It is foreign to our purpose to regard this expedition in any other light
than as it is illustrative of the maritime skill and attainments of Greece
at this era, and so far connected with our present subject. The number of
ships employed, according to Homer, amounted to 1186: Thucydides states
them at 1200; and Euripides, Virgil, and some other authors, reduce their
number to 1000. The ships of the Boeotians were the largest; they carried
120 men each; those of the Philoctetae were the smallest, each carrying
only fifty men. Agamemnon had 160 ships; the Athenians fifty; Menelaus,
king of Sparta, sixty; but some of his ships seem to have been furnished by
his allies; whereas all the Athenian vessels belonged to Athens alone. We
have already mentioned that Thucydides is contradicted by Homer, in his
assertion that the Greek ships, at the siege of Troy, had no decks;
perhaps, however, they were only half-decked, as it would appear, from the
descriptions of them, that the fore-part was open to the keel: they had a
mainsail, and were rowed by oars. Greece is so admirably situated for
maritime and commercial enterprize, that it must have been very early
sensible of its advantages in these respects. The inhabitants of the isle
of Egina are represented as the first people in Greece who were
distinguished for their intelligence and success in maritime traffic: soon
after the return of the Heraclidae they possessed considerable commerce, and
for a long time they are said to have held the empire of the adjoining sea.
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