August 5, 2025 • 29 mins
Move aside Sparta, there's a new power in town!
'Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy' by John R. Hale is a historical book that recounts the period from 483-322 BC of Ancient Greece and in particular the navy armada of Athens. We witness the rise and fall of Athenian power via not only sea battles with other empires but the decisions made by it's democratic governments as well as influential politicians, generals, philosophers & artists.
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Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:48) Themes/Questions
(00:19:29) Author & Extras
(00:25:12) Summary
(00:27:33) Value 4 Value
(00:28:58) Coming Up/Join Live!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
Move aside, Sparta. There's a new power in town.
Welcome, Mere Mortalites, to another round of the mere mortals book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 08/06/2025.
And as you might surmise,
(00:21):
this is the podcast where I am looking to gather a group of, 200 strong men to help me board the ship and sail the seas.
Okay. No. We won't be doing that. None of that on this podcast. We will be covering a book though where a lot of that happened, which is Lords of the Sea by John r Hale
with the subtitle, the epic story of the Athenian navy and the birth of democracy.
(00:44):
So this book was published in 02/2009. As you might surmise, it's a bit of a history book. 395
pages in length. I'd say it took me twelve hours of reading to to fully get through. This was the final book I was reading
whilst traveling, so I read this on my Kindle.
And,
yeah, it's a pretty decent account of the period from April
(01:07):
to March.
So this was in the glory of the Athenian
naval times of Athens at its glory, and those two are somewhat linked.
And,
it's not just about Athens and,
and Greece because it does
talk a little bit about Persian wars. It has,
(01:27):
Alex of Macedonia
coming in, Alexander the Great,
But they all relate to the Athenian navy of some shape or form.
And so we really see the rise and fall of the armada of Athens, if you wanna call it that.
The birth, I guess, of their power as a as a
a city, I, I guess, because it wasn't, you know, of Greece as a country, but certainly Athens as a as a city,
(01:54):
via the the naval battles with other empires,
the
everything that was going on on the seas.
And it also links,
as the subtitle might suggest,
to the rise of democracy and how the political decisions played a part in the birth of the Athenian Navy as well. So what you'll encounter in this book, descriptions of naval battles, you'll encounter
(02:18):
well known
figures throughout history
of,
the Athens and ancient Greece,
philosophers, artists, etcetera, etcetera. It's split into 22 chapters, and the chapters really
are either based around a certain time period,
or they are based around a person
who was influential in that time period. So Pericles, for example, you'll have a kind of a chapter dealing with him. And, you know, he might pop his head into other chapters, but that's how it is sorted out in total.
(02:48):
So let's jump into the themes and questions. What made the Athenian Navy special, and how is this linked to democracy?
So the Athenian navy,
were particularly known for their triremes,
and this,
is a type of boat,
long wooden boat,
manned by a 170
ish rowers
(03:09):
and across a kind of couple of different levels.
And there would be a small contingent of people on the top side of the boat who were, you know, the oarsmen, the captain,
either some fighters perhaps, for example, one guy keeping the beat,
multiple different people.
So you'd have about 200 people per boat.
(03:30):
And
the way the boat was utilized was mostly as a ramming type structure. So right at the front of the boat, they would have this ram, and, essentially, it was to maneuver in battle to get on the broadside of another ship and
crash into it. This would then allow them to either break the ship kind of in half and, you know,
(03:51):
dismantle it
or for it them to kind of get stuck in it so that they could then board and attack and go to hand to hand, fighting.
So
depending on the wealth and the ascendancy
of Athens at the time, their fleet could consist of as low as kind of 20 to 30 ships,
with, you know, the associated hundreds
(04:14):
getting into thousands of people there,
to ships of 200 to 300,
in in in size and number,
which were when they were kind of at the peak of their glory and when they would typically be,
outnumbering other armadas. And there's these interesting battles where you see
they themselves
kind of get outmaneuvered by other generals and even though they are
(04:38):
at greater in number and then vice versa, when they are kind of rising up as a power, there would be some battles where they were versing the Persians
and they would
be, you know, outnumbered three to one, but still managed to pull off a
miraculous,
you know, defeat or victory of the other side. So,
they were mostly used for kind of these attack purposes,
(05:00):
but we could also see them be modified to carry horses
as messenger boats, towing away captured enemy vessels,
landing on beachheads.
They were
the
ability to move men around, but particularly they were for the fighting.
Later on, they started developing these quad quad reams or
(05:22):
kin reams,
which were able to fit more men in and become kind of larger in size. But for the most part, the tri reams were the the,
main vessels during this period. So
as I mentioned, the this hundred and sixty year time period was an eventful time for Greece.
This was
of
many notable things. I'll list a couple of them here. The 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas at Thermopylae fighting against the Persians. That was during this time period. The Peloponnesian War. So this was the war between Athens and Sparta themselves.
(05:56):
And then finally, the Macedonia's
empire building,
which
included Greece, but obviously went far beyond that. So
Athens played its part in all of this by gradually building the dominant maritime empire
based on its powerful navy. So
as I was reading the book, it becomes apparent well, you know, it's it's hard to say. This book had a very particular bent saying this was the Athenian navy. So it didn't talk about their their standing army of hoplites, for example,
(06:28):
or battles that they participate in that. It was pretty much just all, here's the navy battles. Here's the maritime,
you know, associated things. I guess the author is is trying to emphasize just how important the Athenian navy was.
They controlled the seas around Greece,
won, and lost many notable battles, most of which I've forgotten because there were so many in here. And
(06:52):
they're kind of not that important historically wise because there's
so many naval battles just throughout history.
What I also
found in this book was a lot of the
names that you might recognize throughout
ancient Greek history.
Pericles, who was the guy who helped to build up the Athenian Navy in the first place. Socrates, the philosopher who actually
(07:18):
was elected
at one point to a very critical gen,
I guess,
a point of the democracy where they needed a a spokesperson, and this would just be drawn by random lots of all the
eligible voters.
And that was a very influential decision that he kind of presided over,
which I will get to in a little bit.
(07:40):
And
things like,
people like Euripides,
who has,
you know, the famous plays and was a playwright,
Alexander the Great, Alchi,
Alchi Beatis, who is someone I'd never heard of before, but played at a a rather important plot as well. Thucydides, the historian, Hippocrates,
(08:00):
the
the medical doctor of King Leonidas, obviously, from Sparta.
I think I mentioned Alexander the Great. Plenty of important
people were in this whole time period as a whole, as well as a lot of, generals who I'd never heard of before. Foshian
was a rather important person, but
(08:21):
there's just so many people throughout history. You you can't cover really all of them.
So getting towards the the navy as itself, and I'm trying to generalize here, what made their navy so special?
And
for me, I would say it's because they committed fullheartedly
to it.
It wasn't just the simple fact of putting resources into it. It's that their whole
(08:45):
society and structure was largely built around it. So
they literally built
Athens.
You know, Athens was kind of inland a bit. And if you've ever been there,
where,
or at least the center is in terms of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, things like this. And
to protect Athens, they built these long walls all around the city, literally called the Long Walls,
(09:11):
which would link Athens to its port so that they had this kind of joint
connection between the port and the actual sea. You know, this isn't that uncommon. There's plenty of walled cities throughout the world. I guess what was
interesting of note for this was that it was a very active decision to build this walls to protect themselves and to protect their navy and the ability
(09:33):
to,
house their navy inside
a protected barrier because, you know, when you've got hundreds of ships
at
any given time, they need to be housed somewhere. And, this was, I guess, also the the full heartedness.
They were protecting their ships and were meticulous with their preparation of maintenance. They would pull the ships inland. They built special
(09:58):
coverages,
you know, buildings to house all of these gigantic ships.
They would have people training all the time on them and training
to learn to row on land. They had, you know, specialized machines they would build so that people could learn how to row properly.
The generals were revered.
The tactics,
(10:19):
all of this kind of played into
that
Athens became a city based around these ships.
And,
it kinda reminds me of, I guess, the the mining industry, funnily enough, which I used to work in, where
obviously the the mining machines, these gigantic machines, drag lines and diggers
(10:39):
and dozers and,
you know, the whole trucks and stuff like this.
When the mine was going through a good time, these things were maintained
meticulously.
It was it was like a point of pride to, you know, have them cleaned
to,
have any lingering faults fixed and things. Even though it would take away from production,
(11:01):
it was still
that, you know, it was there was pride in the machines. And when you go through a bad time, that's one of the first things that starts to go. You start doing less maintenance. You start wearing them down to the ground. And we see a very similar thing that happened with the Athenian navy. They build themselves up to this tremendous position. They kind of get a bit arrogant.
They lose one or two very significant battles through significant missteps by the the generals.
(11:26):
And then when they're on the way down, it's like, oh, shit. You know, we we don't have enough ships, we don't have enough men.
There's less order, there's less control
and makes them right for the picking and overtaking. So as an industry,
they
were meticulous with not only investing resources, but it's kind of their spirit as well. And so this is where perhaps the Athenian spirit and what the author was maybe linking
(11:54):
of the Athenian navy to their democracy.
At various times, slaves were given the offer of, hey. You can become a full Athenian citizen, which was just kind of this rare privileged thing to be able to become an Athenian citizen and
perhaps vote as well.
Democracy
(12:15):
in a in Athens wasn't everyone gets a vote. It was a lot of people get a vote, but there's still
you probably still had to be a landowner and you had to be an Athenian citizen.
And for example, if you were
an Athenian citizen who married or,
you know, had sex with someone outside of the city and a child was birthed,
(12:35):
they weren't an Athenian citizen that needed to be between two citizens. So it was very
convoluted
item. And, but this is where we can see,
the slaves were given the offer to join the citizenry
to man the boats when they were in times of need, when they didn't have enough men to to to do this. And this obviously came at an extreme risk because they would then have to go to war. You know, if their ship sunk, they were probably going to die out at sea,
(13:04):
or they could be sold into worse slavery if they were captured. Lots of things like this.
So Pericles and other important leaders
built up this
prestige around the navy of pride in it, of,
power. And this is where we can see they started to win some battles. So then the generals become revered
(13:26):
and the generals, you know, get to speak at the,
at the Acropolis
during the kind of voting sessions.
And,
you know, if they have revered, then they're going to speak well about the Navy. So they're going to invest more resources into it. You can see this kind of flywheel of success breeds success,
and they certainly built out a lot of infrastructure
(13:48):
to help support them with all of this.
However,
the the linkage between democracy and
the navy is a little bit tenuous, so I might touch upon that in the extra section.
And you might be thinking like, wow,
The Athenian Navy, what a glorious place to,
be in during those times. And,
(14:10):
the democracy that enabled them was such a good thing. Like, they were they were making good decisions and stuff like this. But
many stories of this time period reminded me of just how brutal it was. So I mentioned Socrates before. There was a a battle out at sea. The eight of the Athenian generals
were
(14:31):
reported to have not behaved,
and these were, like, the main general. So, you know, there was only 10 of them in total, I think, in this battle.
Eight of them were kind of, I guess, you'd call it subpoenaed after the battle,
for their
for what they had done, which was they had actually won the battle,
but they had neglected to pick up the,
(14:55):
drowning kind of, like, Athenian soldiers during it because there was a storm that was coming through. And that was the sort of thing you're meant to do. You're meant to go out and pick up the bodies and try and save survivors.
But the storm came through. They couldn't do it.
They also had the option to, you know, chase after the other,
I believe it was maybe the Spartans. They beat them. It's it's hard to remember. There's so many battles.
(15:18):
And
they, you know, they they come back to Athens, glorious. They've they've won this battle.
But then there's some discontent perhaps amongst other soldiers and things like this. They get called up to the the Parthenon.
Hey. There's these accusations against you. How do you plead not guilty? Well, too bad. You we vote that you're all guilty.
(15:38):
And they all then had to commit suicide
via drinking hemlock.
Afterwards, you know, the day or two afterwards,
the
the the democracy, the the people of it, the population were kinda like, oh, alright. We were kinda mad at the time. We probably shouldn't have done that.
And we just killed eight of our, you know, best generals.
Whoops.
(15:59):
And this happened
regularly.
The the democracy
did not mean that the navy and the structure,
the system, the hierarchy of power of
putting
the right people in charge.
It didn't the I I wouldn't say that democracy
made that it was the navy who had the best people in charge and that they perform to their best abilities.
(16:25):
If anything, I would say that democracy with all the back fighting, the all in fighting, the back stabbing, the
the
subtle power games of scratching this person's back for this sort of thing
meant that you would have people like Alche Alchebe Yadez, and
Let's not even mention the nepotism of, you know, oh, it's Pericles, his son. It must be really good as well. So let's elect him even though there's no there's no necessarily
(16:53):
good merit in in doing that.
And so you'd see throughout time that they consistently made bad decisions. They would consistently
lose battles that they shouldn't have lost, that they would
execute, for example, a whole city,
a vessel state
for refusing to,
(17:13):
obey their orders.
The Athenians were not nice people. They were
ruthless.
They, you know, slavery was fine.
Imperial tribute forced upon vassal cities.
They were overtaxing
these kind of like cities that were within their realm. They would regularly
(17:34):
go on these kind of raids to just basically fuck up, plunder, steal, rape. I'm sure all of the bad things from
people who were kind of nominally their allies. They weren't necessarily,
like,
set in stone allies, but they also weren't
enemies per se.
There's so many things where you just look at them and you go, these are a warlike bunch of assholes, and
(17:59):
it's
it's very, you know, poetic that
they got to this period of of power, of of
building up their navy and becoming like, as, you know, Athens is a
global power at the time.
And
to then see them get their just desserts afterwards was, I guess,
(18:19):
not satisfying,
but it's kind of predictable that
you behave like assholes. Well, get ready to get humbled by Alexander the Great, for example. So, you know, there was all of these things where you go, you know,
democracy
and the Athenian naval power
were linked,
but the neither of them were particularly great. I would
(18:43):
they they had their moment in the sun for,
you know, a brief kind of fifty years in this building up of building up the Navy, fifty years of glory and then then falling down again.
And it's an interesting tale.
And
what made them great was what led to their own demise, the the kind of work, the spirit that they put into it. It's the classic kind of like four four things, you know,
(19:11):
good men create great times. Great times create weak men. Weak men create bad times. Bad times create strong men or strong or good men. Good men create good times. It's that kind of cycle that goes over And we see it. We see it. We saw all of it through through the, the period of Athens during this time period. So let's jump on to the author, some extra details.
(19:32):
John r Hale was born 1951,
still alive.
He's a archeologist,
specialized in ancient history,
particularly, I would say, around Athens. His two specialties were kinda ancient Greece, so think of the Oracle of Delphi,
things like that, as well as the navy
of certain types. So Vikings,
(19:54):
he's he's pretty good at. So
his style in the book
was,
not so much an assertion of what happened, but it was kind of descriptive in nature. It was
not certainly not historical fiction because there was a very long section at the end of all the notes. And so
it was a recounting of what other people have said with, I guess, adding some of his own details into the mix. So, you know, he's saying this is likely what Pericles thought. This is likely what happened. So you have details of
(20:25):
where certain people landed on beachheads of where 400 Spartans, for example, got trapped on an island and Athens was able to, you know, sequester them, keep them trapped on this island, and eventually, I believe, ransomed them back to Sparta
for,
it was be the money or power or or things like this.
(20:48):
I thought he did a very decent job of
creating the setting, the context,
the feeling for the action
without diving too deep into
this person said this or this exact battle happened in this exact way and, you know, there was three ships, and this ship hit this ship. He I think he did a good,
good mix of adding in
(21:10):
all of these kind of components to give you an idea of, okay, this is what was actually happening at the time. A
detraction
that I would have is that this the title is
somewhat deceptive in a way or at least confusing where
I thought that he was gonna really try and link the democracy to the navy and say, you know, the democracy enabled this navy.
(21:34):
Whereas I think he was just
more
pointing out of that the navy was rising and democracy was also rising at the same time because he certainly did spend a lot of time talking about this is the decisions that they were making
in their,
you know, parl parliament, if you wanna call it that. This is what they were doing on the Acropolis. This was what would happen after a battle, and they would erase these,
(21:58):
raise these temples or erect these, you know, offerings and things like this. So,
we could kind of see a mix between people
of the actual navy of some statistics,
and
all of it combining together.
I suppose
I probably won't do it here, but it's worth examining the idea of reading primary sources versus sum ups like this
(22:22):
or a collation
whilst getting through the final portion of the book. You know, on my Kindle, I can kinda see, I've got maybe 25% of the book still to go.
And I've reached the
the end of the last chapter and I still had 15 or 20%. And that 15 to 20% was essentially
the notes that he had of, okay,
(22:45):
in this section,
this is where perhaps one historian difference from another or even where primary sources differ. Thucydides
said this, but this other guy said this.
So
what can you take away from that?
I think it might give you a bit of a false confidence about
particular events
(23:06):
or even
how
the they were viewed perhaps by other people during the time,
time period? Were they viewed as this kind of benefactor or were they viewed as these warlike assholes?
Those are the sorts of things which are hard to tell because history is written by the victors. And so they were the victors. So there's a lot of history written about them, and written about themselves. So personally, I reserve a little bit of judgment in terms of the geopolitics of the time of
(23:38):
individual decisions, but I thought it was decently accurate in terms of descriptions of life on the boat, for example, how the boats were actually constructed,
numbers
of navies and things like that.
Yeah, of boats in the navy.
You know, everyone likes to exaggerate and under exaggerate. So
the those those sorts of things take take a grain of salt.
(24:01):
The only other thing is, I wish I'd actually read this
whilst I was traveling through Athens. I I think I've started reading this as I was already passed. So, you know, I was actually in Piraeus
and Athens, what, like a month ago.
So it would have been
a bit cooler to actually have had the experience of
(24:22):
fully reading this book and then
going there and seeing like, holy shit, like, this is where the boats were perhaps stored and even going to a,
an old sea, a trireme, because I'm sure there's, like, a replica trireme somewhere in Athens and a replica of one of the boat sheds and things like this. So,
I wish I'd done that. And,
(24:42):
but, nevertheless,
Mykonos, Piraeus, Athens, I got to see. And
so seeing that in real life gave me a feeling for, like, oh, this is the type of weather they would have been
going on. Oh, these are the beachheads that they likely would have landed on or where the Spartans could have been trapped and and things like this. So that was pretty cool. It's nice having
(25:05):
a ability to visually see and have been in a place where where you're reading a historical book about it.
So jumping onto the summaries, similar books, recommendations,
I think it was a really good book.
Very easy to read, and I found myself paying attention to almost everything that was going on. Sometimes history books can be rather boring,
(25:25):
if they're listing out too many statistics, if
they're being too historical in a way. I think it's a very fine balance to
try and read the original sources
versus a kind of collation of them. So, I thought he did a a very good job of that.
I'm not even that interested in ancient Greece as a whole
(25:46):
or or or in especially in navies and and,
armadas and battles like that, but I I really was getting stuck into this and, felt like I I learned a lot from it. So we regularly hear about the the famous people,
throughout history. So putting in into a time context of, okay, this is where Socrates was in comparison to
(26:10):
Alexander the Great. You know, this is where Aristotle was,
in in during this time period, things like this. So I feel it's given me a more of an appreciation of Athens, of ancient Greece, and just how important their navy was. So, overall, I'm going to give Lords of the Sea by John r Hale
a very solid seven and a half.
(26:31):
No. Seven and a half is too much. Seven out of 10. Seven out of 10. It was good. What are some similar books recommendations?
Well, if you're onto
wanting to know about history and navies,
Nathaniel's Nutmeg, I read, by Jails Mint Milton a while ago,
deals with this, but that was more in the spice trades in the, oh, I'm gonna say just the
(26:53):
sixteen hundreds time period, maybe seventeen hundreds around then.
I would also say Sailing True North by James Stratividus
Strav Stravridus,
which Juan covered on this channel a long time ago,
was probably good.
Medea and other plays by Euripides
(27:13):
covered some Socrates books in here before,
perhaps even a life on the Mississippi if you wanna know just about boats
and what it's like to to live a boating lifestyle, but in a completely different context.
All of those are books that we've personally covered on the channel here before, so you could go check them out or even better, go read them yourselves. So
this is a value for value podcast.
(27:36):
I do all of this upfront, give this value to you free. There's never gonna be ads, sponsorships, things like that. All I ask is that you provide some value in return. So simple things, liking, subscribing,
commenting,
sharing it with a friend. Word-of-mouth is pretty critical to to podcasts like this and to reviews like this.
(27:56):
I want to know your thoughts on this review. I want to know your favorite books as well. What are some things you would recommend to me?
Please leave a comment down below or reach out to us via the social media. And then if you would like to contribute in terms of some money, because all of this requires time and energy and,
cost in terms of lights and and things like this,
(28:17):
there are some links down below. We have a PayPal, and you could
also send us in a boost via a modern podcasting app. If you go to meremodelspodcast.com/support,
we've got some options there for how you can do that. So final section here, what's coming up? Just a little reminder. I do this live
11AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday. I would love for you to join like,
(28:41):
Juan has done in here in the chat. And, he actually was doing this beforehand, so he's asking me about,
what I thought. Did it over romanticize the Athenians? Nope. I thought it was a pretty good,
balanced book review. So
that is,
one thing to consider. What's coming up? So I'm going
slightly away from my financial history books
(29:03):
and more into history slash Asia as a whole. So I'm reading Chip Wars at the moment,
which is all about the semiconductor industry
and
integrated circuits and and how that industry has worked and probably getting to how it does work.
So I'm reading that at the moment. I've got a couple of Lee Kuan Yew books.
(29:25):
I think I've got one called The Lessons of History. It's very short. That'll be the next one coming up in this book review channel.
And Juan also does regular
books on
not live, but on Saturdays or
in between my my, weekly episodes. So look out for those as well. Plenty to come
for the forsee foreseeable future. So that's it for today. Really hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Come join me on the high seas, and until the next time, chaffing out. Kyron out.
Move aside, Sparta. There's a new power in town.
Welcome, Mere Mortalites, to another round of the mere mortals book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 08/06/2025.
And as you might surmise,
(00:21):
this is the podcast where I am looking to gather a group of, 200 strong men to help me board the ship and sail the seas.
Okay. No. We won't be doing that. None of that on this podcast. We will be covering a book though where a lot of that happened, which is Lords of the Sea by John r Hale
with the subtitle, the epic story of the Athenian navy and the birth of democracy.
(00:44):
So this book was published in 02/2009. As you might surmise, it's a bit of a history book. 395
pages in length. I'd say it took me twelve hours of reading to to fully get through. This was the final book I was reading
whilst traveling, so I read this on my Kindle.
And,
yeah, it's a pretty decent account of the period from April
(01:07):
to March.
So this was in the glory of the Athenian
naval times of Athens at its glory, and those two are somewhat linked.
And,
it's not just about Athens and,
and Greece because it does
talk a little bit about Persian wars. It has,
(01:27):
Alex of Macedonia
coming in, Alexander the Great,
But they all relate to the Athenian navy of some shape or form.
And so we really see the rise and fall of the armada of Athens, if you wanna call it that.
The birth, I guess, of their power as a as a
a city, I, I guess, because it wasn't, you know, of Greece as a country, but certainly Athens as a as a city,
(01:54):
via the the naval battles with other empires,
the
everything that was going on on the seas.
And it also links,
as the subtitle might suggest,
to the rise of democracy and how the political decisions played a part in the birth of the Athenian Navy as well. So what you'll encounter in this book, descriptions of naval battles, you'll encounter
(02:18):
well known
figures throughout history
of,
the Athens and ancient Greece,
philosophers, artists, etcetera, etcetera. It's split into 22 chapters, and the chapters really
are either based around a certain time period,
or they are based around a person
who was influential in that time period. So Pericles, for example, you'll have a kind of a chapter dealing with him. And, you know, he might pop his head into other chapters, but that's how it is sorted out in total.
(02:48):
So let's jump into the themes and questions. What made the Athenian Navy special, and how is this linked to democracy?
So the Athenian navy,
were particularly known for their triremes,
and this,
is a type of boat,
long wooden boat,
manned by a 170
ish rowers
(03:09):
and across a kind of couple of different levels.
And there would be a small contingent of people on the top side of the boat who were, you know, the oarsmen, the captain,
either some fighters perhaps, for example, one guy keeping the beat,
multiple different people.
So you'd have about 200 people per boat.
(03:30):
And
the way the boat was utilized was mostly as a ramming type structure. So right at the front of the boat, they would have this ram, and, essentially, it was to maneuver in battle to get on the broadside of another ship and
crash into it. This would then allow them to either break the ship kind of in half and, you know,
(03:51):
dismantle it
or for it them to kind of get stuck in it so that they could then board and attack and go to hand to hand, fighting.
So
depending on the wealth and the ascendancy
of Athens at the time, their fleet could consist of as low as kind of 20 to 30 ships,
with, you know, the associated hundreds
(04:14):
getting into thousands of people there,
to ships of 200 to 300,
in in in size and number,
which were when they were kind of at the peak of their glory and when they would typically be,
outnumbering other armadas. And there's these interesting battles where you see
they themselves
kind of get outmaneuvered by other generals and even though they are
(04:38):
at greater in number and then vice versa, when they are kind of rising up as a power, there would be some battles where they were versing the Persians
and they would
be, you know, outnumbered three to one, but still managed to pull off a
miraculous,
you know, defeat or victory of the other side. So,
they were mostly used for kind of these attack purposes,
(05:00):
but we could also see them be modified to carry horses
as messenger boats, towing away captured enemy vessels,
landing on beachheads.
They were
the
ability to move men around, but particularly they were for the fighting.
Later on, they started developing these quad quad reams or
(05:22):
kin reams,
which were able to fit more men in and become kind of larger in size. But for the most part, the tri reams were the the,
main vessels during this period. So
as I mentioned, the this hundred and sixty year time period was an eventful time for Greece.
This was
of
many notable things. I'll list a couple of them here. The 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas at Thermopylae fighting against the Persians. That was during this time period. The Peloponnesian War. So this was the war between Athens and Sparta themselves.
(05:56):
And then finally, the Macedonia's
empire building,
which
included Greece, but obviously went far beyond that. So
Athens played its part in all of this by gradually building the dominant maritime empire
based on its powerful navy. So
as I was reading the book, it becomes apparent well, you know, it's it's hard to say. This book had a very particular bent saying this was the Athenian navy. So it didn't talk about their their standing army of hoplites, for example,
(06:28):
or battles that they participate in that. It was pretty much just all, here's the navy battles. Here's the maritime,
you know, associated things. I guess the author is is trying to emphasize just how important the Athenian navy was.
They controlled the seas around Greece,
won, and lost many notable battles, most of which I've forgotten because there were so many in here. And
(06:52):
they're kind of not that important historically wise because there's
so many naval battles just throughout history.
What I also
found in this book was a lot of the
names that you might recognize throughout
ancient Greek history.
Pericles, who was the guy who helped to build up the Athenian Navy in the first place. Socrates, the philosopher who actually
(07:18):
was elected
at one point to a very critical gen,
I guess,
a point of the democracy where they needed a a spokesperson, and this would just be drawn by random lots of all the
eligible voters.
And that was a very influential decision that he kind of presided over,
which I will get to in a little bit.
(07:40):
And
things like,
people like Euripides,
who has,
you know, the famous plays and was a playwright,
Alexander the Great, Alchi,
Alchi Beatis, who is someone I'd never heard of before, but played at a a rather important plot as well. Thucydides, the historian, Hippocrates,
(08:00):
the
the medical doctor of King Leonidas, obviously, from Sparta.
I think I mentioned Alexander the Great. Plenty of important
people were in this whole time period as a whole, as well as a lot of, generals who I'd never heard of before. Foshian
was a rather important person, but
(08:21):
there's just so many people throughout history. You you can't cover really all of them.
So getting towards the the navy as itself, and I'm trying to generalize here, what made their navy so special?
And
for me, I would say it's because they committed fullheartedly
to it.
It wasn't just the simple fact of putting resources into it. It's that their whole
(08:45):
society and structure was largely built around it. So
they literally built
Athens.
You know, Athens was kind of inland a bit. And if you've ever been there,
where,
or at least the center is in terms of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, things like this. And
to protect Athens, they built these long walls all around the city, literally called the Long Walls,
(09:11):
which would link Athens to its port so that they had this kind of joint
connection between the port and the actual sea. You know, this isn't that uncommon. There's plenty of walled cities throughout the world. I guess what was
interesting of note for this was that it was a very active decision to build this walls to protect themselves and to protect their navy and the ability
(09:33):
to,
house their navy inside
a protected barrier because, you know, when you've got hundreds of ships
at
any given time, they need to be housed somewhere. And, this was, I guess, also the the full heartedness.
They were protecting their ships and were meticulous with their preparation of maintenance. They would pull the ships inland. They built special
(09:58):
coverages,
you know, buildings to house all of these gigantic ships.
They would have people training all the time on them and training
to learn to row on land. They had, you know, specialized machines they would build so that people could learn how to row properly.
The generals were revered.
The tactics,
(10:19):
all of this kind of played into
that
Athens became a city based around these ships.
And,
it kinda reminds me of, I guess, the the mining industry, funnily enough, which I used to work in, where
obviously the the mining machines, these gigantic machines, drag lines and diggers
(10:39):
and dozers and,
you know, the whole trucks and stuff like this.
When the mine was going through a good time, these things were maintained
meticulously.
It was it was like a point of pride to, you know, have them cleaned
to,
have any lingering faults fixed and things. Even though it would take away from production,
(11:01):
it was still
that, you know, it was there was pride in the machines. And when you go through a bad time, that's one of the first things that starts to go. You start doing less maintenance. You start wearing them down to the ground. And we see a very similar thing that happened with the Athenian navy. They build themselves up to this tremendous position. They kind of get a bit arrogant.
They lose one or two very significant battles through significant missteps by the the generals.
(11:26):
And then when they're on the way down, it's like, oh, shit. You know, we we don't have enough ships, we don't have enough men.
There's less order, there's less control
and makes them right for the picking and overtaking. So as an industry,
they
were meticulous with not only investing resources, but it's kind of their spirit as well. And so this is where perhaps the Athenian spirit and what the author was maybe linking
(11:54):
of the Athenian navy to their democracy.
At various times, slaves were given the offer of, hey. You can become a full Athenian citizen, which was just kind of this rare privileged thing to be able to become an Athenian citizen and
perhaps vote as well.
Democracy
(12:15):
in a in Athens wasn't everyone gets a vote. It was a lot of people get a vote, but there's still
you probably still had to be a landowner and you had to be an Athenian citizen.
And for example, if you were
an Athenian citizen who married or,
you know, had sex with someone outside of the city and a child was birthed,
(12:35):
they weren't an Athenian citizen that needed to be between two citizens. So it was very
convoluted
item. And, but this is where we can see,
the slaves were given the offer to join the citizenry
to man the boats when they were in times of need, when they didn't have enough men to to to do this. And this obviously came at an extreme risk because they would then have to go to war. You know, if their ship sunk, they were probably going to die out at sea,
(13:04):
or they could be sold into worse slavery if they were captured. Lots of things like this.
So Pericles and other important leaders
built up this
prestige around the navy of pride in it, of,
power. And this is where we can see they started to win some battles. So then the generals become revered
(13:26):
and the generals, you know, get to speak at the,
at the Acropolis
during the kind of voting sessions.
And,
you know, if they have revered, then they're going to speak well about the Navy. So they're going to invest more resources into it. You can see this kind of flywheel of success breeds success,
and they certainly built out a lot of infrastructure
(13:48):
to help support them with all of this.
However,
the the linkage between democracy and
the navy is a little bit tenuous, so I might touch upon that in the extra section.
And you might be thinking like, wow,
The Athenian Navy, what a glorious place to,
be in during those times. And,
(14:10):
the democracy that enabled them was such a good thing. Like, they were they were making good decisions and stuff like this. But
many stories of this time period reminded me of just how brutal it was. So I mentioned Socrates before. There was a a battle out at sea. The eight of the Athenian generals
were
(14:31):
reported to have not behaved,
and these were, like, the main general. So, you know, there was only 10 of them in total, I think, in this battle.
Eight of them were kind of, I guess, you'd call it subpoenaed after the battle,
for their
for what they had done, which was they had actually won the battle,
but they had neglected to pick up the,
(14:55):
drowning kind of, like, Athenian soldiers during it because there was a storm that was coming through. And that was the sort of thing you're meant to do. You're meant to go out and pick up the bodies and try and save survivors.
But the storm came through. They couldn't do it.
They also had the option to, you know, chase after the other,
I believe it was maybe the Spartans. They beat them. It's it's hard to remember. There's so many battles.
(15:18):
And
they, you know, they they come back to Athens, glorious. They've they've won this battle.
But then there's some discontent perhaps amongst other soldiers and things like this. They get called up to the the Parthenon.
Hey. There's these accusations against you. How do you plead not guilty? Well, too bad. You we vote that you're all guilty.
(15:38):
And they all then had to commit suicide
via drinking hemlock.
Afterwards, you know, the day or two afterwards,
the
the the democracy, the the people of it, the population were kinda like, oh, alright. We were kinda mad at the time. We probably shouldn't have done that.
And we just killed eight of our, you know, best generals.
Whoops.
(15:59):
And this happened
regularly.
The the democracy
did not mean that the navy and the structure,
the system, the hierarchy of power of
putting
the right people in charge.
It didn't the I I wouldn't say that democracy
made that it was the navy who had the best people in charge and that they perform to their best abilities.
(16:25):
If anything, I would say that democracy with all the back fighting, the all in fighting, the back stabbing, the
the
subtle power games of scratching this person's back for this sort of thing
meant that you would have people like Alche Alchebe Yadez, and
Let's not even mention the nepotism of, you know, oh, it's Pericles, his son. It must be really good as well. So let's elect him even though there's no there's no necessarily
(16:53):
good merit in in doing that.
And so you'd see throughout time that they consistently made bad decisions. They would consistently
lose battles that they shouldn't have lost, that they would
execute, for example, a whole city,
a vessel state
for refusing to,
(17:13):
obey their orders.
The Athenians were not nice people. They were
ruthless.
They, you know, slavery was fine.
Imperial tribute forced upon vassal cities.
They were overtaxing
these kind of like cities that were within their realm. They would regularly
(17:34):
go on these kind of raids to just basically fuck up, plunder, steal, rape. I'm sure all of the bad things from
people who were kind of nominally their allies. They weren't necessarily,
like,
set in stone allies, but they also weren't
enemies per se.
There's so many things where you just look at them and you go, these are a warlike bunch of assholes, and
(17:59):
it's
it's very, you know, poetic that
they got to this period of of power, of of
building up their navy and becoming like, as, you know, Athens is a
global power at the time.
And
to then see them get their just desserts afterwards was, I guess,
(18:19):
not satisfying,
but it's kind of predictable that
you behave like assholes. Well, get ready to get humbled by Alexander the Great, for example. So, you know, there was all of these things where you go, you know,
democracy
and the Athenian naval power
were linked,
but the neither of them were particularly great. I would
(18:43):
they they had their moment in the sun for,
you know, a brief kind of fifty years in this building up of building up the Navy, fifty years of glory and then then falling down again.
And it's an interesting tale.
And
what made them great was what led to their own demise, the the kind of work, the spirit that they put into it. It's the classic kind of like four four things, you know,
(19:11):
good men create great times. Great times create weak men. Weak men create bad times. Bad times create strong men or strong or good men. Good men create good times. It's that kind of cycle that goes over And we see it. We see it. We saw all of it through through the, the period of Athens during this time period. So let's jump on to the author, some extra details.
(19:32):
John r Hale was born 1951,
still alive.
He's a archeologist,
specialized in ancient history,
particularly, I would say, around Athens. His two specialties were kinda ancient Greece, so think of the Oracle of Delphi,
things like that, as well as the navy
of certain types. So Vikings,
(19:54):
he's he's pretty good at. So
his style in the book
was,
not so much an assertion of what happened, but it was kind of descriptive in nature. It was
not certainly not historical fiction because there was a very long section at the end of all the notes. And so
it was a recounting of what other people have said with, I guess, adding some of his own details into the mix. So, you know, he's saying this is likely what Pericles thought. This is likely what happened. So you have details of
(20:25):
where certain people landed on beachheads of where 400 Spartans, for example, got trapped on an island and Athens was able to, you know, sequester them, keep them trapped on this island, and eventually, I believe, ransomed them back to Sparta
for,
it was be the money or power or or things like this.
(20:48):
I thought he did a very decent job of
creating the setting, the context,
the feeling for the action
without diving too deep into
this person said this or this exact battle happened in this exact way and, you know, there was three ships, and this ship hit this ship. He I think he did a good,
good mix of adding in
(21:10):
all of these kind of components to give you an idea of, okay, this is what was actually happening at the time. A
detraction
that I would have is that this the title is
somewhat deceptive in a way or at least confusing where
I thought that he was gonna really try and link the democracy to the navy and say, you know, the democracy enabled this navy.
(21:34):
Whereas I think he was just
more
pointing out of that the navy was rising and democracy was also rising at the same time because he certainly did spend a lot of time talking about this is the decisions that they were making
in their,
you know, parl parliament, if you wanna call it that. This is what they were doing on the Acropolis. This was what would happen after a battle, and they would erase these,
(21:58):
raise these temples or erect these, you know, offerings and things like this. So,
we could kind of see a mix between people
of the actual navy of some statistics,
and
all of it combining together.
I suppose
I probably won't do it here, but it's worth examining the idea of reading primary sources versus sum ups like this
(22:22):
or a collation
whilst getting through the final portion of the book. You know, on my Kindle, I can kinda see, I've got maybe 25% of the book still to go.
And I've reached the
the end of the last chapter and I still had 15 or 20%. And that 15 to 20% was essentially
the notes that he had of, okay,
(22:45):
in this section,
this is where perhaps one historian difference from another or even where primary sources differ. Thucydides
said this, but this other guy said this.
So
what can you take away from that?
I think it might give you a bit of a false confidence about
particular events
(23:06):
or even
how
the they were viewed perhaps by other people during the time,
time period? Were they viewed as this kind of benefactor or were they viewed as these warlike assholes?
Those are the sorts of things which are hard to tell because history is written by the victors. And so they were the victors. So there's a lot of history written about them, and written about themselves. So personally, I reserve a little bit of judgment in terms of the geopolitics of the time of
(23:38):
individual decisions, but I thought it was decently accurate in terms of descriptions of life on the boat, for example, how the boats were actually constructed,
numbers
of navies and things like that.
Yeah, of boats in the navy.
You know, everyone likes to exaggerate and under exaggerate. So
the those those sorts of things take take a grain of salt.
(24:01):
The only other thing is, I wish I'd actually read this
whilst I was traveling through Athens. I I think I've started reading this as I was already passed. So, you know, I was actually in Piraeus
and Athens, what, like a month ago.
So it would have been
a bit cooler to actually have had the experience of
(24:22):
fully reading this book and then
going there and seeing like, holy shit, like, this is where the boats were perhaps stored and even going to a,
an old sea, a trireme, because I'm sure there's, like, a replica trireme somewhere in Athens and a replica of one of the boat sheds and things like this. So,
I wish I'd done that. And,
(24:42):
but, nevertheless,
Mykonos, Piraeus, Athens, I got to see. And
so seeing that in real life gave me a feeling for, like, oh, this is the type of weather they would have been
going on. Oh, these are the beachheads that they likely would have landed on or where the Spartans could have been trapped and and things like this. So that was pretty cool. It's nice having
(25:05):
a ability to visually see and have been in a place where where you're reading a historical book about it.
So jumping onto the summaries, similar books, recommendations,
I think it was a really good book.
Very easy to read, and I found myself paying attention to almost everything that was going on. Sometimes history books can be rather boring,
(25:25):
if they're listing out too many statistics, if
they're being too historical in a way. I think it's a very fine balance to
try and read the original sources
versus a kind of collation of them. So, I thought he did a a very good job of that.
I'm not even that interested in ancient Greece as a whole
(25:46):
or or or in especially in navies and and,
armadas and battles like that, but I I really was getting stuck into this and, felt like I I learned a lot from it. So we regularly hear about the the famous people,
throughout history. So putting in into a time context of, okay, this is where Socrates was in comparison to
(26:10):
Alexander the Great. You know, this is where Aristotle was,
in in during this time period, things like this. So I feel it's given me a more of an appreciation of Athens, of ancient Greece, and just how important their navy was. So, overall, I'm going to give Lords of the Sea by John r Hale
a very solid seven and a half.
(26:31):
No. Seven and a half is too much. Seven out of 10. Seven out of 10. It was good. What are some similar books recommendations?
Well, if you're onto
wanting to know about history and navies,
Nathaniel's Nutmeg, I read, by Jails Mint Milton a while ago,
deals with this, but that was more in the spice trades in the, oh, I'm gonna say just the
(26:53):
sixteen hundreds time period, maybe seventeen hundreds around then.
I would also say Sailing True North by James Stratividus
Strav Stravridus,
which Juan covered on this channel a long time ago,
was probably good.
Medea and other plays by Euripides
(27:13):
covered some Socrates books in here before,
perhaps even a life on the Mississippi if you wanna know just about boats
and what it's like to to live a boating lifestyle, but in a completely different context.
All of those are books that we've personally covered on the channel here before, so you could go check them out or even better, go read them yourselves. So
this is a value for value podcast.
(27:36):
I do all of this upfront, give this value to you free. There's never gonna be ads, sponsorships, things like that. All I ask is that you provide some value in return. So simple things, liking, subscribing,
commenting,
sharing it with a friend. Word-of-mouth is pretty critical to to podcasts like this and to reviews like this.
(27:56):
I want to know your thoughts on this review. I want to know your favorite books as well. What are some things you would recommend to me?
Please leave a comment down below or reach out to us via the social media. And then if you would like to contribute in terms of some money, because all of this requires time and energy and,
cost in terms of lights and and things like this,
(28:17):
there are some links down below. We have a PayPal, and you could
also send us in a boost via a modern podcasting app. If you go to meremodelspodcast.com/support,
we've got some options there for how you can do that. So final section here, what's coming up? Just a little reminder. I do this live
11AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday. I would love for you to join like,
(28:41):
Juan has done in here in the chat. And, he actually was doing this beforehand, so he's asking me about,
what I thought. Did it over romanticize the Athenians? Nope. I thought it was a pretty good,
balanced book review. So
that is,
one thing to consider. What's coming up? So I'm going
slightly away from my financial history books
(29:03):
and more into history slash Asia as a whole. So I'm reading Chip Wars at the moment,
which is all about the semiconductor industry
and
integrated circuits and and how that industry has worked and probably getting to how it does work.
So I'm reading that at the moment. I've got a couple of Lee Kuan Yew books.
(29:25):
I think I've got one called The Lessons of History. It's very short. That'll be the next one coming up in this book review channel.
And Juan also does regular
books on
not live, but on Saturdays or
in between my my, weekly episodes. So look out for those as well. Plenty to come
for the forsee foreseeable future. So that's it for today. Really hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Come join me on the high seas, and until the next time, chaffing out. Kyron out.
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