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Je doute que ça puisse vous aider.
Mais, si vous aimez l'anglais et les choses longues et compliquées, alors vous allez être servi !
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Scholia Reviews ns 3 (1994) 5.
H. T. Wallinga, Ships and Sea-power before the Great
Persian War: the Ancestry of the Ancient Trireme. Leiden,
New York & Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1993. Pp. xv + 217 with 25
illustrations. ISBN 90-04-09650-7. Gld.140/US$80.
Antony Graham Keen
The University of Manchester
In this volume, the culmination of over a decade of
articles on Archaic naval matters, Wallinga attempts to give a
thorough treatment of two intertwined themes; the development
of sea-power in the Archaic period and the evolution of the
trireme. Both themes have recently been dealt with at shorter
length, the latter by Morrison and the former by Starr.(1)
These brief treatments have their problems; Morrison is marred
by his tendency to manipulate the evidence to support his
reconstruction of the trireme, whilst Starr's work lacks real
depth.(2) Wallinga is more satisfactory than either.
Some of Wallinga's ideas are simple common sense and
should not need to be brought to the attention of scholars
(but clearly do). Into this category can be put his constant
reminding the reader of the importance of triremes, and indeed
most ancient naval vessels, as transport vessels. Likewise
there is his argument that not all triremes were always
fully-manned (pp. 169-83); hence a fleet of three hundred
vessels might have a paper manpower of 60,000, but the actual
figure might be as much as half of that.(3)
Many other of his ideas are quite radical, and often at
variance with commonly-held scholarly opinion; but only
occasionally (e.g. when criticizing Meyer's view of the
evolution of Athenian naval power at pp. 8-11) does he labour
the point when opposing traditional interpretations. Many of
Wallinga's ideas are worthy of serious consideration. So, for
instance, he argues that the pentecontor was without exception
a twin-banked vessel rather than the more common view(4) that
there were both single and twin-banked versions (pp. 45-53).
The introduction of the trireme he dates quite late, to some
time in the third quarter of the sixth century, dismissing the
triremes attributed to the seventh-century Egyptian pharaoh
Necho by Herodotus (2.159)(5) as a mistranslation of the
Egyptian word for 'ship', which in Herodotus' time was
equivalent to Greek trieres but probably in Necho's
time referred to the then-standard warship (p. 104f.);
Wallinga finds it difficult to believe that these vessels can
have been triremes for the very sound reason that if the
trireme was in existence c. 600 B.C., it is strange that
the Carthaginians did not use them at the battle of Alalia in
the 540s to offset the otherwise superior Phocaean
pentecontors (on which see pp. 67-83).
He further argues that the evolution of the trireme
occurred not in the world of the Greek polis (where the
speed advantage over the pentecontor would not, without other
factors coming into play, justify the trebling of the manpower
requirement), but in Carthage and Egypt, and in two distinct
phases; the Carthaginians added a third bank of oars to the
pentecontor as a means of countering Phocaean naval
superiority, and the three-banked system was in Egypt added to
existing cargo vessels to counter a potential naval threat
from Persia (pp. 102-18). This is in direct contrast to the
usual view(6) that the trireme originated in Greece and was
then exported to the Near East; but though Thucydides says
that triremes were built E)N *KORI/NQW| PRW=TON TH=S
*E(LLA/DOS (1.13.2), it seems best, despite the objections of
Morrison,(7) to accept Wallinga's view (p. 31)(8) that by this
he means the first triremes in Greece, not the first
triremes ever; this at least is the natural reading of
the Greek. Wallinga's hypothesis seems far more plausible than
the common view that the trireme evolved from the much smaller
two-level pentecontor with no intermediate stage, though it
will not appeal to the Hellenocentric. According to Wallinga,
the trireme only became the standard warship in the late sixth
and early fifth centuries; Persia built them because Egypt had
them, Athens because Persia had them, and the rest of Greece
because of Athens. The general historian of the Greek world will, however,
have more interest in Wallinga's theories on sea-power rather
than in those on the technical development of ship designs.
Here again Wallinga often departs from accepted views, often
to his (and the reader's) profit. He argues convincingly that
most Archaic navies (and a number into the Classical period)
depended largely upon privately-owned vessels pressed into
service on behalf of the polis, one important exception
being Corinth (pp. 13-32). It follows that most of these
fleets would be without the expensive triremes until the
polis per se rather than individual citizens took a
leading role in the fitting out of the navy, in the case of
Athens not properly until Themistocles' naval bill in 483 (pp.
148-54).
At many other places Wallinga puts forward ideas that at
the very least will force teachers of the Archaic period to
rethink their approach. The naval power of Polycrates of
Naxos, according to Wallinga (pp. 84-101) was funded by Egypt
as a means of averting the Persian threat; the `Ionian'
thalassocracy of Thucydides (1.13.6) was that of Phocaea and
Polycrates (p. 66f.), the other Ionian cities not having any
significant naval power until supplied with ships by the
Persians (pp. 118-122);(9) Miltiades' Parian expedition, often
held up as evidence that the Athenians were capable of acts of
simple imperialism that fitted in with no strategic plan, is
seen as having as its objective the raising of funds for
building and operating a trireme fleet to oppose Persia (pp.
144-48), anticipating (though Wallinga does not say as much)
the financial demands of the Delian League.
With all these radical ideas, it might not be surprising
if Wallinga went a bit too far on occasion, and indeed he
does, chiefly in regard to his interpretation of Persian
policy. The suggestion that Xerxes possibly planned to follow
his conquest of Greece immediately with an attack further west
(p. 161f.), though supported by the comment that `once [a
large-scale expedition] was organized, commanders would want
to exploit its potential to the utmost', pushes the reader's
credulity, especially as Wallinga has already described the
attribution of a similar plan to Cambyses as `an armchair
strategist's fancy' (p. 130).
This credulity is stretched to its limits by his
suggestions that Darius I's tribute system was largely geared
up to financing a fleet in the Mediterranean (pp. 126, 135 n.
15, with a related point at p. 126 that the crisis
precipitated by Cambyses' financial measures to run a fleet is
reflected in the stories of his madness and the revolt of
Bardiya), and that Xerxes' decision to invade Greece was a
reaction to Athens' acquisition of a trireme fleet (p. 161).
The former is a rather Eurocentrist perspective; the Persian
empire was vast, and Darius had more problems to worry about
(and spend his money on) than simply the maintenance of naval
dominance in the west. As for the motive Wallinga gives for
Xerxes' expedition, though he disputes Herodotus' report
(7.1.1f.) that Darius had any plans for a full- scale invasion
of Greece (p. 160), a Persian invasion to forestall mainland
Greek interference in Ionia must have been a serious
possibility from the moment Cyrus the Great dismissed the
threats of Spartan ambassadors after the fall of Croesus (Hdt.
1.152f.), and after Greek involvement in the Ionian revolt and
the humiliation of Marathon, it would surprising in Darius did
not plan an invasion.
There are omissions and infelicities. In his treatment of
the trireme's evolution he accepts without question Morrison's
reconstruction of the vessel.(10) But though Morrison has
proved that the trireme could have been built in the
way he suggests, there remain dissenters, who maintain that
Morrison's view is not in fact the way in which the trireme
was actually built.(11) Wallinga nowhere acknowledges this. He
should have done so, if only to dismiss the alternative
reconstructions; though his interpretation of the trireme's
evolution is markedly different from that of Morrison, it is
important to Wallinga's view that Morrison's reconstruction of
the vessel's final form is correct.
Wallinga's note of the small scale of early Archaic trade
and therefore the lack of need for sail-powered merchant ships
(p. 35) should mention the larger sailing ships of the Bronze
Age found at Cape Gelidonya and Ulu Burun off the coast of
Turkey,(12) and his discussion on the same page of the grain
route to the Black Sea, which he believes began in the late
seventh century, seems in ignorance of the much later date for
this proposed by Noonan and Garnsey.(13) As an example of the
infelicities, at p. 126 he states `as argued earlier there is
reason to assume... [Persian] permanent patrols [in the
Mediterranean]'; in fact the only previous mention of the
patrols at p. 119 merely asserts that they existed - the
arguments are actually at p. 126 n. 55.
It is also regrettable that such a provocative book is
marred by a poor standard of proofreading. Non-words such as
`Thukydides' and `Korkyra' are more forgivable in someone
whose first language is not English than they are in the
anglophone, and only at one point (p. 176) do the numerous
punctuation errors cause any serious confusion. The chief flaw
lies in the bibliography. The following works are referred to
in the text but not included in the bibliography: Bremmer 1990
(frequently cited); Bury 1900; Cartledge 1983; Heinimann 1945;
Hornblower 1982; Hornblower 1983; Katzenstein 1973; Lloyd
1988; Ray 1988; Roebuck 1984. This is rather too many
omissions, and to make matters worse, Braun 1982, Gardiner
1961 and Warmington 1960 are cited in the bibliography as
`1983', `1960' and `1964' respectively, whilst Harden 1962 and
Bickerman 1968 appear in the text as `1963' and `1969'; and
The History of the British Navy is erroneously
attributed in the bibliography to David Lewis, rather than to
the distinguished naval historian Michael Lewis.
But though these faults make the book annoying to use,
only occasionally do they make it all but impossible (I have
been unable, for instance, to deduce to what `Ill. 76' at p.
49 n. 54 refers), and the book's errors should not be allowed
to detract from the important ideas advanced. This is a book
that should be consulted not only by scholars of ancient naval
warfare, but by anyone whose teaching or research interests
lie in the period c. 800-480 B.C. For by clarifying
details of the use of ships and sea-power, Wallinga has mapped
out a whole new interpretation of Archaic Greek history.
NOTES
(1) John S. Morrison & J. F. Coated, The Athenian
Trireme (Cambridge 1986) 25-45; Chester G. Starr, The
Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History (Oxford 1989)
15-28.
(2) See the review by Philip De Souza, CR n.s. 40
(1990) 506-7.
(3) The suggestion that a trireme could not move with a
reduced crew is effectively argued against by Wallinga (p.
171f.) and has been conclusively disproved by the trials of
the reconstruction Olympias; see J. F. Coated, Stavros
K. Platis & J. T. Shaw, The Trireme Trials 1988 (Oxford
1990), 20, 23, which surprisingly Wallinga does not mention.
(4) For which see Morrison [1] 30-36.
(5) Usually accepted without question; see e.g. Morrison [1]
38.
(6) E.g. Morrison [1] 38.
(7) E.g. `The First Triremes', The Mariner's Mirror
65.1 (1979) 53-63.
(8) Following e.g. Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in
the Ancient World (Princeton 1971) 81 n. 17.
(9) Wallinga first advanced this latter idea in `The Ionian
Revolt', Mnemosyne ser. 4, 37 (1984) 404-7.
(10) J. S. Morrison & R. T. Williams, Greek Oared Ships
900-322 B.C. (Cambridge 1968); John Coated & Sean McGrail,
The Greek Trireme of the 5th Century B.C. (Greenwich
1984); Morrison [1].
(11) In particular Alec F. Tilley, most recently in `Three Men
to a Room - a Completely Different Trireme', Antiquity
66 (1992) 599-610, who does raise some salient points.
(12) Cape Gelidonya: G. F. Bass (et al.), Cape
Gelidonya: a Bronze Age Shipwreck (Philadelphia 1967). The
Ulu Burun wreck has not yet been fully excavated; interim
reports have appeared in AJA 90 (1986), 92 (1988) and
93 (1989).
(13) T.S. Noonan, 'Grain Trade of the Northern Black Sea',
AJPh 94 (1973) 231-42; P.D.A. Garnsey, Famine and
Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge 1988)
108-9.
_________________
partout où les jeunes gens savent rougir de ce qui
déshonore, et se porter avec audace à tout ce qui est glorieux; partout où ils craignent bien
plus le blâme que le danger, là sont les hommes les plus redoutables à leurs ennemis
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