The Lost Technology of Ancient Greek Rowing

In the classic age of oared galleys,Greek navies dominated the Medi-terranean, and the Athenians dom-

inated the other Greeks. While moststates were relying on aristocratic cav-alry or yeoman infantry for their mili-tary force, Athens mobilized thousandsof lower-class citizens to serve as rowersin the fleet. Themistocles, the master-mind of this naval policy, endured rhe-torical attacks from conservative rivalswho said he had “robbed the Atheniansof the shield and spear, and degradedthem to cushion and oar.” The referenceto oars is sufficiently clear: 170 rowerswere required to propel each of Athens’strireme warships (galleys with three tiersof rowers). But why mention cushions?

This cushion, or rowing pad, presents

a riddle, one of many in the history oftechnology. I have proposed a solutionto this mystery that suggests the cush-ions used by Greek rowers were in factone of those modest technical advanc-es—like the cavalry stirrup or the me-dieval longbow—that can decide thefate of empires. An enigma today, therowing cushion was once so familiarthat when the Greek geographer Era-tosthenes wanted to describe Mesopo-tamia, he stated that it was shaped likea rowing cushion. Yet further writtendescription of this object is lacking, andhistorians must depend on chance cluesthat have survived the wreck of the an-cient world. Like so many items of tech-nical apparatus, the device may neverhave been described or drawn in detail.

Fortunately, there is more informationthan the fact that the cushion was shapedlike Mesopotamia—that is, broad inthe middle with tapering ends. The row-ing pad (hyperesion in Greek, meaning“under the rower”) was indeed a cush-ion. The Roman and Byzantine schol-ars who wrote dictionaries to explainobscure terms in Greek texts variouslydefined the hyperesion as a fleece, a hideor a pillow that kept the rower fromwearing out his rump. It is clear that therowing cushion was tied to the rower:an Athenian orator complained of theridiculous figure cut by his countrymenabroad when they went ashore wearingtheir rowing pads. And it is apparentthat the cushion was a necessity. Whenthe Spartans launched an amphibiousattack against Athens in 429 B.C., eachrower had to carry a rowing cushionalong with his oar as he walked over-land to the ships. Such descriptions are,however, uniquely Greek.

The Lost Technologyof Ancient Greek Rowing

The navies of classical Greece took advantage of the sliding stroke, a technique that 19th-century

competitive rowers later reinvented

by John R. Hale

82 Scientific American May 1996

STONE RELIEF, discovered on the Athenian acropolis, depicts a triple-tiered Greekgalley of the fifth century B.C. called a trireme. The posture of the rower with knees an-gled upward (center) suggests ancient Greek oarsmen used a sliding stroke to take ad-vantage of the power of the rowers’ leg muscles.

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The Romans manned war-ships like those of the Greeks,yet Roman oarsmen used norowing cushions. Indeed, theLatin language does not evenhave a word for such an ob-ject. Rowing cushions werealso unknown on Venetiangalleys in the Middle Agesand the Renaissance. Hadthey been used, it would sure-ly have been recorded. Theobsessively complete navalinventories of Venice detailevery item, down to the rowers’ caps. Isone to believe that the Greeks, includ-ing the famously austere Spartans, wereso soft that they alone could not rowon a bare bench?

To solve this puzzle, one must realizethat different rowing techniques haveevolved throughout history. Initially,some prehistoric inventor must have dis-covered that he could use his paddle asa lever if he tied it to the side of a boatand pulled. Thereafter, the efficiency ofpropulsion offered by rowing, as op-posed to paddling, inspired the develop-ment of a vast family of rowing strokes.Techniques range from the “sculling”stroke of a Venetian gondolier, whosweeps a single oar back and forth inthe manner of a fish’s tail, to the “walk-ing” stroke of medieval galleys, whichrequired oars so immense that the row-ers had to step forward and back asthey worked. Rowing helped to carrythe Vikings across the Atlantic and thePhoenicians around Africa. Humanpower was particularly critical to thenavies of the ancient Greeks, whosewarships were torpedolike galleys withheavy bronze rams affixed to their bows

[see “Ancient Oared Warships,” by Ver-nard Foley and Werner Soedel; Scien-tific American, April 1981].

Buckskin and Butter

Among the different rowing tech-niques that have evolved over time,

there is one from the 19th century that,like the ancient Greek stroke, dependedon the use of a leather pad. In the 1850sand 1860s, competitive rowers andscullers in the U.S., Canada and Britainbegan to experiment with a pad of“wash leather” (a soft, pliant leather)sewn to the seat of their rowing trou-sers. When these pads were greased, therower could slide forward and back onhis thwart (the flat board that served asthe rower’s seat), increasing the lengthof his stroke and adding the pistonlikethrust of powerful leg muscles to themotion of his arms and back.

The 1871 edition of the Annual Illus-

trated Catalogue and Oars-man’s Manual, by George T.Balch, sang the praises of thisinnovation. “The seat is madeof a thin plank of hard, close-grained wood, usually cherry,the grain running fore andaft, and the surface smoothlypolished. To reduce the fric-tion still more, this surfaceand the oarsman’s panta-loons, which should be rein-forced with wash-leather, arelubricated with grease.” Balch

referred to this rowing technique as the“buckskin and butter plan.” His cata-logue of rowing equipment also adver-tised various medicinal potions to dealwith the boils and blisters that resultedfrom the repeated sliding.

Because championship races of theday awarded as much as $4,000 to thewinner, rowers eagerly sought new tech-niques that might give them a competi-tive edge in speed. Experiments haveshown that every inch of forward move-ment on the handle of the oar translatesto double that distance in the water. Asliding motion of only six inches adds afull foot to the beginning of the stroke— the most critical point in terms of lever-age. Such performance was unattainablewith a fixed seat, which forces a rowerto use a sharp, dipping movement.

Nineteenth-century rowing races alsoresembled some naval contests of antiq-uity in the sense that the ability to makea sharp turn at high speed could mean

The Lost Technology of Ancient Greek Rowing Scientific American May 1996 83

COMPETITIVE OARSMEN in England and North America rediscovered the advan-tages of the sliding stroke in the mid-19th century. An early 20th-century lithograph ofa rowing race shows the bent-knee posture at the start of the stroke (rowers in fore-ground ) and the full extension of the leg at the end (rowers in background ).

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SCORINTHIAN VASE DECORATION from the sixth centuryB.C. shows Greek rowers positioned with their knees raised.

Copyright 1996 Scientific American, Inc.

the difference between winning and los-ing. Victorian competitors normallydashed out to a fixed stake, doubledquickly around it and then rowed backover the same course to finish where theyhad started. A famous American paint-ing of 1873 by Thomas Eakins, “TheBiglin Brothers Turning the Stake,”shows how a longer stroke from therower on the outside of the curve couldpry the boat around the turn. The slid-ing stroke—Balch’s buckskin-and-but-ter method—offered the greatest ad-vantage during such a maneuver.

The greased leather pad of the 19thcentury was eventually replaced by me-chanical means to make the sliding mo-tion even longer and easier: a seatmounted on wheels that rolled forwardand backward on a wooden track. Suchmechanical slides are now essentialequipment on collegiate, club and Olym-pic racing shells. Even today, however,Australian lifeboat crews who race inheavy surf are unwilling to risk jammingor breaking a mechanical slide. Insteadthey sit on molded thwarts with a

smooth polymer coating so that, likerowers of an earlier century, they canslide on a fixed surface.

Truth in Comedy

It is logical, then, that ancient Greekrowers used their cushions just as

19th-century rowers used greased washleather: to allow a more powerful, slid-ing stroke. Is there evidence other thanthe use of a rowing pad that the Greeksemployed a sliding technique? Indeed,

artistic renderings, literary accounts andshipbuilding techniques all bear witnessto this type of rowing. For example,painted pottery and sculptured reliefsshow Greek rowers sitting with theirknees bent upward—a strong visual clueto the use of the sliding stroke. Theseimages also prove that the Greek rowersdid not sit on raised benches but ratheron low planks set at the same level astheir feet. In this position, upper bodymovements are severely restricted, andsliding becomes the best method of de-livering an effective stroke.

Curiously, much information aboutthe details of ancient rowing comes notfrom histories or technical manuals butfrom Athenian comic plays. These sa-tirical comedies originally entertainedaudiences made up in large part of thepoor citizens who manned the oars inthe Athenian fleet. (The depiction in thepopular 1959 film Ben-Hur notwith-standing, most rowers in classical navieswere freemen, not slaves.) Aristophanes,for example, created a chorus of frogsthat mocks the cries of a novice rowercomplaining of the blisters on his but-tocks. The playwright Eupolis also wrotea scene intended to be familiar to rowersin which the tough old general Phormiotaught an unwilling recruit how to row.“Stop splashing!”—the first of the an-gry general’s commands—could apply toany rowing style. But his second shout-ed order—“Extend your leg!”—identi-fies the sliding stroke, in which the legsbegin bent and then extend straight asthe rower pulls through.

Greek naval engineers and shipbuild-ers developed designs that reflect the useof a sliding stroke. Greek triremes were

The Lost Technology of Ancient Greek Rowing84 Scientific American May 1996

FIXED-POSITION ROWER uses arm andback muscles to work the oar through arelatively short stroke (arrow). The legsserve only to brace the rower, and kneescannot be raised too high without inter-fering with the rower’s motions.

ROMAN GALLEYS had raised benches for the rowers (who were typically freemen,not slaves as pictured in the film Ben-Hur). These oarsmen thus could not have usedthe sliding stroke developed earlier by the Greeks.

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fitted with wooden “outriggers” on eachside to carry the wooden pins to whichthe oars were secured. The outrigger wasa point of vulnerability in battle, but itwas necessary to accommodate the long-er reach a sliding stroke requires. Dur-ing the 19th century, the reintroductionof the sliding stroke brought with it a 30percent increase in the distance betweenthe rower and the oar’s hinge point.

Nineteenth-century boat designers ul-timately developed a low, streamlinedhull in the quest for more speed. In theprocess, the rowing bench disappeared,and the oarsman’s seat was lowered tothe level of his feet. Ancient Greek navalengineers achieved the same result, butfrom an entirely different motivation. Inorder to squeeze more men into the hull,additional tiers of rowers were addedabove and below the original line of oars.This close packing required the legs ofthe upper rowers to be lifted so as toclear the oars of the men below.

For centuries, the evidence that row-ers in Greek triremes sat at different lev-els was challenged by doubting scholarswho considered the arrangement im-practical. The reality of multitiered gal-leys, however, was triumphantly provedby John S. Morrison of the University ofCambridge, whose theories were broughtto life in the reconstructed trireme Olym-pias [see “The Trireme Sails Again,” byJohn F. Coates; Scientific American,April 1989]. The sea trials of this ambi-tious experiment in nautical archaeolo-gy validated a number of ancient claims,including the statement that these gal-leys made their fastest speed under acombination of oars and sails. It is clear,however, that during actual battles the

trireme and other such ships were pow-ered by rowers alone. The masts andsails were removed and left on shore,and most naval battles were fought atdawn, when calm seas favored optimalworking of the oars.

Full Slide Ahead

Classic trireme warfare was one ofthe simplest forms of combat ever

devised. It had but a single tactic: tosmash and disable enemy warships byramming them. This result could beachieved through two different maneu-

vers. Both were techniques for gainingan advantageous position off the sternor the rear quarter of the enemy vessel,and both required the ability to make aquick, sharp turn. Commanders avoid-ed prow-to-prow ramming becausesuch head-on collisions might cause asmuch damage to one’s own ship as tothe opponent’s.

In a stratagem called the diekplous(Greek for “rowing through”), a shipbroke the enemy’s line by chargingstraight through the gaps between op-posing vessels into the open water be-hind. Once clear, the attacker wheeledquickly around to strike its rival’s ex-posed stern or quarter. The second pop-ular maneuver was the periplous (“row-ing around”). If the enemy attemptedto close ranks or double its line to pre-vent a diekplous, the attacker couldtake advantage of the shorter line bysimply rowing around it at either end.Both the diekplous and the periplousrequired the attacker to execute a hair-pin turn behind the enemy line withoutlosing so much speed as to become it-self a sitting, broadside target.

One readily sees the advantages con-

The Lost Technology of Ancient Greek Rowing Scientific American May 1996 84A

SLIDING-POSITION ROWER benefitsfrom the added thrust of leg muscles, giv-ing a longer stroke (arrow) and increasedleverage. The sliding stroke begins withthe knees flexed tightly and ends with thelegs fully extended.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY ROWERS, such as the world champion James Renforthof Newcastle (depicted in this wood engraving), adopted the sliding stroke in the 1850sand 1860s. These rowers initially used greased leather patches sewn to the seats oftheir pantaloons to slide freely. Later, movable mechanical seats were devised.

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ferred by a sliding stroke in the duelfought between two Greek galleys inlate October of 429 B.C., during the ear-ly stages of the Peloponnesian War. TheSpartan commander Timocrates waschasing into port the Athenian Phormioin the flagship Paralos. Phormio couldnot turn to confront his pursuer with-out exposing the vulnerable flank of hisown trireme to the Spartan’s ram. But bychance a merchant ship had anchoredoutside the harbor. As the Paralos drewabreast of this stationary vessel, Phor-mio gave the command to turn.

Using the anchored merchantman asa screen, the Athenian crew executed atight 270-degree turn so quickly that theSpartan ship had no time to take evasiveaction. Phormio struck the enemy amid-ships with his ram, destroying the Spar-tan trireme. Timocrates was so shamedby the sudden reversal of fortune thathe killed himself on the spot. The Athe-nians had indeed capitalized on the ad-vantages afforded by the sliding stroke.Phormio and his highly trained crewhad brought the full-speed turn to thepoint of perfection.

In certain ancient naval engagements,neither the diekplous nor the periplouswas effective. The advantage then re-mained with the ship that could executethe most rapid 90-degree turn in thesmallest space. Such agility allowed astraight dash at the enemy line to termi-nate in an abrupt swerve intended todrive the attacker’s ram against the flankof the opponent’s vessel.

The most famous use of such an ab-breviated turn occurred at Salamis inlate September of 480 B.C. That island

was the site of a fierce battle between analliance of free Greek cities led by Ath-ens and the invading armada of KingXerxes of Persia. The core of Xerxes’naval strength was a Phoenician fleetfrom Tyre and Sidon (ancient cities sit-uated in what is now southern Leba-non). The Phoenician triremes lackedoutriggers, which strongly suggests that,unlike their Greek adversaries, they didnot use a sliding stroke.

At Salamis, the heavily outnumberedGreeks could not use the diekplous orthe periplous, because the huge Persianfleet jammed the straits from shore toshore. Indeed, the Greeks were morevulnerable to both maneuvers because

of their smaller numbers. Sothey seized the initiative

and attacked before the Persians had achance to break or encircle the Greekline. An eyewitness reported that the firstGreek ship to engage the enemy carriedout a sharp turn to such good effect thatits ram entirely sheared off the enemy’sprow. Many other Greek advances weresimilarly successful, and the Persian linewas soon clogged with disabled shipsattempting to turn and escape into thecrush behind. So many ships on thePersian left wing were disabled that theAthenians were finally able to forcetheir way around in a rudimentary peri-plous, thus surrounding the enemyfleet. Had the Persian ships and crewsbeen capable of the same sharp turns athigh speed, the Greeks could never havewon the critical initial advantage.

After the battle of Salamis and the sub-sequent retreat of King Xerxes and hisallies, Athens began its ascendancy overthe islands and cities of the Aegean Sea.A key element in the rise of the Athe-

ROWING PARAPHERNALIA are described in the 1871 edition of the Annual IllustratedCatalogue and Oarsman’s Manual. Items include a close-grained wooden seat that allowsan oarsman with greased leather trousers to slide—the “buckskin and butter” method.

SEAT FOR SLIDING

ROWLOCK

84B Scientific American May 1996 The Lost Technology of Ancient Greek Rowing

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GREEK TRIREME WARFARE in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. used ramming asthe primary offensive weapon during naval engagements (far right). An attacking ves-sel frequently positioned itself on the vulnerable side of the enemy’s line, using one oftwo maneuvers, the diekplous or the periplous (panels above).

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nian empire was the willingness to com-mit the time, money and manpower tobuild a standing navy. Athenians paid12,000 rowers to train for a full eightmonths of the year, in part because thesliding stroke required extensive prac-tice for complete mastery.

Technology Lost and Found

Given the superiority of a slidingtechnique for trireme warfare, why

was it ever abandoned? The Atheniansthemselves saw no reason to meddle withan effective method. Inevitably, though,states that found themselves unable tocompete with Athenian ships developedinnovative techniques of their own. In400 B.C. the Carthaginians launched thefirst quadriremes, or “fours.” This newtype of galley initiated an arms race inwhich the means to success lay in mul-tiplying the number of rowers on eachoar. (The trireme had always used just

one man per oar.) As ships and crewsgrew larger, the brute force of unskilledmuscle superseded the finesse of theAthenian professionals, with their longand intense periods of training. Tacticsalso changed. Pulling enemy ships along-side with grappling hooks and boardingreplaced ramming as the chief offensivemaneuver, and warships became littlemore than mobile platforms for smallarmies of foot soldiers. The sliding strokeseems to have survived only in a fewbackwaters. Mention of the rowing cush-ion appears for the last time in a papy-rus document that lists gear for a smallGreek galley operating on the Nile River,several centuries after triremes had givenway to larger ships carrying more men.

During the period when highly skilledrowing had been appreciated and re-warded, its benefits had made Athensthe greatest naval power in the ancientworld. The Athenians themselves werewell aware of the part that their rowing

technique played in the victory over thearmada of King Xerxes—the beginningof their naval dominance. In a scenefrom a comedy by Aristophanes, an oldman named Demos (in the satire he rep-resents the “Everyman” of Athens) startsto take a seat on a rough stony surface.A fellow Athenian immediately offershim a cushion, so that Demos will be inno danger of wearing away the rumpthat “served so well at Salamis.”

The means may have been humble,even comical. But the end result was acentury of naval supremacy that builtAthenian hegemony in the Aegean. Thetribute from this maritime empire builtthe Parthenon, financed Athenian de-mocracy, sponsored the plays of Sopho-cles and Aristophanes, and laid the cor-nerstone for the Academy of Plato andAristotle. Yet the Golden Age of Athenswas in fact founded on the sweat of afew thousand skilled rowers—and a lit-tle buckskin and butter.

The Lost Technology of Ancient Greek Rowing Scientific American May 1996 85

The Author

JOHN R. HALE is an archaeologist and director of liberalstudies at the University of Louisville. His investigations of nauti-cal history (and rowing) were conducted at Yale University and atthe University of Cambridge. In the course of those studies, Haleexplored ancient naval tactics, sea trials in experimental archae-ology and the evolution of the Viking long ship. His current field-work takes him to Portugal for the excavation of a Roman villawhere horses were bred for chariot races and to western Greecefor a survey of ancient naval stations and battle sites.

Further Reading

A Text-Book of Oarsmanship, with an Essay on Muscular Ac-tion in Rowing. Gilbert Charles Bourne. Oxford University Press,1925.

The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of anAncient Greek Warship. John S. Morrison and John F. Coates. Cam-bridge University Press, 1986.

The Story of World Rowing. Christopher Dodd. Stanley Paul, 1992.Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times. Lionel Casson. University ofTexas Press, 1994.

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Copyright 1996 Scientific American, Inc.