Pyrrhus of Epirus Illustration

[Paralus]

One disagreement there, Paralus. Thucydides implies that both sides tried ramming, but prow-to-prow not in the flanks or against the oars. As ships became stuck or grappled ("it was difficult for them to break away clear") movement probably stopped.

There were four basic tactics for disabling an enemy in ancient naval battle. To wit:

1 ramming head on
2 ramming the flanks or oars of the enemy by clever manoeuvering
3 grappling and boarding
4 (rare) setting your opponent alight with flaming missiles or fire-pots

Yes, it would be a little disingenuous of me to reject the implication. But - and there is always a but - the whole is predicated on the introduction; that is, they were "behindhand" in naval operations. Thucydides is at some pain to stress the numbers of hoplites, javelineers and archers aboard each fleet. That description itself seems of a pair of land armies. The intention, in my view, was always to fight a land battle aboard ship after initial contact - whether they could back water or not. The formations adopted, as Thucydides implies, were not conducive to Athenian style operations. Hence they take the right wing (as well as for the political reasons expounded above).

Agreed on the Athenian preference. Whilst Athenian fleets will never have sailed minus a compliment of marines (ships will become stuck etc) it was rarely the intention to fight close quarters warfare as described at Sybota. Athenian Triremes were not, in fact, designed for such close quarter fighting as the fighting in the closed waters of the Great Harbour at Syracuse so devastatingly points out.

Some might argue those fleets which sailed early in the Archidamnian War carried a strong compliment of hoplites; this misconstrues their mission which was to land same in Peloponnesian territory for harassment.

It is post Syracuse and the unmitigated disaster that Athens adopts your number three as well as tactics resembling Sybota. The contrast between the victories of Phormio and the crushing Athenian victory at the Arginusae Islands is astounding. Indeed I was planning something along those lines for the coming edition of AW but real life, unfortunately, supervened! At Arginusae the Athenians adopt a staggered set of lines. This resembles the Roman maniples (each ship in each line) and is designed to destroy any enemy that sails through the front line. It created a land battle at sea and resulted in a thumping Athenian victory. Phormio though would not have recognised the tactics at all.

This adoption of such tactics didn’t happen immediately though. While ever Athens possessed decent generals with nous and the money to hire rowers of calibre, she displayed exactly that tactical ability that had got it empire in the first place. The victories under Thrasybulus and Alcibiades recall halcyon days. These were though, with Persian darics dropping into Spartan coffers and a flippantly dangerous demos, an illusion.