New Book on the Byzantine Navy

[Narukami]

http://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/781.asp


The Age of the Dromon: The Byzantine Navy, ca. 500-1204, by John H. Pryor & Elizabeth M. Jeffreys

Leiden/Boston: E.J. Brill, 2011. Pp. lxxvii, 758. Illus., maps, diagr., tables, appends., notes, biblio., indices. $49.50 paper. ISBN: 900420590X.

Heirs to the Roman Empire, the Greek Orthodox Byzantines dominated the Mediterranean world from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Sea power was a big part of that dominance, but except for a handful of obscure manuscripts, passing references in other sources, and tantalizing bits of nautical archaeology, we know very little about how the Byzantines actually practiced naval warfare. With The Age of the ΔΡΟΜΟΝ, medieval maritime historian Pryor and Byzantine philologist Jeffreys make a major contribution toward understanding Byzantine naval power.

The dromon or “runner” was the standard oared warship of this period. With 54 oars on each side, arranged in two banks, above and below deck, it could manage about 4 knots under ideal conditions. Two masts carried auxiliary triangular sails on long yardarms that crewmen could lower to the deck and stow before battle. The 108 rowers were professional paid mariners, not slaves, and they were expected to fight in battle as well as pull an oar. Unlike Greek and Roman galleys, dromons did not carry a heavy bronze ram below the waterline. Instead, the bow carried a projecting wooden “spur” above the waterline, designed to break or tangle the oars or an opposing vessel, by running along its flank. Armament included catapults (ballistae) firing stones, bolts, or fire-pots. In addition, at the bow a swiveling bronze pressure pump, the siphon, could discharge the famous “Greek Fire” – a secret incendiary weapon whose composition is still not understood. The ramming tactics of the classical era were replaced by a standoff exchange of missile fire to demoralize enemy crews, followed by grappling and boarding by armored marines.

Byzantine writers tried to show off their classical learning by deliberately writing in an archaic style imitating Athenian Greek of the 4th century BC. Since nautical technology had changed so much in the intervening centuries, their seafaring terminology was a total mess. Pryor and Jeffreys manage to untangle this can of worms in a dazzling display of scholarship and logic. Selective glossaries of English, Greek, Latin, and Arabic nautical terms make this book invaluable to anyone interested in medieval naval history.

The Age of the ΔΡΟΜΟΝ consists of five chapters, plus ancillary material.

Chapter One, “The Operational Context” provides a naval history of the empire in five phases:

400-560 - Germanic assault and imperial recovery.
560-750 – Muslim assault and imperial recovery.
750-875 – "Equilibrium of chaos”.
875-1025 – Byzantine ascendancy.
1025-1204 – Triumph of the Latin West.
The second chapter, “The Origins of the Dromon,” examines how changes in hull construction and the invention of the triangular (“lateen”) sail transformed the late Roman liburna into the Byzantine dromon. Chapter Three, “From the Sixth to the Ninth Centuries” briefly attempts to fill in a dark period where no detailed nautical texts or pictorial representations of warships survive. Chapter Four, “The Dromon in the Age of the Macedonian Emperors” (867-1056) is a detailed exploration of the surviving sources, with special attention to the parts of a ship, crewing, and oarage, and the problems of horse transport, water supply, weapons, fleet tactics and strategy. Chapter Five, “The Demise of the Dromon”, and Chapter Six “The triumph of the Galea” explain how single-decked Western galleys, with two or three men pulling each oar gained ascendancy in the thirteenth century. The fitting of gunpowder weapons to galleys, which marked the rise of Venice as the dominant Mediterranean power, was an innovation for another era, well after the period considered in this book.

Appendices include translations (with original text on facing pages) of four important Byzantine Greek manuscripts, the remarkable detailed inventory lists for the Imperial expeditions against Crete in 911 and 949, and Muhammad ibn Makali’s fourteenth century Remarks on Sea Warfare, which preserves many details of Byzantine naval practice, as seen through the eyes of their Muslim adversaries.

When the hardcover edition of this massive scholarly work was published in 2006, the list price of $210 put it well out of reach of many readers who eagerly wanted to read it. The new paperback edition should reach a wider audience.
Readers unfamiliar with Byzantine history might be intimidated by the profusion of Greek text, and the massive scholarly footnoting in Age of the Dromon. But that would be a mistake. Although this is by no means an easy book to read, it contains a wealth of well-organized data and careful analysis.

The Age of the ΔΡΟΜΟΝ will stand for many years as a landmark in our understanding of a little-known, but very significant era of naval history.

Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is a D.C. based defense analyst, who writes for several defense related journals and Defense Media Network, including, The Year in Special Operations. He is the co-designer, with John Gresham, of Supermarina 1 and Supermarina 2, both from Clash of Arms. His previous
reviews for StrategyPage include To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940 and The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire.

:wink:

Narukami

[Nikanor]

Interesting book indeed even by its description.

Some interesting notes go with it:

Heirs to the Roman Empire, the Greek Orthodox Byzantines dominated the Mediterranean world from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Sea power was a big part of that dominance, but except for a handful of obscure manuscripts, passing references in other sources, and tantalizing bits of nautical archaeology, we know very little about how the Byzantines actually practiced naval warfare.

Today we can say they were heirs to the Roman Empire, but in the reality of the times, this was the very Roman Empire itself as the capital had moved to the East already as early as 286 AD. The term Greek Orthodox Byzantines is misleading. There are no Greek or Armenian or Russian orthodox. There are just Orthodox. The term Byzantine, may be still widespread - and it is understandable that still writers feel the need to use it - but as a late 18th c. neologism that was meant to denigrate, rather than describe, the Eastern Roman Empire it should be phased-out in future literature because it is politically painted top-bottom, thus being unhistoric/unscientific. The Eastern Roman Empire was often termed as "Greek" by contemporary opposing Latins who of course had more contact with its western Greek regions (Greece and West Minor Asia) than with the East but in reality this, as a big regional Empire was of course multi-ethnic no matter if Greeks constituted at times about half or more of its population and were the ones who manned mostly its administration. In reality though, much of the Greek (and bilingual) speakers, mostly in the center, south and east were of non-Greek ancestry all while Armenians were another core ethnic element and being at the forefront of the eastern front against muslims, were naturally at most times the majority in the land army which meant that they reached more quickly up to the throne than Greeks who mostly manned the navies rather than the field armies. Notably, we lack any Emperors with an explicit Greek background and even those pro-Greek ones like Heraclius and Basil I and II were actually of Eastern Minor Asian, probably Armenian ancestry.
What is interesting though with the Eastern Roman Empire is the fact that despite it being the direct continuation of the older Roman Empire, unlike it (which was land based), it was naval-based. More than a land Empire with land borders, the Eastern Roman Empire had been a naval Empire - and this is something that as far as I understood this book is referring to and correctly it does so. It is not accidental that it only lost, only, when navies were subcontracted to the North Italian cities of Venice and Genova (by the very Eastern Roman plutocratic oligarchies that moved gradually there).

Byzantine writers tried to show off their classical learning by deliberately writing in an archaic style imitating Athenian Greek of the 4th century BC.

They were not really showing off since everyone did so - if anything to show off one would need to differ. That was the natural outcome of tradition and convention. Most Eastern Roman writers were not just classically educated, these people were ethnic Greeks who (and this throughout the 10 centuries of the Empire) since the tender age of 5-6 were learning reading and writing from Homer's Iliad and Oddysey, long before getting their first look upon any Bible. Thus they would naturally develop a "katharevousa" style of writing. In reality "katharevousa" existed well since early Roman Empire, precisely in the 1st AD century. Even foreigners such as the Evangelists in the mid-1st century BC were writing with varying degrees of "katharevousa"-"koine" Greek. Note that Athenian of the 4th century BC was already a "katharevousa" in its own times, at times when the average Athenian was far from speaking in the way written in texts of writers of the time all while the vast majority of Greeks of the time spoke rather Dorian-like rather than Ionian/Attic like - this is why you got basic words such as sea as "thalassa" and not as "thalatta", peninsuala as "hersonesos" not as "herronesos" (so much for Athenian sea-power...). I.e. such things happen to languages spoken and taught for millenia. Another reason also was the fact that Eastern Romans made wide use of jargon that was meant to circulate along the initiated ones. We see the same in texts on land-based military where quickly jargon ended up to confusion (exactly as strategists of the time meant it to be, explicitly). Most writers were necessarily neither military nor naval people, thus they would anyway mix up things irrespectively of use of any type of linguistic styles of their own.

[DanRO]

$50? Please tell me where I can buy the book for that price! *greed*