Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
In this article it is argued that Philip developed a considerable navy in the course of his reign, and that Alexander took that Macedonian navy as well as the Greek navy when he first entered Asia in 334 B.C. I shall discuss the literary testimonia in two sections, one for Philip and the other for Alexander.
1. Aeschines 2.72.
Setting out from Macedonia, Philip was contending with us no longer for Amphipolis but already for Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, our possessions. And our citizens abandoned the Chersonese, which was by general agreement an Athenian property.
1 In the quotation I give the MS reading instead of altering it to as the Loeb edition did. Griffith 331 translated as ‘some Athenian settlers’, which is incorrect.
2 Griffith 331 dated the raids on Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros and the departure from the Chersonese to 347 B.C. but without stating his reasons. Cawkwell and Ellis did not, I think, refer to this passage in Aeschines; but Davies, G.A., Philippics I, II, III (Cambridge 1925)Google Scholar dated the events to ‘before 353 B.C.’ Hauben 1 55 did not offer a date.
3 The chronology is that for which I argued in my Studies in Greek History (Oxford 1973) 486–532 Google Scholar, summarised on p. 533. So too Griffith 255 and 723.
4 Not the city, as was supposed by Marshall, F.H., The Second Athenian Confederacy (Cambridge 1905) 116 and Ellis 76 Google Scholar. The MS reading seems to me to be possible, if one compares FHG 3.692 ‘Philip went to the Chersonese, took it ( ) and returned’, the reference being to the land, not to the cities there. The usual emendation ( ) is not palaeographically likely.
5 Griffith 266 suggested that some of the ‘many ships’ were cargo ships, and this idea led him to suggest that Philip's ‘fleet need not be taken too seriously’ (266 n.1); but the Greek text does not admit of his interpretation. Ellis 77 wrote of Philip's infantry being on board the ships. That is not a meaning of , and one has only to compare Arr. 1.11.3 . Griffith 265, ‘he had … an army on shore’, gave the sense of the passage correctly.
6 I use the term ‘sailing’ to cover moving by oar as well as by sail.
7 This description fits admirably the first Russian crew to win the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley.
8 This appears to be the meaning of the ‘small boats’ ( and ) which Alexander wanted to build in Athens’ harbours ([D.] 17.27); for the suggestion followed that Alexander would ask next for ‘triremes’. Curtius had the Latin equivalent ‘levia navigia’ (4.2.21). Another meaning of the word éAappôç was that the ships were made of a light wood which floated well (as in Odyssey 2.240 and AT 181 and 235); but that meaning is redundant here, since Polyaenus had already said that they were the best sailers. Hauben 1 did not discuss this text.
9 So Griffith 264. Collart, F.P., Philippes, Ville de Macédoine (Paris 1937) 166 n.3Google Scholar, placed it between 354 and 352, and Ellis in 354 on his p. 76 and in spring 353 on his p. 256 n.38 and n.41. It is usually assumed that Philip had escorted the army of Pammenes, the Theban general, as far as the territory of Maronea (see D. 23.183).
10 Griffith 311; Hauben 1 54: ‘suffisant pour contenir la force maritime de Philippe’.
11 The number is uncertain; see Griffith 322 n. 1.
12 The primary meaning of is ‘ropes’. The alternative meaning ‘weapons’ is not appropriate here, because Macedonia, having an abundance of iron ore, made its own weapons.
13 On the freedom of the seas see Wüst 178-80. If Meritt's restorations in Meiggs-Lewis, GHI no. 91 p. 279, are accepted, Archelaus provided facilities for Athenian ship-wrights to build triremes in Macedonia in 407-406 B.C. Dockyards would have been needed. For Amphipolis see Thuc. 4.108.6.
14 See Hammond, N.G.L., A History of Macedonia 1 (Oxford 1972) 148 Google Scholar f.
15 Griffith 570 f. discusses Philip's tactics.
16 Philochorus, , FGrH 328 F 162 Google Scholar .
17 See Griffith 576 n.1 for speculation on the methods which the Macedonians may have employed.
18 Just. 9.1.5 pecuniae commercium de piratica mutuatur. His number of ships taken by Philip, 170, was close to that of Theopompus (FGrH 115 F 295), 180; for Philip let those not bound for Athens go free. See Wüst 131 n.2. In CQ 41 (1991) 499 and 503 I argued that the source behind Justin was Theopompus.
19 It was evidently in these actions that Philip captured some ships of Byzantium, Rhodes and Chios according to Frontinus 1.4.13a, and that the Byzantines defeated Macedonian ships, commanded by Demetrius (Dionys. Byz. F 41 in GGM 2.50).
20 Frontinus 1.4.13 and Polyaen. 4.2.21. The Athenian fleet was guarding ‘the narrows’ according to Frontinus. After he had been duped by Philip, Phocion captured some of Philip's ships and raided his coast (Plu. Phoc. 14.5; cf. D. 18.145).
21 Ellis 175. Cawkwell 136 f. paid even less attention to the Macedonian fleet during this time: ‘Philip used ships in the approach presumably for siege equipment’ … ‘the small fleet that Philip appears to have had there’ (at Byzantium). Wüst 128 and 131 was concerned more with the political situation than with naval tactics.
22 See AG 2 43 for a map of the area.
23 Tarn 355.
24 Bosworth C 61 disagreed, as I do, with Berve's interpretation and saw that Byzantium may have been a Macedonian naval base, but he did not connect it with the advance force invading Asia.
25 See Bosworth C 57 for the hypothesis of two islands called Peuce.
26 On this voyage of some 600 kilometres the ships must have carried their own supplies. There was probably more room for storage per man on a pentecontor or triacontor than on a trireme. It must have been experience on this kind of voyage that encouraged Alexander to depend on triacontors for the fleet on the Indus and the voyage of Nearchus. See AG 2 301 n.157 and the illustration of a pentecontor on p. 237.
27 I commented on these accounts in AG1 67 (1980), A History of Macedonia 3.24 ff. (1988), and AG 2 68 with n.49 (1989).
28 These warships and their crews will have been mostly those contributed in the previous year to the Greek fleet. Bosworth CE 47—‘Alexander had no choice but to commission a new fleet, tacitly admitting a military blunder’—implies a de novo commissioning by Alexander and a preference for Parmenio's advice to tackle the 400 Persian warships with the 160 ‘unpractised’ Greek fleet (Arr. 1.18.6-9 and 20.1).
29 In THA 35-37 I suggested that Diodorus was following Diyllus, who had himself drawn on Ptolemy for the size of detachments, both military and naval.
30 Athens, the leading Greek naval power, had in 330 B.C. only 18 quadriremes to its 392 triremes, whereas the Phoenician and Cyprian fleets already had quinqueremes and quadriremes.
31 It was essential for Alexander to control the Hellespont not only for his own line of communications and supplies, but also to keep control of the corn-route from the Black Sea, which was of vital importance to Greek states and especially to Athens. Since Berve thought there was no Macedonian fleet, he postulated the creation by Hegelochus ‘einer neuen Flotte am Hellespont’ (2.164). Atkinson, J.E., A Commentary on Q. Curtius Rufus’ Historiae Alexandri Magni S and 4 (Amsterdam 1980) 92 Google Scholar, wrote of a few ships at the Hellespont.
32 It was characteristic of Alexander to maintain the establishment of units by replacements for losses. See my article, ‘Casualties and replacements of citizen soldiers in Greece and Macedonia’, in JHS 109 (1989) 56 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 These were what Griffith 639 called the ‘Defence Officers’ of the League of Corinth.
34 Kahrstedt, U. in Hermes 71 (1936) 123 Google Scholar n.2 took the difference between Arrian's figure of 160 and Justin's of 182 to indicate that Justin included some Macedonian ships. Hauben 2 80 n.10 thought such a deduction ‘somewhat hazardous’, and he preferred to include some Macedonian ships in Arrian's 160 ships of the Greek fleet; for Hauben did not draw a distinction between ‘the Macedonian fleet’ and ‘the Greek fleet’, the latter in my opinion being the fleet of the Greeks of the Common Peace. In 333-332 during the Persian naval offensive, when the reconstituted Greek fleet was defending the western Aegean area, a Macedonian fleet was summoned from Greece and defeated the Persian flotilla off the Hellespont (Curt. 4.1.36 classis Macedonum ex Graecia aceita). The contention of Hauben 2 83 n.34, that this was a Greek fleet ‘manned, in whole or in part, by Macedonian soldiers’, is not convincing; for the Latin for a Greek fleet would have been ‘classis Graecorum’, translating .
35 This was a fashionable catchword at the time. I attacked the misuse of it in JHS 57 (1937) 44 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Tarn 360-2.
37 So also Wilcken, U., Alexander the Great (transi. G.C. Richards, London 1932) 76 and 83Google Scholar.
38 Geschichte Makedoniens (Munich 1986) 221 Google Scholar.
39 He had exaggerated the partial disbanding of the Greek fleet in 334 B.C. by writing of ‘the dismissal of the entire fleet’ (C 142; and 143 ‘dissolved his Hellenic fleet’), leading up to his attribution to Alexander of ‘a colossal error’.
40 The neglect of Macedonia as a naval power is due in part to scholars’ concentration on the trireme and larger warships (e.g. by Tarn, in Hellenistic Military and Naval Developments [Cambridge 1930] 122 ff.)Google Scholar. It is appropriate to emphasise that the Macedonian navy began with small warships. Elsewhere pentecontors had gone out of fashion, but triacontors were still in use, especially as ‘swift dispatch boats’ (see Morrison, J.S. and Williams, R.T., Greek Oared Ships 900-322 B.C. [Cambridge 1968] 246)Google Scholar. Pirates also used small, swift ships, which Curtius called lembi (4.5.18 and 21). The tactics of Philip were at first similar to those of pirates, and even when the Macedonians built triremes and had warships of larger dimensions they continued to use triacontors in large numbers (Arr. 2.21.6 and especially 7.19.3; Curt. 4.4.6). The fact that the first ship to run through Persian-controlled waters from ‘Macedonia’ and reach Alexander at Tyre was a pentecontor (Arr. 2.20.2) indicates the confidence which Macedonians had in that class of warship. Textual, Structural, and Interpretive Issues in Horace Carm. 4.2 for WGR