Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy Read Online Free PDF Page B

outnumbered. Athenians knew that no physical force was mightier than the mind. In the world of myth, Mêtis was the ancient goddess from whom Athena derived her own wisdom. Not brawn but mêtis was the special attribute of Athena’s favorite hero, Odysseus, whose stratagem of the Trojan Horse succeeded where ten years of direct assaults had failed. Every educated Athenian knew the famous lines in Homer’s Iliad on the uses of mêtis.
    To win the prize, keep mêtis well in mind.
By mêtis, not brute force, men fell great oaks.
By mêtis steersmen on the wine-dark sea
Steady their swift ships through the tearing gale.
By mêtis charioteer beats charioteer.
    As a fervent advocate of naval power, Themistocles saw further than other Athenians of his time. There was more at stake than the Persian threat. Athens’ future, he believed, lay with the sea. The projected fortification of the Piraeus had been just one step toward transforming his city into a maritime center with a commercial emporium and a strong fleet of warships. Over the past decade those hopes had been repeatedly frustrated. But when the agenda for the upcoming Assembly meeting was posted a few days earlier, listing a proposal concerning income from the Athenian silver mines at Laurium, he realized that fate or luck had finally turned in his favor.
    Laurium (“Place of Silver”) was a rugged knot of hills near the southern tip of Attica, about twenty-five miles from Athens. Prospectors had been working the Laurium lode for a thousand years. They had first dug out the greenish ore from surface deposits, then followed the glittering veins deep underground. By Themistocles’ time there were shafts that reached depths of three hundred feet. Miners, most of them slaves, were lowered into the shafts armed with iron picks and clay lamps that held enough oil for an eight-to-ten-hour shift. Ropes and winches lifted the ore to the surface, where it was crushed, washed, sieved, and smelted. In Athens the mint master received the silver and used his iron anvils and punches to manufacture the city’s coins or “owls,” stamped on one side with the helmeted head of Athena, and on the other with the goddess’s owl and an olive sprig.
    Other Greeks had to procure their precious metals from the Aegean islands or the mountains of the north. The Athenian people owned the Laurium mines collectively, but the actual investment and operations were privatized. Mine leases were auctioned off at the start of each year to the highest bidders, and the Athenians also collected a percentage of each mine’s yield at the end of the annual lease.
    ATTICA, ca. 500 B.C.

    The lands of Themistocles’ family lay at a township called Phrearroi (“Wells”), on the edge of the mining district. He knew that in recent years the miners had unexpectedly broken through to a zone where the ore lay in a vast subterranean reef. The annual trickle of silver from Laurium soon swelled to a mighty stream. Inspectors reported the increase in silver to the Board of Mines, which passed the news on to the councilors. The lucky strike at Laurium created a surplus big enough for a public distribution. The Council was submitting a proposal to keep half the silver in the treasury but to divide the rest in equal portions among all thirty thousand citizens. According to the draft resolution on the notice boards, ten drachmas would be the amount of the dole. Themistocles, however, had other ideas.
    That morning a flag had been hoisted at daybreak to remind citizens of the Assembly meeting. Before Themistocles arrived at the Pnyx, officials had climbed to the hilltop and purified the place with prayers and sacrifices. Soon the ground in front of the speaker’s platform began to fill as citizens came up from the Agora. The noise increased: an irrepressible Athenian hubbub of greetings, comments, arguments, obscenities, and jokes. At the rear of the talkative and straggling procession walked a line of slaves. They