitude and direction and local time. Larry Freeman wrote in his Astronomy & Navigation Page: “The earth revolves on its axis nearly every 24 hours so the sun appears to revolve around the earth every 24 hours (on the average — our orbit is not circular). The sun is directly south (in the northern hemisphere) every noon (local time). The sun appears to move farther north as summer approaches and farther south as winter approaches because of the axis tilt. If you knew how far up in the sky the sun would be at noon and you measured how far the sun was up in the sky and how long away from noon (time before noon or after noon) you could compute your latitude. This analog computer was refined and used by the Arabic Moslems to do this calculation. It was called by the Europeans "astrolabe" (Greek meaning star taker). The Moslems needed to know the local time and their location so the would know when to pray and the direction to Mekka (Mecca) so they knew which direction to face. See Determine Directions with a Watch for an explanation how the time was determined. [Source: Larry Freeman's Astronomy & Navigation Page]

“The astrolabe has a base that has measurements based on a close approximate to the latitude. Then it has a plate that slits on top of it that has a offset circle that represents the path of the sun through out the year. A rule is set on top of that and with measurements of the location of the sun to the offset circle, the local time and actual latitude and direction can be read off the underneath dial. They also added stars as little points on this plate so they could be used at night. The other side of this device provided the ability to measure the angles needed on the front side (the computer side). It could also be used to measure sine, cosine, and tangent of angles (cotangent of angles over 45 degrees). The first English technical manual, in 1391, was about the Astrolabe (Astrelabie) written by Geoffrey Chaucer, the same one that wrote "Canterbury Tales". The Astrolabe was considered to be the greatest of all scientific instruments.”

Ancient Pirates


model of a 6th century BC Trireme

Mark Woolmer wrote in National Geographic: The origins of the modern term “piracy” can be traced back to the ancient Greek word peiráomai, meaning attempt (i.e., “attempt to steal”). Gradually this term morphed into a similar sounding term in Greek meaning “brigand,” and from that to the Latin term pirata. [Source: Mark Woolmer, National Geographic, April 17, 2020]

Ancient pirates left no archaeological records. The historical evidence for what they did, why they did it, and the attempts that were made to quell them is obtained entirely from written sources. These help build a picture of the threat that pirates presented and reveal that the practice was prevalent throughout antiquity.

Piracy in the ancient world can be linked, in part, to geography. The ruggedness of the Mediterranean region often favored maritime rather than agricultural livelihoods. During the Bronze and Early Iron Ages, occupants of coastal settlements such as Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre in Lebanon, and Athens, Aegina, and Corinth in Greece, relied on marine resources such as fish, mollusks, seaweed, and salt for their survival. Most people living in such places would have owned a boat and possessed both seafaring skills and an unsurpassed knowledge of local navigation and sailing conditions. If times were particularly hard, these skills could be easily used in piracy.

Models and images of sailing vessels found in Greece, Egypt, and the Levant reveal that by 3000 B.C., a wide assortment of craft were regularly sailing the Mediterranean. During the early millennia of seafaring, when maritime navigation was in its infancy, ships were unable to cross long distances over open water and so kept close to the coast. Shipping was therefore restricted to a few navigable routes, such as the one that connected Egypt with the island of Crete.

Merchant vessels laden with goods moved along these shoreline thoroughfares. The rugged coastlines of the Mediterranean were another advantage to pirates. Numerous hidden inlets allowed their ships to remain hidden from view until it was too late to escape. Merchant ships lacked speed and dexterity, and pirates were quicker and nimbler.

Pirates in Ancient Greece

Mark Woolmer wrote in National Geographic: Attitudes to piracy in ancient Greece are reflected in the Homeric epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, composed around 750 B.C. Although pirates are often spoken of with disapproval in these works, on a few occasions their actions and activities are not only condoned but praised. The historian Thucydides later wrote of the different motives for coastal dwellers to practice piracy, “some to serve their own cupidity and some to support the needy.” Like Homer, Thucydides suggests that marauders could be held in esteem: “They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls and would plunder it; indeed, this came to be the main source of their livelihood, no disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some glory.” [Source: Mark Woolmer, National Geographic, April 17, 2020]

In 1965 the wreckage of an ancient, small, single-masted merchant boat was discovered on the bottom of the sea off the coast of Cyprus. Archaeologists Michael and Susan Womer Katzev dubbed the wreck Kyrenia, after a nearby Cypriot port. Radiocarbon dating reveals the boat was constructed between 325 and 315 B.C. — around the time of the death of Alexander the Great — and sank between 295 and 285 B.C. When it sank, the ship was carrying a shipment of amphorae of wine from Rhodes, millstones, and almonds. The 46-foot-long, lead-plated hull bore signs of violence. Evidence that some of the cargo is missing has led archaeologists to suspect that the Kyrenia was captured, plundered, and then sunk by pirates.

Demetrius I of Macedon regularly employed pirates among his naval forces. The first-century B.C. historian Diodoros Siculus records that the spectacular array of vessels Demetrius deployed when blockading Rhodes included a number of pirates, the sight of which “brought great fear and panic to those who were watching.” (Some pirates practiced democracy... when they weren't busy looting.)

Efforts to Thwart Piracy in Ancient Greece

Mark Woolmer wrote in National Geographic: By the end of the sixth century B.C., Greek trade spanned the length and breadth of the Mediterranean. The marked increase in the volume and value of goods being traded meant that, for the first time, large coastal cities such as Athens, Corinth, and Aegina were almost wholly dependent on maritime trade. With piracy now posing a significant threat to their commercial interests, these cities introduced a number of measures to fight it.[Source: Mark Woolmer, National Geographic, April 17, 2020]

According to Thucydides, the Corinthians were the first to use their navy to suppress piracy. The huge expense and impracticality of large-scale naval campaigns, however, would have precluded many other states from these kinds of efforts. Consequently, throughout the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the Greek states tried to curtail piracy using less expensive measures, including sporadic campaigns designed to “clear the seas of pirates”; the creation of alliances and pacts with specific language outlawing maritime banditry; the construction of naval outposts in regions popular with pirates; and the use of naval escorts to protect merchant shipping.

These measures proved fruitless in stopping the pirates. In the fourth century B.C., Alexander the Great believed attacks on his merchant shipping would threaten his planned invasion of Persia. He created the first truly international coalition against piracy to which his allies were expected to contribute. But following his death in 323 B.C., no power was strong or affluent enough to suppress piracy. In fact, Alexander’s successors found that pirates could be turned to their advantage, either to directly menace their enemies, or by being incorporated into their own navies as auxiliary units.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except the Africans, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated October 2024


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