Olympias: Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Trireme

"Though all else shall be taken within the bound of Cecrops
And the fastness of the holy mountain of Cithaeron
Yet Zeus the all-seeing grants to Athene's prayer
That the wooden wall only shall not fall, but help you and your children.
But await not the host of horse and foot coming from Asia,
Nor be still, but turn your back and withdraw from the foe.
Truly a day will come when you will meet him face to face,
Divine Salamis, you will bring death to women's sons
When the corn is scattered, or the harvest gathered in."
~ Oracle of Delphi in
Herodotus Histories 7.140

Persian King Darius' army had been turned back at the epic battle of Marathon in 490 BCE; now, ten years later, Xerxes son of Darius was returning to Greece with an even larger army and navy to finish the job. In Greece's most dire hour, Athens sent messengers to the Oracle of Delphi and were told, in essence: run for the hills, all is lost. Refusing to give up, they sent to the oracle a second time and received the cryptic verses translated above.

What was the wooden wall on which their hopes depended? Some thought it meant a city stockade, while others guessed it meant a ship. In the end, the ship theory prevailed. The statesman Themistocles persuaded his fellow citizens to abandon Athens to the sack of the Persian army and build 100 triremes for a counter-offensive. At "divine Salamis," fast-moving Athenian triremes destroyed Xerxes' fleet, and the impoverished Persian army was finished off at Plataea in 479.

In the wake of the Persian Wars, Athens formed the Delian League with other Greek city-states, who agreed to donate triremes or money to support Athens' fleet as insurance against future Persian aggression. Athens used part of the money to rebuild the Acropolis and Parthenon, and became a flourishing sea power and center of trade, importing grain, silver and other goods from overseas colonies.

When the Persian threat dwindled, Athens turned its fleet against its own allies to keep them in line and keep tribute flowing. Sparta, which had had formed its own League in the southern part of Greece known as the Peloponnese, went to war against Athens and her allies, and the rest of the fifth century was spent fighting it out in a battle between sea and land powers. In the end, Sparta mustered its own fleet and cut off the overseas grain imports on which Athens depended. The killing blow came when Sparta's fleet under the generalship of Lysander destroyed 168 of Athens' ships and captured some 3-4000 sailors at the battle of Aegospotami. The Athenians were starved out and surrendered to the Spartans in 404BCE. All of Greece was weakened by the conflict, and the stage was set for the rise to power of Philip of Macedon just to the north and his mighty son, Alexander the Great.

Throughout the fifth century, fast-moving triremes served as chariots of the sea, outmaneuvering the Persians' heavier warships, ramming and sinking supply ships and troop convoys, and providing swift military aid to besieged islands. They were the wooden wall of the cradle of democracy -- and of empire.