At the start of the month I reflected on Leonidas' reign -- and the possibility under Leonidas the helots had enjoyed a period of increasing prosperity and rising expectations. One of the ways in which helots may have been able to improve their status was by serving in Sparta's small but by no means insignificant fleet. Here's what it might have looked like.
When
word reached the Spartan fleet at its home base of Gytheon that King Leonidas
required a trireme in Corinth,
the duty vessel was launched at once. Although this was not the sailing season
and merchant vessels kept to the safety of their harbors (if they weren’t
pulled up on the beach for repairs and maintenance), triremes were built to
take any weather, and the trip along the coastline to Corinth entailed little danger. Because of a
heavy east-northeast wind, however, the trireme turned west and set all sail,
with the obvious intention of sailing westward around the Peloponnese.
Eurybiades
watched it until it was out of sight, and then called his crew together. His
crew now numbered two hundred men; for taking Sperchias and Bulis safely to Persia and back, Eurybiades had been rewarded
with command of Sparta’s
newest trireme, the Minotaur. In
fact, he had been charged with overseeing the construction and with recruiting
the crew, at Leonidas’ personal orders and expense. Eurybiades had chosen to
use the shipyard at Skandia, and the keel had been laid down only six months
earlier. The launch had taken place barely a fortnight ago, and the Minotaur had not yet completed her sea
trials.
But
Eurybiades was an ambitious and impatient man. He had already hired the bulk of
his penteconter crew, and many of the other oarsmen were local men from
Kythera. He was willing to take a chance. With the wind whipping his long black
braids and trying to drag his himation right out of his hands, he put his
proposal to the crew collected in a curious group around him.
“King
Leonidas requires a trireme in Corinth.
The duty vessel has departed, heading west. It will take two days by that
route. If we can row through the Malean Straits, we can beat them by as much as
a day and be the first ship to respond to the king’s summons.” Eurybiades did
not need to say that rowing against the northeasterly gale would be exhausting;
even the least experienced among them knew that. He chose not to stress that it
would also be extremely dangerous. They would have a mountainous lee shore
licking its chops the whole voyage north, and they would also be crossing the Gulf of Argos,
the lair of Sparta’s
most tenacious foe. While it was not likely that Argive warships would be
prowling around at this time of year, they could not exclude the possibility. A
prudent man would not suggest this voyage, not with an untried ship and crew.
Eurybiades
was not prudent; he was driven by the desire to prove what he could do. It was
the kind of competitive instinct that drove other men to athletic feats or to
climb mountains or explore the unknown. But Eurybiades also knew that he could
achieve nothing with an unwilling or frightened crew. He knew that he had to
sweep them up in his own enthusiasm. With his old crew, that would have been no
problem. Even now, his helmsman of nearly a decade was asking rhetorically with
a deep growl, “Why are we wasting time? Let’s launch the bloody boat.”
But
Eurybiades wasn’t worried about the men from his penteconter, nor about the
perioikoi deck hands and marines. They would not bear the brunt of the
hardships. It was the 170 men who manned the oars who had to be willing to
fight a running gale. And more than half these men were helots.
Eurybiades
had initially concentrated his recruiting on Kythera, talking to the sons of
fishermen, men often too poor (after surrendering half their catch to their
masters) to support a family. But he had not found nearly enough men to man a
trireme, so the remaining oar-banks had been filled with country lads who
streamed down to Boiai, where he put in with a ship still smelling like a
lumberyard and nearly one hundred vacancies at the oars.
Eurybiades
focused on Hierox, his bosun or rowing master, the keleustes. Hierox was a burly man with a full black beard that
looked permanently salt-soaked. He too was a Kytheran, a perioikoi who had
kicked around on foreign ships for half a lifetime before attaching himself to
Eurybiades like a barnacle. They had been inseparable ever since, a team that
could make even a half-rotten penteconter a dangerous pirate with the help of
marines like Prokles.
To
this man had fallen the main responsibility for sorting the wheat from the
chaff as the country bumpkins, still stinking of the barnyard and literally
unable to tell stem from stern, streamed in looking for a berth. To him had
fallen the even more difficult task of trying to make seamen of these farm
lads. Eurybiades knew that this man would sail into Hades itself with him―but
only if he thought the crew was up to it. Eurybiades found himself regretting
his own impulsiveness. He should have consulted Hierox first.
Hierox
seemed to be thinking the proposition through carefully. He looked up, sniffed
the wind, and squinted at the breakers, which were rolling into the bay in
stately rows to dissolve with a roar and hiss on the long beach. Then at last he asked dubiously,
“What happens once we reach Corinth?”
Eurybiades
understood his concerns. Taking such a green crew on this voyage was only half
the danger. The other risk was that these eager farm lads, who had never before
set foot outside their villages, would find themselves overwhelmed by the
charms of a city like Corinth.
They might desert (or get kidnapped by unscrupulous foreign captains) and leave
the Minotaur short-handed in a
foreign port.
“King
Leonidas will board almost straight away and we will take him to his next
destination, wherever that might be,” Eurybiades answered. He opened his mouth
to add that there would be no shore leave, but he didn’t get the words out.
From
the crowd of men standing in the blustering wind, a young voice asked, “The
king himself will sail with us? King Leonidas?”
“Yes,”
Eurybiades confirmed, “so there’ll be no―”
“Then
let’s go!” the voice called eagerly.
To
Eurybiades’ and Hierox’s surprise, this suggestion was met with a cheer and the
shout, “For Leonidas!”
