When classes are not in session, many historians can be found in the archives, pouring over documents for their next research project. Doctoral candidate and ancient historian Mark Porlides pursued a much less traditional research opportunity this summer. Porlides was among two hundred volunteer rowers on an inaugural trip of the Olympius, a 121-foot replica of an ancient Greek trireme ship.
Rowing a trireme ship was only one part of the three-week “Greek By Sea” seminar that Porlides participated in. The program was hosted by the American School for Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA), one of the oldest foreign research institutions in the world. Along with scholars, students, and teachers from across the United States, Porlides traveled Greece by sailboat, visiting historical sites and museums.
The seminar’s maritime focus was perfect for Porlides, an expert in Hellenic navies. “My dissertation project examines naval personnel in Greek fleets from about 525 BC to 31 BC– so that marks the rise of the classical navies and particularly the introduction of a new type of ship called the trireme. It required massive numbers of people to operate it, quadruple the next biggest ship before it,” said Porlides, who is co-advised by Richard Talbert and Fred Naiden. “I’m interested in how city states–we’re not talking about nations or countries–mobilized forces of 30,000 or 40,000 men in a fleet and then sent them across the ocean in what amounts to a floating city.”
Rowing the trireme gave Porlides a new perspective on the experiences of these ancient Greek oarsmen. “There were several things that I immediately realized about the situation that I never would have known had I not gone there. For example, all the oarsmen faced the back of the ship– none of them could see where they’re going. I just had to trust that the guy who was commanding us knew what he was doing and that the guy beside me was going to row as hard as I was,” Porlides said.
The triremes had three decks, which were often unfenced and open to the elements. Porlides quickly realized the dangers this design posed to the oarsmen. “On the one hand, it meant the sunlight comes in, which made it hot. But it also means there was a sea breeze. In a battle, you would be vulnerable to getting shot by arrows or javelins,” he explained.
These insights will play an important role in Porlides’s dissertation project. While previous scholars have focused on developments in naval technology, tactics and strategy, and the connections between naval fleets and political systems, Porlides takes a more social history approach. “I look at naval personnel all the way from top to bottom, with an emphasis on common people– the sailors, the rowers, the people below deck,” he said. In particular, he wants to better understand the roles that enslaved people played in Hellenic navies, a long-running debate among ancient historians.
While in Greece, Porlides studied a number of other sources that will help him answer these questions. At museums, he viewed pottery with maritime motifs, which are especially important for understanding naval history before Greeks adopted written language. He also did research at the ASCSA’s Blegen Library, where he looked at ancient epigraphs, which often are inscriptions made in public places for public consumption. Uncovered at Greek archaeological sites, these inscriptions range from formal dedications carved into stone temples to misspelled names scratched into pottery.
Because any literate or semi-literate Athenian could write an inscription, these are the foundational sources for Porlides’s study of common people. In fact, he’s already found some important evidence that challenges longstanding conceptions of how Hellenic navies functioned. Right now, he is working with a partial inscription that records the crews of six trireme ships and differentiates between free and enslaved sailors.
“I’m super interested in that because there’s been a long-running argument over the last hundred years about whether slaves ever took part in military affairs and whether they were ever impressed in large numbers into service or labor, especially by a state rather than by an individual,” Porlides explained. “In the 1960s, an historian named Lionel Casson basically argued that there were never slaves on ships, and on the rare occasion that there was a slave, that person was a servant of one of the soldiers on deck, and wasn’t rowing. I disagree with some of these ideas.”
– Aubrey Lauersdorf