From minnow to leviathan: Transformation of the Athenian navy (499-480bc)

Abstract

Several, if not many, scholars and historians have written about the exploits of the Athenian Navy during the 5th century BC, especially, during the Persian Wars, (480-479) the pentekontaetia period (478-432) through to the Peloponnesian War period (431-404), until the destruction of the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami (405 BC). This interest in the Athenian Navy and its achievements in the Classical period has led to the writing of several specialist works on that phenomenon; and we note that no general work on Greek history is deemed complete without an excursus on the Athenian Navy and how it helped save Greece from the tyranny of Persia. Our intention in this paper is not to trod the same path and recount the exploits of the Athenian navy, but rather to attempt to account for the transformation of the Athenian navy from a minnow to a leviathan within a twenty year period. We shall, through a critical examination of extant primary sources, primarily Herodotus and, to a lesser extent, Plutarch, argue, firstly, that in terms of naval strength and sea power, Athens was a minnow as at 499 BC, and secondly that it was through a recognition of this deficiency and at the urging of Themistocles that Athens commissioned a fleet to bolster its sea power and naval strength, and thus became a leviathan as at 480 BC when the Persian Wars broke out in earnest in main land Greece