Ancient Greek Warship: 500–322 BC by Nic Fields
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
While I find this a good introduction to Athenian ships, I find the book does a less good work on actually fulfilling its promise on discussing “Greek” ships. Overall, the ships’ military performance is not very well assessed with Corinth and Corcyra not mentioned except in a few short paragraphs. However, speaking historiographically, some other conclusions Mr Fields made sound more like conjecture than actual science, and I feel that quite a few other books are a better look at Athenian triremes (which is invariably the city and ship this book focusses on) and at least do not pretend to deal with other topics.
I will briefly mention the other topics: Mr Fields describes “positive buoyancy” as the main reason why triremes have not come through the ages, while it has always been my understanding that the salinity of the Mediterranean along with the biological organisms there (vis-a-vis the low salinity Baltic Sea and the oxygen-deprived Black Sea, for example) are the main reason why wooden ships in the area have not been well preserved (in general).
Secondly, Mr Fields also makes it sound as if the trireme was the cause for the Athenian defeat in the Syracusan Expedition, and that is not quite how I would read Thucydides (who admittedly is not the most unbiased author). There are some other similar claims made about other battles along with not mentioning some of the most famous Themistoclean statements on triremes which one should consider a mainstay of any book on Athenian navies. Also, I find Mr Fields’ incapability to not refer to Athens as an “empire” quite poor, especially where in a book of this length accuracy of statements should be paramount (hence, “Athens and Her Allies”…).
Lastly, Mr Fields says that “control of the seas in the modern sense was impossible for a trireme navy”. This could be the beginning of a discussion longer than any worthy of this post here, but in short, I think he is wrong. I think that conceptually war had a different purpose in that time and age, and no one even thought of a “control of the seas” à la Mahan.
The illustrations, however, are superb as ever.
