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The Diekplous

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

J. F. Lazenby
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Extract

Like ‘crossing the T’, the diekplous can sometimes seem a manoeuvre ‘more honour'd in the breach than in the observance’, for there are, perhaps, only three battles in which it is said to have been successfully used – Lade (Herodotos 6.15.2), Chios (Polybios 16.4.14), and Side (Livy 37.24.2) – and mostly what we hear about are reasons why it was not or could not be used. Nevertheless, it seems to have been regarded as at least a potentially effective tactic from at least the fifth to the second century: Thucydides has Phormio declare (2.89.8), for example, that diekploi and anastrophai ‘are the marks of bettersailing ships’ (νɛν ἄμɛινον πλɛουσν ἔργα στν), and Polybios (1.51.9) refers to the diekplous as ‘the most effective manoeuvre in sea-fighting’ (ὅφɛρ ν τῷ ναυμαχɛîν στι πρακτικᾡτατον).

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , October 1987 , pp. 169 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

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References

1. Perhaps only successfully used by Admiral Togo at Tsushima – cf. , D. and Warner, P., The Tide at Sunrise (London, 1974), pp. 504–6Google Scholar – though Jellicoe also managed it – twice – at Jutland, without being able to bring about the destruction of the German fleet – cf. Mordal, Jacques (trans. Ortzen), Twenty-five Centuries of Sea Warfare (London, 1970), pp. 283ffGoogle Scholar.

2. E.g. Thucydides 1.49.3 (Sybota), 2.83.5 (Phormio's first victory in the Gulf of Corinth), 7.36.4; 70.4 (fights in the Grand Harbour of Syracuse); Xenophon Hellenika 1.6.31 (Arginusai); Polybios 1.51.9 (Drepana), 16.4.8–10 (Chios). It is even disputed whether Herodotos is not anachronistic to ascribe its use to Lade: see, e.g., Hignett, C., Xerxes' Invasion of Greece (Oxford, 1963), pp. 184–5Google Scholar.

3. My pupil, Ian Whitehead, who has rowed in Argo, and hopes to row in the new trireme, tells me he thinks it might be possible to ship oars if the thole-straps were well greased, but agrees that shearing away enemy oars as one passed by was not the primary intention.

4. Cf., e.g., Grundy, G. B., The Great Persian War (London, 1901), pp. 129–30n.Google Scholar; Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, ii (Oxford, 1956), 218Google Scholar; Morrison, J. S. and Williams, R. T., Greek Oared Ships 900–322 B.C. (Cambridge, 1968), p. 137Google Scholar; Green, P., The Year of Salamis (London, 1970), p. 133Google Scholar; Warry, J., Warfare in the Classical World (London, 1980), p. 31Google Scholar; White, K. D., Greek and Roman Technology (London, 1984), p. 142Google Scholar; Morrison, J. S. and Coates, J. F., The Athenian Trireme (Cambridge, 1986), p. 43Google Scholar. It is difficult to see, from what they say, how some scholars view the diekplous – e.g. Hignett, loc. cit. n.2 above; Burn, A. R., Persia and the Greeks (London, 1962), pp. 158Google Scholar and 213 – but Rogers, W. L., Greek and Roman Naval Warfare (Annapolis, Maryland, 1980), pp. 10 and 68–9Google Scholar, and Rougé, Jean, Ships and Fleets of the Ancient Mediterranean (trans. Fraser, S.; Middletown, Connecticut, 1981), p. 97Google Scholar, are among those who appear to adhere to the view put forward in this paper: the clearest statement of it is, perhaps, that of Carleton L. Brownson in n.3 on p.63 of his Loeb translation of the Hellenika (Vol. I).

5. J. S. Morrison and J. F. Coates, loc. cit.

6. Cf., most recently, Morrison, and Coates, , op.cit., pp. 43 and 88–9Google Scholar.

7. The nearest parallel I can find for ships is Thucydides 2.90.1: π τɛσσρων ταξμɛνοι τσ νασ. But Thucydides is here clearly thinking of the formation which will result when the ships in this formation turn to port to form lines of battle, as is indicated by the phrase δɛχω κρα γουμνῳ – in other words, π τɛσσρων here amounts to ‘four (ships) deep’, though strictly speaking it may mean ‘in four files’.

8. Polybios also uses π μ;αν to mean ‘one deep’ as in 1.27.3 and 1.60.9, but he then makes it clear that this is what he means by attaching the adjective ντιπρώρωσ, in some form, to the ships in question.

9. Morrison, and Coates, , op. cit. p. 88Google Scholar.

10. Loc. cit.

11. Allowing a minimum of 15 metres per ship – cf. Morrison, and Coates, , op. cit., p. 58Google Scholar.

12. It is not my purpose in this paper to discuss the term periplous: see now the article by Ian Whitehead, 179–186 below.

13. Op. cit., pp. 88–91.

14. First published by Wilcken, in Hermes 41 (1906), 103ff.Google Scholar: cf. Hignett, , op. cit., pp. 393–6Google Scholar for a discussion. Morrison and Coates do not mention the fragment.

15. Herodotos (8.11.1) probably did mean by his phrase σ τῸ μσον τσ πρυμνας συνγαγον that the Greeks formed a circle – cf. Thucydides 2.83.5 τς πρᾡρας μν ἒξω, ἔσω δ τς πρμνας – but it may be significant that he does not actually use the word κκλος and it seems to me difficult to believe that some 270 triremes literally formed a circle: its circumference would have been some four kilometres, its diameter 1300 metres, and keeping station would have been extremely difficult, to say nothing of the fact that the strait north of the Euboian coast at Artemision is only about 10 kilometres wide.