WEBVTT - Ancient Oars on the Wine-Dark Sea, Part 3 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:14.880 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:16.280 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:18.680 And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.560 three of our series on the ore powered galleys of 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.720 the ancient world. Now, if you haven't heard parts one 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:28.280 and two yet, you should go back check those out first, 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.760 but for a brief recap. In the previous episodes, we 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:35.040 talked about the difference between paddling with a paddle and 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.159 rowing with an ore. An ore is of course, resting 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:42.000 on or connected to, part of the boat itself, and 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.400 you typically face backwards when you row. We talked about 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.960 archaeological evidence of Mesolithic wooden paddles found in northern Europe. 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.800 We talked about some of the pressures leading to the 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:58.040 development of different power mechanisms for ancient boats, wind powered 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:02.440 sails versus human powered or We discussed the different designs 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.600 of war galleys in the ancient Mediterranean and the considerations 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:11.120 that led to increasing concentration of rowers and oars put 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:15.840 more oars in. Starting with single level galleys, the penteconter 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:20.360 and its evolving forms, and eventually the famous trirem, which 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:24.160 had three levels of oarsmen and was the dominant weapon 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:28.280 of the navies of the Mediterranean Empires for hundreds of years. 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:33.160 We also talked about experimental modern attempts to create replicas 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:37.480 of ancient Greek trirems, such as the Olympias project built 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.880 in the nineteen eighties, and we talked about the primary 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:45.080 battle tactics of the trirem, the main weapon of which 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.240 was the ram used for ramming and cracking the hull 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:51.680 of the opposing ships. Oh and of course, back in 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:55.160 part one, we talked about Ptolemy, the fourth of Egypt's 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.920 gigantic ancient war boat, which we are going to come 0:01:58.960 --> 0:01:59.880 back to today. 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:02.200 Yeah, we'll come back to that one again and sort 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:05.360 of revisit it with perhaps a little more context. 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:08.120 Now, there's something I mentioned last time that I wanted 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:10.480 to come back to at the top of today's episode, 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:16.320 which is the idea of the physical remains of rams 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:20.720 from these ancient warships. So we talked about how the 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:25.360 physical archaeological evidence for ancient war galleys is often pretty sparse, 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:29.799 and so modern reconstructions have mostly had to go off 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:34.480 of descriptions in ancient texts and artistic representations that you 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.280 might find on a vase or something. So these ships 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.679 were made out of wood, and they, according to some 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.600 sources we talked about last time, they generally did not 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.160 sink when damaged in battle. They might kind of dip 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:50.600 in the water and become immobilized and they could be 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:54.200 towed away afterwards, or if they did sink, the wooden 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.919 parts mostly decomposed over time. Yeah. 0:02:58.040 --> 0:02:59.840 Yeah, And I was reading a little bit more about 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:04.400 the this issue of positive buoyancy in trirems. I was 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:08.720 reading a bit by Mark C. Davies. Really long title 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:09.799 to this, but I guess I have to read the 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.400 whole of an investigation into the absence of ancient Greek 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.520 trirems in the archaeological record and a study of the 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:20.560 battlefield deposition at the site of the Battle of Agati's 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.880 off the Agatti Islands, to determine whether this example could 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:28.359 direct future exploration for evidence of ancient Greek sea battles. 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:28.960 M that's tight. 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:31.720 Yeah, I would cut it if they'd just thrown a 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.480 colon in there. Anyway, This was a twenty twenty one 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:39.120 publication by Honor Frost Foundation. Anyway, the author here is 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:43.800 ultimately making the case that some trirems may have actually sunk, 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:46.880 and we should look for more particular environments where some 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:50.400 of the wreckage might have survived the sinking. But he 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.480 also outlines the predominant theory as well, that we already 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:57.680 touched on the trirems had positive buoyancy, particularly during battle, 0:03:57.960 --> 0:03:59.920 because if you had anything heavy in there, you had 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.640 equipment or ballast, you'd throw that out and then when defeated, 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:06.440 they would not have been sunk like we've been saying, 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.760 but they would have been left flooded and floundering. Thus 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:12.240 they again, they tended to be dragged back to port. 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.400 They tended to be harvested for wood. But Davies, for 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:18.279 his part, stresses that there is disagreement about how much 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.960 equipment and or ballast a trirem would carry, so it's 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:25.640 not something we can be one certain on. So there 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:30.159 remains at least some scholarly disagreement and discussion on this matter. Right. 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:35.280 But for whatever reason, the wooden components of these boats 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:39.320 have rarely been preserved into the modern archaeological record. Maybe 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:44.200 that's due to positive buoyancy, maybe that's due to decomposition 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:46.279 in the water, or maybe we just failed to find 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:50.320 whatever's there, but for whatever reason, the wooden components are 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:54.560 often lost. But remember that the ram of the ancient 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:59.360 Trirem was usually capped with a solid metal sheath made 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.320 of bronze, and we do have a number of these 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:06.920 bronze rams in archaeological collections today. So I was reading 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.359 about one particular bronze ram from the ancient world in 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.159 a source in a book called War at Sea, A 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:20.080 Shipwrecked History from Antiquity to the Cold War, by James P. Delgado, 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:24.479 Oxford University Press, twenty nineteen. And the section of this 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:29.280 book I was reading concerns a ram called the Athlete ram. 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:34.280 This is a bronze ram filled with wooden timbers, which 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:39.200 was discovered by an archaeologist named Yehoshua Ramone in nineteen 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:41.680 eighty while he was snorkeling off the coast of a 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:47.039 town called Athlet, which is near the Israeli city of Haifa. Apparently, 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.520 nothing else of real archaeological significance was found in the bay, 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:54.760 so it wasn't part of a broader shipwreck that anybody found. 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.320 We just have the broken off ram with the bronze 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:01.719 sheath on the outside and a wooden protrusion from the 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:05.480 prow of the boat inside. After being recovered from the sea, 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.680 this object was subject to extensive study, so a few 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.760 things we know about it. It is thought, though this 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.400 is not certain, that the ancient warship it belonged to 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.440 was wrecked and then drifted close to the shore, and 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:24.600 then was broken apart and disintegrated somehow. They don't say how, 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.560 but maybe it was rocked in the waves or hit 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:31.200 against the rocks or something, but somehow it came apart. 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.599 So the ram, with its heavy metal sheath, sank to 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.359 the ocean floor, and there it was preserved, and the 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:41.520 rest of the boat, the wooden elements, disintegrated over time. 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:47.080 The ram by itself, according to Delgado, weighs about five 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.640 hundred kilograms or about eleven hundred pounds, and the bronze 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:54.440 on it is an alloy of about ninety percent copper 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:57.760 and ten percent ten Now I found some slightly different 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:01.479 figures about the weight I was reading about also at 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.799 the website of the National Maritime Museum in Haifa, where 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:07.839 the object is kept, and they say about its way 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:11.400 that the bronze casting is four hundred and sixty five kilograms, 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:15.240 and then together with the wood inside. When it was discovered, 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.640 it was six hundred kilograms, that's about a third of 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:22.800 the weight of a typical mid sized car. It originally 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:27.720 had sixteen timbers from the ship's frame protruding into the 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:31.560 cast bronze fitting, and those timbers were extracted by an 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:36.880 American nautical archaeologist and named J. Richard Stepfi. Now the 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.920 metal part of the ram is preserved at that museum, 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.760 the National Maritime Museum in Haifa, but Stephi went on 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:46.720 to publish important work on the Athlete Ram, which led 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:50.200 him to conclude that these rams and the ships that 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:54.280 bore them were carefully engineered to distribute the force of 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.880 an impact into the sturdy bottom of the ship's hull, 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:01.040 so that the ship itself could absorbed the shock of 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:05.640 a ramming impact in battle without damaging itself in the process. 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.040 There is a quote from Stephie given in this book. 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.880 That is quote, the entire bottom of the ship was 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:16.000 essentially the weapon, so not just the bronze ram, but 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.360 you should think of the ship itself as the weapon. 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:23.040 Another place, another source I was reading in the last 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:27.480 episode compared the try Rems hull to an arrow. It's 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:31.200 designed to hit and absorb the shock and deliver that 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:32.319 punch at its tip. 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:36.680 Yeah, listeners should definitely look up images of this ram 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:40.000 and tr rams in general, because I think one of 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.920 the most fetching things about them is that there is 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:47.640 this synthesis of elegance and design. Like it is, it's 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:51.840 a beautiful looking artifact, but its function is clear, like 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:54.560 its function above everything else. That if you were to 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:57.760 compare it to something, you might compare it to like 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:01.440 a can opener, but a very elegant can opener, you know, 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:03.440 with some decorative flourishes. 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:06.439 Yeah, that's right. But I want to get more into 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.920 the design of the bronze part itself in just a minute. 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.520 But first I want to focus on the way the 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:17.760 ram fits into the battle tactics. So, as we talked 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:21.040 about last time, there is a delicate balance in play 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:23.800 with the idea of ramming. It seems kind of an 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.400 oxymoron almost, you know, the ramming and delicacy, but there 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:30.439 is actually there's a sweet spot you need to hit 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.200 when you are designing a ship to ram and carrying 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.040 out a ramming maneuver. And that balance that you need 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:39.319 to strike is being able to ram an enemy boat 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:42.000 and crack its hull, causing it to take on water 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:47.360 without damaging your own warship through impact stress and without 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.160 punching a hole through the enemy's hull and getting your 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.960 ram stuck, which was also bad for the attacking ship 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.840 because getting stuck means you are immobilized and vulnerable to 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.640 being hit on the on the broadside yourself. And this 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.120 ties into something we talked about in the last episode 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:09.320 that ramming speed was not necessarily top speed for these 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.679 galleys because ramming another ship at maximum speed was dangerous 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:17.400 to the attacking ship for the previously mentioned reasons. Instead, 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:20.280 you wanted to hit another ship with your prow on 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:24.720 their broadside within an acceptable angle of attack at just 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.360 the right speed. And to illustrate the forces in play 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:33.200 with combat based on ramming stepfi, the archaeologist used the 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:35.800 analogy of trying to knock down a brick wall with 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.240 a wheeled vehicle. So he said, you know, if you 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:41.079 drive a motorcycle into a brick wall at one hundred 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.800 kilometers per hour, you might knock down the bricks, but 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.960 the motorcycle itself is going to be destroyed in the process. 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:51.920 But if you are driving an eighteen wheeler loaded with 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:56.320 heavy cargo into a brick wall, you can limit the 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:59.920 risk to yourself because you only need a relatively low 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.600 speed with a vehicle that heavy. The example given is 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:05.920 like an eighteen wheeler full of cargo going at ten 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:09.560 kilometers per hour. You can knock the wall down and 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.439 maybe not damage your own truck too much in the process. 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.600 And of course, the reason the larger vehicle can knock 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:18.960 down the wall at a lower speed is that the 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.320 greater mass of the truck results in greater kinetic energy 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.640 and that's converted into force upon impact. So there was 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:29.640 a tradeoff with these warships. A heavier ship could do 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:33.320 more damage with a ramming attack at lower speeds. And 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.200 I remember last time, one of the books I was 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:39.000 reading had an estimate of a required ramming speed only 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.760 around two to four knots, depending on various factors like 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.000 the angle of attack, and that's between three point seven 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.600 and seven point five kilometers per hour, so it didn't 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.240 have to be going amazingly fast. But on the other hand, 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.400 a heavier ship was harder to maneuver, and so it's 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.240 harder to get behind the enemy, get to where you 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:01.840 need to be, and to outflank the enemy in terms 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:05.520 of the ramming approach. So there was an impetus to 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:08.120 make the ship lighter and more nimble so that it 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.680 could maneuver better in battle, but also heavier so that 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:15.920 it could deliver these attacks at lower speed. Now, if 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.000 we're thinking about a trirem or any ancient war glley 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:23.280 that executes a ramming maneuver as an arrow, of course, 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:25.520 a very important thing about an arrow is the arrow 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:29.480 head sort of the war head that delivers the force 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:32.960 of the attack. On one hand, if you want to 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:37.240 maximize your damage causing potential, you could have a ram 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.400 shaped like a tusk or a tooth, something that narrows 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.280 down to a point at its tip, and that of 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:47.640 course really concentrates your impact force over the smallest surface 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:50.880 area and would be really good at punching a hole 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.440 in enemy vessels. You would make sure that when you 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:55.959 hit them it punches through and they take on water. 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:59.480 But again that comes at risk to the attacking vessel. 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:03.000 Once again, with a spike, you're likely to punch through 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:05.640 and then get stuck, which means there is a good 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:09.920 chance you're dead as well. So the popular Greek design 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:13.520 for a bronze ram sheath was actually not a spike, 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:19.040 but it was shaped with three narrow horizontal fins in 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:23.439 a kind of rectangular box shape, and this shape delivered 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:26.880 the ship's punch in a relatively small surface area. A. 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.040 Delgado says that it's less than half of a square meter, 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:35.199 and it was especially effective at cracking the enemy ship's 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:39.120 planks and making it take on water without stabbing through. 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.040 So you have to think of this as like they're 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.839 kind of trying to design the perfect bronze hammer. They 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:50.920 want a surface texture that will deliver force, well, that 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:55.000 will really really concentrate that impact force and damage the 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:58.800 enemy hull but never get stuck. And for some reason, 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:02.360 this three find design seemed to work very well, so 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:04.240 they stuck with it for hundreds of years. 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.680 Yeah. Like I say, one can imagine a combination of 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.480 field experience at sea in battle and also perhaps some 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.199 harbor experiments as well, Like let's try different designs out, 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:20.360 Let's see which ones are going to succeed, which ones 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:22.160 can punch that hole without goodness stuck. 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:24.800 Yeah, it would be fascinating if we could learn the 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:28.520 design process, like you know what led to this particular 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:40.920 design that was used over and over Now There's been 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:44.160 some disagreement over the years about how this bronze weapon 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.920 was made. The fact that it is a single piece 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:51.680 of cast bronze, of course, is very important that gives 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.000 it strength for battle. You can imagine if it were 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:57.000 like two halves riveted together or something, it would be 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.880 much more likely to split and fail during an impact. 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:04.960 According to the National Maritime Museum, the idea was once 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:08.560 that it was made using the sand casting method with 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:12.000 a hinged mold, but more recently scholars think that it 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.400 was likely made using the lost wax method, which is 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:19.920 itself a fascinating process that we could talk about at length. Sometimes. 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.320 It's probably come up on the podcast before years ago, 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.000 but anyway, it's worth looking up videos of how the 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:30.720 lost wax method works. It's very interesting. Especially I found 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.880 a cool video of like a small sort of statuette 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:37.680 of a humanoid figure being made with a lost wax method. 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.360 In short, it involves making a wax replica of the 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:46.480 final metal item you want, and then tightly encasing that 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.760 within plaster or clay with these channels running out of 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:53.920 the mold, and then you pour the molten bronze into it. 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:57.480 The wax melts and escapes into voids created for the process, 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:01.160 and so the bronze replaces the wax mold. 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:04.960 I recall us talking about this a bit in our episode. 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:09.040 This is from years back on Tallos, the giant Greek automaton, 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:12.800 because I believe in some tellings there's this idea that 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:16.720 he has this kind of iCore in his body, and 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:19.240 there are a lot of comparisons to be made between 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:24.480 this supposed you know, non blood substance running through this 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:29.880 automaton and this method of casting something. 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:33.960 Oh, very interesting. It's funny that actually connects to so 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:36.400 I mentioned this this video I was watching of making 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:39.480 a little bronze statuette with the lost wax method. So 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:42.680 when they put these channels in that are you know, 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:45.480 the bronze is poured through and the and the wax 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.880 escapes through. It ends up looking like all these sort 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:53.920 of veins and pipes running out of the figure's flesh. 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:56.920 You know, you're making a bronze aphrodite or whatever, and 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.000 it's just got these like pipes coming out of its body. 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:05.040 So it looks a very steampunk and suggests some kind 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:09.680 of horrific automaton. But coming back to the athletic ram. 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:12.520 Of course, a good question is when and where does 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:15.520 this come from. We have a few data points here. 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:19.640 Delgado cites a date range between two four and one 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:23.320 sixty four BCE, and this is based mostly on a 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:27.320 collection of symbols encoded on the bronze ram. So it 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:31.480 has these designs on its symbols on the surface. What 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:34.920 would these be, Well, according to the National Maritime Museum, 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.359 they are first of all Poseidon's trident. Of course, Poseidon 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.840 was the Greek god of the sea and of storms 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:46.159 and earthquakes, and his trident was commonly used as a 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:49.639 metonym for his powers. Like the trident is Poseidon's power 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.600 that has some relationship to the power of the sea 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:55.879 or power over the sea. So you can see why 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.560 sailors might include that on a vessel for a kind 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:02.560 of magical protection. Second symbol is a helmet with a 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.359 star overhead, sort of a it's sort of a half 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.160 egg shape of a helmet. It's got a star over 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:10.399 the top of it. Rob I've got a close up 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:13.119 of this for you to see. Here. This helmet is 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:18.439 apparently a symbol of the Dioscuri, meaning the sons of Zeus. 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:22.480 These are the twins Castor and Pollux, who were commonly 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:26.720 said to wield power over storms at sea and to 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:30.320 give hope to shipwrecked seamen. There's some version of the 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:33.439 story where they have these like special horses given to 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.359 them by Poseidon that gallop over the waves and allow 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:38.399 them to rescue sailors lost at sea. 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:40.880 Yeah. In Latin, these are the genini. 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.879 A third symbol is an eagle's head, and the fourth 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:47.800 symbol is the Cadusius. This is the staff of the 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:50.639 god Hermes, which has many meanings. We could probably come 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:52.439 back and have we ever done an episode on the 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:53.320 Cadusius before. 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:56.400 I don't think we have, But yeah, there's a number 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:57.679 of rich traditions behind it. 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:02.159 Yeah, it's it is a mini thing. But one of 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:04.280 the meanings of it was that it was regarded as 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:09.040 sort of the wand of the herald and symbolized diplomatic protections. 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.119 On your nautical ram. 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:14.320 I don't know exactly the best way to interpret it here, 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:17.200 but it might be seen as a kind of general apotropaic, 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.560 you know, a general protective symbol. But I don't know, 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:24.080 maybe there's something more specific at work anyway. According to 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:28.560 the National Maritime Museum, this collection of particular symbols means 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:33.240 the ram likely originated on the island of Cyprus between 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:37.400 the dates previously given, because the same collection of symbols 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.639 appears on coins minted in Cyprus during this period. So 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.680 if this is correct, the galley probably would have belonged 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:48.679 to the fleet of either Ptolemy the fifth Epiphanes or 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:54.960 Ptolemy the sixth Philometer. However, they also mentioned that radiocarbon 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:58.240 dating of the wood that was initially embedded inside the 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:01.880 bronze ram gave an estimate of four hundred BCE plus 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:04.879 or minus one hundred and thirty years, So the estimate 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:07.960 based the radio carbon estimate based on the wood is 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.679 a little bit older than the estimate based on the symbols. 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:13.360 By the way, if you're keeping score with your Ptolemy's 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:18.119 that would be Ptolemy the Glorious and Ptolemy Lover of 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:18.520 his Mother. 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.280 These would both be coming after the guy who made 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:24.119 the really big ship. But correct, we're coming back to 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:26.600 that lover of his father. Yeah. 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:26.880 Now. 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.920 Multiple sources have also suggested that this scalley was not 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:33.960 a trirem. Maybe it was, but some say it was 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:38.240 more likely a four banked galley. Called a tetraris or 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:44.480 a quadra reem. But then Delgado also cites another archaeologist, 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:49.400 a scholar named William Murray into quote Delgado here quote 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:52.439 analyzing the symbols and pondering how the ship came to 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:55.920 be lost near Athlete. Murray feels it was a smaller 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:59.480 warship based on the Levantine coast that may have been 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:03.080 lost in a storm or during an unrecorded naval skirmish 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:07.840 during Dynastics struggles for control of Phoenicia. But ultimately we're 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:11.040 probably never going to know with certainty where and when 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:14.040 exactly this ram came from or how the ship that 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:17.600 it belonged to was destroyed. But we've got some good 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:18.359 guesses here. 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:23.160 Yeah. In one of the books that I was sourcing 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:26.199 for this series, Lionel case Ses the Ancient Mariners, he 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:29.560 gets into discussing this ram a bit and using it 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.159 to talk about using it as a data point to 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:38.360 try and understand exactly what naval combat consisted of in 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:42.520 like the age immediately following the dominance of the Trirem, 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:44.840 which we'll be getting into here in a bit. But 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:46.359 I guess one thing to keep in mind about all this, 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:47.720 and I guess this. I mean, this is true of 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:52.040 any archaeological endeavor, but they're a finite number of data points, 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:55.760 and a lot of the scholarship it seems to be 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:58.280 about like connecting all of those lines and trying to 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:01.240 sort of triangulate a problem truth based on it. 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:03.639 But of course, Rob you mentioned that there was an 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:07.400 age after the age of trirem dominance, when there when 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:11.440 the ships just kept getting more and more extra Yeah. 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:14.040 Yeah, this is really fascinating. You're going to see the 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:19.240 trirem dominance last for a while, but then the designs 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:21.919 begin to get bigger, and this is going to of 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:25.119 course change the way combat occurs at sea and the 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:29.320 way military endeavors in general are carried out in the Mediterranean. 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:35.200 So basically we're looking at some changes beginning to take 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:38.000 hold in the fourth century BCE. This would be the 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:43.040 development of fours, fives, and polyrems. So Brian Fagan and 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:47.280 Boris Rhankoff in their section on these ships in the 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:50.520 seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World, they point to 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:53.879 Syracuse in Sicily as being the main place where this 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:58.320 innovation is chiefly sighted. The innovation here does not entail 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:01.840 the addition of a fourth and fifth level to a galley. 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:04.040 Though we talked previously about how it's like you start 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:06.679 with one level and then the next evolution is you 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:09.200 do two levels and then you got three levels. Well 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:12.480 we're not doing that anymore at this point, no fourth 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:18.000 and fifth levels. Historians have worked this out over time. Instead, 0:23:18.080 --> 0:23:21.480 what it constitutes is more men to each or. 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:27.719 So you could still add additional rows of oarsmen, but 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:31.240 they're just not each getting their own or right. 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:34.760 And to be clear, this was not necessarily just a 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:38.199 matter of cramming in extra guys. As we discussed, the 0:23:38.200 --> 0:23:43.000 tryream was already crammed essentially all human engine Lionel case 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:45.800 and in the ancient Mariners does state that the initial 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:48.720 Greek updates would have still been the same size as 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:52.760 tryrems with an extra rower to each or on the 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:57.000 upper levels. So there's not much you could do basically 0:23:57.040 --> 0:23:59.080