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Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy |  | Author: John R. Hale
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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as of 7/30/2010 23:41 MDT details
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Seller: mkbookloft
Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 83920
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First American Edition
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 067002080X
Dewey Decimal Number: 359.00938
EAN: 9780670020805
ASIN: 067002080X
Publication Date: May 14, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A stirring history of the world's first dominant navy and the towering empire it built
The navy created by the people of Athens in ancient Greece was one of the finest fighting forces in the history of the world and the model for all other national navies to come. The Athenian navy built a civilization, empowered the world's first democracy, and led a band of ordinary citizens on a voyage of discovery that altered the course of history. Its defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BCE launched the Athenian Golden Age and preserved Greek freedom and culture for centuries. With Lords of the Sea, renowned archaeologist John Hale presents, for the first time, the definitive history of the epic battles, the indomitable ships, and the men-from extraordinary leaders to seductive rogues-who established Athens's supremacy. With a scholar's insight and a storyteller's flair, Hale takes us on an illustrated tour of the heroes and their turbulent careers and far-flung expeditions and brings back to light a forgotten maritime empire and its majestic legacy.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
 Amazing story and amazing story telling July 10, 2010
George Popescu
An amazing story of the Athenian navy , the life and history of Greece seen from the Athenian point of view from 500 BC to 350 BC. The history is particularly interesting, the story telling is riveting. This book will give you the urge to get your own boat and sail the waters of Greece as soon as possible. Too bad it's so hard to find a trireme to rent nowadays...
Impeccable Scholarship with Riveting Writing June 28, 2010
P. Hunt (San Francisco)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
John Hale's LORDS OF THE SEA is that rare combination of impeccable scholarship and beautifully riveting writing. The first pages of the introduction alone provide one of the most beautiful prose passages one could ever read in a history book, almost like a Sappho poem in its sensory imagery, while being entirely factual. The reader can almost hear, feel and smell the details of an approaching Athenian trireme because the writing is so clear.
Since Hale is an esteemed archaeologist with nautical as well as Classical training, he understands material history from marine contexts as well as shipbuilding and sailing practicalities. He has elsewhere published meticulous academic studies on boats and seamanship in antiquity, including pragmatic studies on ancient Greek rowing for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (1996), and has multiple peer-reviewed journal articles on military history. Even his Cambridge doctorate in archaeology is on shipping in antiquity, so his accounts are not only seaworthy but honed by decades of critical review. Hale capably writes about initial Athenian control of the Laurion silver mines as a stimulus to new economic status along with Attic ability of outfitting a fleet for distant trade with the Black Sea and elsewhere. He also examines Athenian formation of the Delian League and subsequent political maneuvers and intrigues. This accessible book also carefully documents new demographics of Athenian naval power that leveled the playing field to the advantage of Greek commoners, allowing democracy to burgeon in the Golden Age of Athens like nowhere else. Hale's analyses and commentary on ancient sources such as Herodotus and Thucydides are well-reasoned and reliable.
As a university archaeologist and historian myself, I know how difficult it is to achieve this balancing of sound scholarship with good writing. It is so significant a book on Athenian naval history and seamanship in antiquity that I will be using it henceforth in Stanford courses.
 Athens: Good. Sparta: Bad. Navy = Democracy: good! April 14, 2010
Ramesh Gopal (Albuquerque, NM United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Discussions of Athens and Sparta in the Classical Greek era tend to be ideological. In the 19th century scholars compared the conflict to that between Britain and Napoleonic France. In the 20th it was the West vs. the Soviet Union. The fact is that Athens left us monuments and literature, while Sparta left only memories of stern, military men. In this book John Hale basically offers a selective reading of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and some others focusing on naval affairs. The premise that enrolling lower class Athenians as rowers in the navy made them hungry for political power and so led to democracy is not a new one. Hale describes key moments in naval history in almost novelized form. The egalitarian navy was the basis of Athenian power, led to democracy, which in turn paved the way for the glories of the Classical Golden Age. This is a simple story, with an obvious appeal to modern western sensibility.
Readers can enjoy this story but should also be aware of some uncomfortable issues: Democratic reforms began in Athens well before the glory days of the navy and many other poleis had navies without becoming democracies. If Spartans were all brawn and no brain, slow to adapt and in Thucydides words 'the perfect enemies' because of their bumbling, then how to explain that they WON the war? Moreover, they did it by adapting and building a navy, not having had one before, and winning the so called Ionian phase of the war at sea. Their navy did not lead to democracy either. Hale gets around this problem by extending his scope beyond our traditional understanding of the Peloponnesian War to Athens' eventual (but brief) resurgence and Sparta's decline. This is like saying that in our own times Germany really won WWII because if we merge WWII with the Cold War we can claim that Germany eventually became the powerhouse of Europe while Britain lost its Empire and dwindled away.
The other subtle problem is that Athenian democracy was not an unalloyed good. The concept of `democracy at home, but dictatorship abroad' was first used to describe Athens' behavior in the 5th century BCE towards its so-called allies. It is clear from Thucydides that the Athenians were rash, bellicose and inconsistent. The stability of the Spartan government begins to look more admirable. Finally, Socrates' death sentence was probably the last straw that turned thinkers like Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle away from democracy. Turning the argument on its head, Plato perceived the navy as the enemy of peace and good government and used his story of Atlantis as a cautionary allegorical tale about the pitfalls of naval power. Finally, neither democracy nor the navy proved much use against Philip and Alexander of Macedon.
So, readers should enjoy the survey of Classical Greek history but take with a pinch of salt the paean to the Athenian Navy and democracy.
Interesting Hypothesis Done Exceedingly Well March 29, 2010
William Alexander (Spartanburg, SC)
John Hale, as historian, obviously has high regard for the institution of the Athenian Navy, but "Lords of the Sea" never degenerates into a "300" style ludicrous fantasy about the ancient Greeks. Drawing very heavily from Thucidydes and Herodotus (where he offers little by way of new interepretation), he also weaves in what the best of contemporary scholarship has to offer. The result is an eminently readable, fascinating work about how the Athenian navy was not just the prime intrument of its regional foreign policy, but also the economic engine and, socially, the best example of the societal microcosm of male Athens itself. Hale makes the interesting argument that the Athenian fleet, by being open to larger swathes of Athenian society than her land based forces and government, should have essentially been the model for how the city-state should have reshaped herself after the triumph of the Persian Wars. But, he then paints a compelling portrait of how the power of this egalitarian institution, more "democratic" than Athens itself ever dreamed of being, became driven into the acquisition and maintenance of the Delian League, an implicit subversion of every principle this self-same fleet brilliantly fought for in pursuit of the limited vision and ultimate "zero sum game" of oligarchic, place-seeking rapacity. The fleet was Athens at its best, its literal salvation. It was also the sword and expression of its own hubris and ultimate destruction.
I think both of these ideas are intriguing, bolstered by Hale's generally conservative and responsible working of his primary and secondary source materials. Hale's mature, measured, and sober tone reflects a fine mind at work in attempting to explain Athens through, not philosophy or culture, but its premier military institution. It is military history in the best modern frame, weaving not only strategy and tactics throughout but explaining the social impact and consequence of military activity unvarnished by romantic illusion.
I recommend this fine book with great enthusiasm. Five stars.
 Not good for listening (review of book on CD) March 9, 2010
Wayne Mitzner (Towson, MD)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
While this is a very well written book, and the recording is excellent, be forewarned that without a map to visualize, it is almost impossible to appreciate the story. Unless one has a map of ancient Greece in their head, listening while driving is not a positive experience.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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