Part IV
Chapter 16
Introduction
In contrast to the great naval battles of the Persian Wars, in which the Athenians put to the test their newly constructed fleet, the sea-fight at Naupactus during the early years of the Peloponnesian War provides a masterclass in naval tactics from the Athenian navy at the height of its powers. The Athenian admiral Phormio relied on the skill and daring of his crews to defeat much larger Peloponnesian forces in two battles at the western edge of the Corinthian Gulf, providing Athens with its first major victories of the war.
Directions to the Site
Modern Nafpaktos, identical to the ancient site of Naupactus, is a three-hour drive from Athens, the best route being the National Highway along the northern coast of the Peloponnese towards Patras and then across the impressive Rio-Antirrio bridge. Nafpaktos is 10km to the east of the bridge, along the southern coast of the mainland. Patras, Greece’s third-largest city, is only a thirty-minute drive from the site, and modern Nafpaktos itself, with its stunning Venetian-Ottoman castle and fortified harbour, is a very pleasant place to stay for a night. Aside from the Peloponnesian War battles covered by this chapter, the sixteenth-century Battle of Lepanto, a famous naval clash between the forces of Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, was fought here too. Nafpaktos is a two-hour drive from Actium, the only other battle covered by this book to have taken place on the western side of Greece, so it makes sense to visit both sites as part of the same itinerary.
Historical Outline of the Battle
Naupactus was a site at the western end of the Gulf of Corinth with many advantages. Lying on the southern coast of mainland Greece, just a few kilometres across the water from Achaea on the northern Peloponnese, Naupactus was home to a natural harbour backed by a formidable and easily defensible hill – ideally suited for a strong acropolis. In the 450s BCE, Athens saw the usefulness of having a friendly base in western Greece to complement its naval monopoly in the Aegean. Accordingly, the Athenians settled Naupactus with Messenian refugees, residents of the south-western Peloponnese who had been oppressed by the Spartans for centuries. In one fell swoop, Athens made a home for its ships in the Gulf of Corinth and did a favour for a new ally that would be forever hostile to Athens’ great rival, Sparta. When the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431, Naupactus became one of Athens’ prime holdings, essential for Pericles’ strategy of sailing around the Peloponnese at will and creating as much havoc and damage in enemy territory as possible.
In the summer of 429, the Ambraciots and Chaonians, two peoples from barely settled country in western Greece, appealed for Spartan help in subduing the territory of Acarnania, an ally of Athens to the west of Naupactus. The Spartans immediately appreciated the benefits of the proposal, since by removing Athenian friends in western Greece, including perhaps Naupactus itself, the Athenians would be far less able to conduct naval operations around the Peloponnese. A Spartan commander named Cnemus and a contingent of hoplites were sent out to the island of Leucas with orders to raise a fleet and help the Spartans’ western allies conduct a combined operation on land and sea. As the naval forces continued to get ready, Cnemus and several infantry troops crossed from the city of Patrae (now the large city of Patras) in the Peloponnese into Acarnania at night, evading the watch of the Athenian force in the region, a squadron of twenty ships based in Naupactus under the command of the admiral Phormio.
The Peloponnesian advance force joined with the Ambraciots and Chaonians, and gathered together a sizeable army from various local populations, Greek and non-Greek alike. Without waiting for the fleet, this army began attacking sites in Acarnania. When the Acarnanians appealed to Phormio to send help, with much regret the Athenian commander replied that he could not afford to leave his post at Naupactus and abandon his Messenian allies. Though they had to go it alone, the Acarnanians surprised everyone, managing to defeat the enemy coalition in battle and striking a humiliating blow at their largest city, Stratus. The Spartan Cnemus had been forced to admit defeat openly by asking the Stratians for the return of his dead under an armistice. One major reason Cnemus’ army had failed at Stratus was that the supporting fleet had not been able to cross the gulf from Patras to offer help. Phormio and his twenty Athenian triremes had left the shelter of Naupactus to stand in their way, and Thucydides tells us that a memorable naval encounter took place about the same time as the land fight was raging at Stratus.
Naupactus Map 1. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
The kyklos, or ‘circle’, is a formation adopted by triremes usually against a more numerous foe. Rather than risk being outflanked or surrounded, a smaller fleet of triremes could resort to forming a circle, with sterns facing in and deadly rams facing out, to prevent exposing the vulnerable sides and backs of the ships to the enemy’s rams. This is the formation the Greeks, led by the Athenians, adopted at Artemisium in 480, when they faced the much more numerous and far more experienced ships in the Persian fleet. The kyklos allowed the Greeks to fight to a sort of stalemate – far better than a crushing defeat – in this first test of their naval mettle (see the chapter on Artemisium in this book). By 429, it was the Athenians who boasted the most experienced trireme crews, and usually the greatest number of ships. At Naupactus they had the experience, but not the numbers. Despite having forty-seven ships to the Athenians’ twenty, the Peloponnesians, inexperienced and equipped with mostly slow troop-transports instead of triremes, opted for a kyklos.
Wary of Phormio’s watchful eye, the Peloponnesian fleet opted to embark from their camps at Patrae well before dawn in an attempt to cross the open water and join up with their comrades on the opposite shore. Phormio, though, was ready. He launched his triremes to intercept the Peloponnesians at the halfway point of the crossing, venturing out in the dark because he knew that a fight in the open water offered the best chance for the Athenians to make use of their peerless ship-handling skill, and he did not want to let the Peloponnesians slip through his fingers. As the Athenians approached, the Peloponnesians formed a circle with prows out and the most vulnerable ships placed in the centre, like the young animals in a wary herd. Also in the centre were the few fast triremes the Peloponnesians had, poised and ready to dart out against the Athenians when the opportunity presented itself. This opportunity never came.
Phormio directed his small fleet to approach the circle in single-file, and then proceed to sail around the circle again and again, tightening the circumference with each pass. Phormio was confident because he knew two crucial things: the Athenians’ experience would allow them to execute this manoeuvre with the sort of precision bound to intimidate the Peloponnesians even further; and every morning about dawn, a stiff wind began to blow out of the gulf (as it still often does today), which would play havoc with the already nervous enemy crews. With each Athenian turn around the circle, the Peloponnesian ships were forced closer and closer together. Finally, when the wind picked up, just as Phormio had expected, the choppy waters made the Peloponnesian crews lose control, and ships began to run afoul of one another. Thucydides says that the cursing and swearing of the crews as they tried to pry each other’s ships apart drowned out any commands that were being issued, not that commands would have made any difference. At Phormio’s signal, the Athenians attacked, immediately ramming and sinking one of the flagships of the Peloponnesian fleet. Chaos ensued, with the Athenians ramming as many ships as they came across, and those Peloponnesians that could fleeing back towards the Peloponnese. In hot pursuit, the Athenians captured twelve ships – in addition to the ones they had already destroyed – along with their crews, a total of perhaps nearly 2,400 men. Elated with victory, the Athenians set up a trophy on the northern headland at the entrance to the gulf, and dedicated a ship to Poseidon, lord of the sea. Battered physically and morally, the Peloponnesians limped to a safe dockyard in the territory of Elis and nursed their wounds.
Naupactus Map 2: The first battle. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Naupactus Map 3: The kyklos. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
The Spartans’ response to the debacle was anger. As Thucydides says, the Spartans could not imagine that the defeat was due to deficiencies in the Peloponnesian navy. Rather, it must have been simple cowardice that caused the Spartans and their allies to be defeated by a smaller number of Athenian ships. As Thucydides says, backed by common sense, Athenian naval superiority could not so easily be explained away. But no matter: in order to prevent such cowardice from harming their efforts further, the Spartans sent reinforcements, including a board of advisors who were to make sure Spartan courage prevailed among the commander, Cnemus, and the crews in a future engagement. These advisors included Timocrates, Lycophron and Brasidas, a dashing soldier who had already won a major victory and would become a star of Sparta’s war effort in the coming years (see the chapters on Pylos and Amphipolis in this book).
Sending for reinforcements and refitting their troop-transports to serve as warships, the Peloponnesians amassed a fleet of seventy-seven triremes, nearly four times the size of Phormio’s force. When he realized that he would have to fight another battle, against even greater numbers, Phormio sent to Athens for help, but the Athenians could only spare an additional twenty ships, and even these had to stop at Crete on their way to support Phormio. In the event, these ships did not arrive in time, and Phormio had to face the Peloponnesians with nothing more than the twenty ships with which he had fought the first battle. The Athenians’ skill at sea still promised to be an important factor in the coming fight, and as far as he could help it, Phormio intended to engage again in open water to give his crews free rein. The Peloponnesians had other ideas, and wanted to lure the Athenians into the narrower waters closer to Naupactus. For six days the two sides faced each other across the water, practising their manoeuvres and looking for an opportunity to fight on favourable terms.
Before narrating the second battle, Thucydides has the commanders of both sides give speeches to raise the spirits of their men. Speeches in the works of ancient historians are always a tricky matter, since ancient writers did not conform to modern standards of accuracy or word-for-word transcription, but instead often used speeches to make editorial comments on events or have the historical characters deliver words that would have been fitting for the occasion. The speeches before the second battle at Naupactus are especially likely to be inaccurate reflections of what was actually said, since they are delivered as a pair, and the speakers seem to anticipate and respond to one another’s points, despite there being no possibility that one knew what the other had said. Nevertheless, through these speeches Thucydides provides his readers with his own considered opinion concerning the respective character of the Spartans and the Athenians, and how this dictated the course of the coming battle, a valuable bit of historical insight indeed. In a nutshell, Thucydides presents the Spartans as either incapable of crafting sensible plans, or unable to see a plan through to the end if faced with any setback. The Athenians, on the other hand, are shown as masters of bold and clever plans, and at the same time more capable than most at dealing with unexpected reversals of fortune. The Spartan commanders – we do not know which of them actually spoke – are said to have encouraged their troops by saying that the Spartans still possessed a great deal of courage, and the prior defeat was due to bad luck as much as anything else. If anything, the Spartans would learn from their past defeat in order to close the skill-gap with Athens. For his part, Phormio is said to have reminded the Athenians that they were the most skilled mariners in the world, and that he would try his utmost to fight in the open sea.
When the day of the battle arrived, the Peloponnesian fleet set out in four lines, with nearly twenty ships in each line, and began to sail eastward along the coast, in the direction of Naupactus. The goal was to threaten Naupactus and force Phormio to fight inside the gulf lest he let down his Messenian allies and lose a vital foothold in western Greece. Once the Athenians had taken the bait, the ships in the Peloponnesian fleet planned to turn abruptly north towards the Athenians and attack in the confined waters close to the northern shore. Leading the Peloponnesian formation were the twenty fastest ships in their fleet, with orders to sail out ahead of the Athenian force and prevent them from escaping to the shelter of the harbour at Naupactus when the attack came. When he saw that Naupactus was being threatened, Phormio had no choice but to sail into the gulf and reach the site before the Peloponnesians did. From his base on the coast just past the headland, he ordered his sailors to embark and set out immediately in the direction of Naupactus in a single line, mirroring the Peloponnesians’ movements. The tactical initiative and advantage seemed firmly on the side of the Peloponnesians: they had Phormio right where they wanted him.
The bulk of the Peloponnesian fleet slammed into the rearmost nine ships of the Athenians, driving them against the shore and taking them out of commission almost instantly. Having no chance to resist from their ships, most of the Athenian crews abandoned their triremes and swam desperately for the shore, where friendly Messenian hoplites awaited them. The victorious Peloponnesians killed as many of the Athenians as they could, and dragged several ships away as prizes, including one that still had its unfortunate crew aboard. The Messenians, heroically storming into the sea in full armour, managed to save a ship or two by climbing aboard themselves and fighting it out with the Peloponnesians they found there. In general, though, this sector of the battle was a resounding success for the Peloponnesians.
The eleven leading Athenian ships, on the other hand, had been fast enough to evade the Peloponnesian attack, even that from the Peloponnesian right that consisted of their twenty fastest ships. Ten of these eleven made it all the way to the harbour of Naupactus unscathed, and turned about in the shadow of the city’s temple of Apollo to face their rams toward the enemy and defend themselves to the last. The eleventh ship was still making its way to join its comrades, with a Leucadian ship commanded by Timocrates, one of the special Spartan advisors, hot on its trail. The other nineteen Peloponnesian ships were following along at a leisurely pace, overconfident with their side’s success and jovially singing a victory song. Just off shore a merchant vessel lay anchored, right in the path of the Athenian trireme hurtling through the waters. Thucydides does not give us any details about this trireme’s crew, but Polyaenus, a later source, tells us that it was the Athenian flagship Paralus, commanded by Phormio himself, which is indeed possible yet perhaps just too good to be true. In any case, whoever was commanding this ship decided on a desperate manoeuvre at the last minute. The expert crew wheeled around the anchored merchant ship – showing that the Athenians’ nautical boasts were not in vain – and rammed Timocrates’ ship right in its side, delivering a powerful enough blow to sink it.
The shock to the Peloponnesians was so great that Timocrates instantly killed himself in shame, while the rest of the pursuing vessels drifted about, their crews scared out of their wits. The ten other Athenian ships seized their moment, and bore down on their perplexed foes, driving them back towards their home shore and hardly having to come to blows at all. These eleven Athenian triremes then turned their attention to the main part of the enemy fleet, still engaged in trying to haul off their war-prizes, and managed to recapture most of the Athenian ships after slaughtering the Peloponnesian crews that had commandeered them. What had looked like certain defeat at the hands of a far larger enemy and seemingly well-wrought plan, the Athenians turned to a stunning and glorious victory. The Athenians set up another trophy, this time near the spot where the merchant ship had been anchored, and gave back the enemy dead under truce, including the body of Timocrates, which had washed ashore at Naupactus. Making the best of a bad situation, the Peloponnesians set up their own trophy on the opposite shore, to commemorate their initial success against the nine Athenian ships. But the real piece of evidence concerning how the Peloponnesians had fared in the battle came when they left their base in the middle of the night to sail with all speed to the safe harbour of Corinth at the eastern end of the gulf.
Naupactus Map 4: The second battle. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Having watched their land ravaged by Peloponnesian armies for the past three years, and seen a huge percentage of their population succumb to a horrific plague, the victories at Naupactus gave the Athenians a vital boost in morale. Their navy had shown itself indeed to be peerless, even against long odds and overwhelming numbers, suggesting that Pericles’ original strategy for the war – namely to favour the fleet and wait out the Peloponnesians on land – might pay off in the end. On the other side, the Peloponnesians followed up their defeat by launching an ill-conceived and unsuccessful surprise attack into Attica, an attack aimed at seizing the Piraeus but had served most of all to embarrass the Spartans and make the Athenian defences even stronger. Brasidas, one of the three advisors the Spartans had sent to Naupactus, would eventually turn his city’s fortunes around, but the Spartans would have to wait several years for that, suffering humiliation again at Pylos in the meantime.
Fig. 16.1: View from Naupactus towards the site of the first battle, just beyond the modern bridge. Authors’ photo.
Fig. 16.2: The fortified harbour and modern town of Naupactus. Authors’ photo.
The Battle Site Today
Phormio’s two battles were actually fought several kilometres apart from each other. The first clash took place in the open sea, outside the Gulf of Corinth, which allowed the superior manoeuvring skill of the Athenians to shine. The stretch of water between Patras on the Peloponnese and the coast of the mainland opposite is about 10km wide.
The Peloponnesian fleet attempted to cross this expanse after setting out before dawn, and was met by the Athenians and thus pressured to resort to a defensive circle formation at the halfway point of the crossing. The best places to view the site for this first engagement are the fortress of Antirrio, guarding the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth from the promontory just beneath the modern suspension bridge, or from the mountainside along the Riou-Agriniou highway stretching to the west. There are plenty of places along this road that offer space for cars to pull over (N38° 21.142"; E021° 41.816"), and from the heights there are commanding views of the entrance to the gulf, the modern bridge and across to Patras.
The second battle was fought inside the gulf, in the much more confined waters close to the harbour of Naupactus itself, just as the Peloponnesian fleet had intended (even if their plan didn’t quite work out as they had hoped). The fortified harbour, nestled within a naturally sheltered bay, offers a nice view of the battle site from its walls (N38° 23.534"; E021° 49.728").
The merchant vessel around which the Athenian ship made its bold manoeuvre was anchored just offshore, and the rest of the Athenian ships that had evaded the initial Peloponnesian assault had turned around to face their pursuers from the protection of the harbour. The prominent statue on the harbour walls is of a hero from the Greek War of Independence, while next to the walls one can see a statue of Cervantes, the great Spanish writer who took part in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Though the walls of the harbour and the fortifications of the town’s acropolis are primarily Venetian with later Ottoman additions, it is likely that the ancient city’s fortifications provided the basic plan and even some of the foundations for later works. The natural harbour and strong high points rising above it made Naupactus an ideal site for the settlement of anti-Spartan Messenians.
Further Reading
Ancient Sources
–Thucydides 2.80-92
A brilliant historian and naval commander himself during the early years of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides provides a detailed account of these battles and their strategic background. For Thucydides, the naval battles near Naupactus perfectly demonstrated the very different respective characters of the Athenians and Spartans.
–Diodorus of Sicily 12.48
Writing his universal history in the first century BCE based on the work of earlier authors, Diodorus covers these battles only briefly and adds nothing to Thucydides’ preferable account.
–Polyaenus Stratagems 3.4
This compiler of military stratagems wrote during the second century CE, and attributes three stratagems to Phormio. Whereas Thucydides does not tell us who commanded the ship that executed the brilliant manoeuvre around the anchored merchant vessel, Polyaenus credits Phormio himself.
Modern Sources
Books
–Hale, John R., Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy (New York, 2009).
An entertaining and readable account of the role of the navy in Athenian history, including a gripping description of Phormio’s victory at Naupactus.
–Kagan, Donald, The Archidamian War (Ithaca, 1974).
The relevant volume in a multi-volume set that remains the standard in historical scholarship on the Peloponnesian War.
–Lazenby, John, The Peloponnesian War: A Military Study (London, 2004).
A comprehensive treatment of the Peloponnesian War from a strictly military perspective, from a leading scholar of ancient warfare.
–Lendon, J.E., Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins (London, 2010).
A lively, popular account of the early years of the Peloponnesian War, with useful bibliographical essays.
–Morrison, J.S., Coates, J.F., and Rankov, N.B., The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship 2nd edition (Cambridge, 2000).
An essential book for anyone wanting to understand Greek naval warfare, this volume details the construction of the Olympias trireme in the 1980s, in addition to offering a study of trireme battles and tactics.
Articles
–Holladay, A.J., ‘Further Thoughts on Trireme Tactics’, Greece & Rome 35 (1988), pp.149-51.
A brief and informative article offering some clarification on the arguments of Lazenby and Whitehead (whose work is included below) on trireme tactics.
–Lazenby, J.F., ‘The Diekplous’, Greece & Rome 34 (1987), pp.169-77.
A discussion about one of the standard tactics ascribed to ancient triremes, arguing that the manoeuvre was undertaken by single ships, rather than entire formations as some scholars have suggested.
–Sears, M.A., ‘The Topography of the Pylos Campaign and Thucydides’ Literary Themes’, Hesperia 80 (2011), pp.157-68.
Discusses the ways in which Thucydides uses the battles of Naupactus and Pylos to characterize the Spartans and Athenians and their respective conduct in the war.
–Whitehead, Ian, ‘The Periplous’, Greece & Rome 34 (1987), pp.178-85.
A discussion of another standard tactic of Greek triremes, likening this manoeuvre to a ‘dogfight’.