NAVAL SERVICE AND POLITICAL POWER IN CLASSICAL ATHENS: AN INVERSE RELATION

Abstract

Perhaps in reaction to claims that service on Athenian triremes offered citizen rowers a 'democratic education' or over time proved the worthiness of thētes (marginalized citizens) to exercise citizenship in the Athenian democracy, lines of correlation and causation among socioeconomic status, military function, political power and the evolution of democracy at Athens have been decentred. 1 The first proposition to be dismissed is that naval power played a causal role in the formation and evolution of democracy at Athens, or, indeed, anywhere in the Greek world. 2 Non-democratic poleis, such as Sparta and Corinth, maintained navies; this had no discernible effect on their political organization. These cities used slaves, non-citizen perioikoi and mercenaries as rowers. Democratic Athens, mutatis mutandis, adopted such practices with increasing frequency over the course of the fifth and fourth centuries bce (Thuc. 1.121.3, 143; 7.63.3; IG I 3 1032). 3 Athens, by contrast, had employed large numbers of thētes as rowers after the creation of the fleet and the victory at Salamis in 480. Indeed, increasing democratization at Athens in the half-century between the reforms of Ephialtes in 462 and the oligarchic takeover of 411 was predicated on the agency of these citizens in the democratic process as dicasts and assemblymen rather than on their active service as rowers.