WEBVTT - From the Vault: Ancient Oars on the Wine-Dark Sea, Part 3 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:07.800 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:12.280 name is Robert Lamb. We were off yesterday for the holiday, 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:15.280 so today's episode is another vault episode. This is going 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.000 to be part three of our series from last year, 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.200 Ancient Oars on the Wine Dark Sea. It originally published 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.200 eight twenty seven, twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in. 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:31.560 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:39.560 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:41.000 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.400 And I am Joe McCormick. And we're back with part 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.279 three of our series on the ore powered galleys of 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.440 the ancient world. Now, if you haven't heard parts one 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.000 and two yet, you should go back check those out first, 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.480 but for a brief recap. In the previous episodes, we 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.680 talked about the difference between paddling with a paddle and 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.040 with an ore. And ore is of course resting on 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.840 or connected to part of the boat itself, and you 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.960 typically face backwards when you row. We talked about archaeological 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:15.520 evidence of Mesolithic wooden paddles found in Northern Europe. We 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:19.080 talked about some of the pressures leading to the development 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:23.200 of different power mechanisms for ancient boats, wind powered sails 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:27.280 versus human powered ores. We discussed the different designs of 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:31.440 war galleys in the ancient Mediterranean and the considerations that 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:36.080 led to increasing concentration of rowers and ores put more 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:40.920 ores in, starting with single level galleys, the penticonter and 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:45.280 its evolving forms, and eventually the famous Trirem, which had 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:49.200 three levels of oarsmen and was the dominant weapon of 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:53.000 the navies of the Mediterranean Empires for hundreds of years. 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.880 We also talked about experimental modern attempts to create replicas 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:02.200 of ancient Greek trirems, such as the Olympias project built 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.600 in the nineteen eighties, and we talked about the primary 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:09.800 battle tactics of the Trirem, the main weapon of which 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.960 was the ram used for ramming and cracking the hull 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.360 of the opposing ships. Oh and of course, back in 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:19.880 part one, we talked about Ptolemy, the fourth of Egypt's 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:23.639 gigantic ancient war boat, which we are going to come 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:24.639 back to today. 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:26.920 Yeah, we'll come back to that one again and sort 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:30.040 of revisit it with perhaps a little more context. 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:32.840 Now, there's something I mentioned last time that I wanted 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.119 to come back to at the top of today's episode, 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:41.000 which is the idea of the physical remains of rams 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:45.440 from these ancient warships. So we talked about how the 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:50.080 physical archaeological evidence for ancient war galleys is often pretty sparse, 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:54.519 and so modern reconstructions have mostly had to go off 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:59.160 of descriptions in ancient texts and artistic representations that you 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:03.359 might find on or something. So these ships were made 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:06.960 out of wood, and they, according to some sources we 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.440 talked about last time, they generally did not sink when 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:13.120 damaged in battle. They might kind of dip in the 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:16.680 water and become immobilized and they could be towed away afterwards, 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:21.040 or if they did sink, the wooden parts mostly decomposed 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:21.680 over time. 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:24.280 Yeah. Yeah, And I was reading a little bit more 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:28.480 about this, this issue of positive buoyancy in try rems. 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:32.919 I was reading a bit by Mark C. Davies really 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:34.280 long titled to this, but I guess I have to 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.800 read the whole an investigation into the absence of ancient 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.080 Greek tryrems in the archaeological record and a study of 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:44.160 the battlefield deposition at the site of the Battle of 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:48.320 Agati's off the Agatti Islands to determine whether this example 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.880 could direct future exploration for evidence of ancient Greek sea battles. 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:53.640 M that's tight. 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:56.240 Yeah, I would have cut it if they'd just thrown 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:59.040 a colon in there. Anyway, This was a twenty twenty 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:03.600 one publication by Honor Frost Foundation. Anyway, the author here 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:07.680 is ultimately making the case that some tryrems may have 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.839 actually sunk, and we should look for more particular environments 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:14.160 where some of the wreckage might have survived the sinking. 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.680 But he also outlines the predominant theory as well, that 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:21.560 we already touched on the trirems had positive buoyancy, particularly 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:24.320 during battle, because if you had anything heavy in there, 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:27.400 you had equipment or ballast, you'd throw that out and 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:30.560 then when defeated, they would not have been sunk like 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:32.560 we've been saying, but they would have been left flooded 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:36.240 and floundering. Thus they again, they tended to be dragged 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.839 back to port. They tended to be harvested for wood. 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.320 But Davies, for his part, stresses that there is disagreement 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.640 about how much equipment and or ballast a tryream would carry, 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:48.560 so it's not something we can be one hundred percent 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:52.960 certain of so there remains at least some scholarly disagreement 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:54.280 and discussion on this matter. 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:59.560 Right. But for whatever reason, the wooden components of these 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:03.680 boats have rarely been preserved into the modern archaeological record. 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:07.520 Maybe that's due to positive buoyancy, maybe that's due to 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:10.680 decomposition in the water, or maybe we just failed to 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.839 find whatever's there. But for whatever reason, the wooden components 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.839 are often lost. But remember that the ram of the 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:23.800 ancient trirem was usually capped with a solid metal sheath 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.760 made of bronze, and we do have a number of 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:31.279 these bronze rams in archaeological collections today. So I was 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:35.440 reading about one particular bronze ram from the ancient world 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:39.640 in a source in a book called War at Sea, 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:43.480 A Shipwrecked History from Antiquity to the Cold War, by 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:48.599 James P. Delgado, Oxford University Press, twenty nineteen. And the 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:52.040 section of this book I was reading concerns a ram 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:57.040 called the Athlete ram. This is a bronze ram filled 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:01.799 with wooden timbers, which was discovered by an archaeologist named 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:05.800 Yehoshua Ramone in nineteen eighty while he was snorkeling off 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:08.599 the coast of a town called Athlet, which is near 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:12.760 the Israeli city of Haifa. Apparently, nothing else of real 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.599 archaeological significance was found in the bay, so it wasn't 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.400 part of a broader shipwreck that anybody found. We just 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.479 have the broken off ram with the bronze sheath on 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:26.919 the outside and a wooden protrusion from the prow of 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.560 the boat inside. After being recovered from the sea, this 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.679 object was subject to extensive study, so a few things 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.680 we know about it. It is thought, though this is 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.760 not certain, that the ancient warship it belonged to was 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.360 wrecked and then drifted close to the shore, and then 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.320 was broken apart and disintegrated somehow. They don't say how, 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.240 but maybe it was rocked in the waves or hit 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.920 against the rocks or something, but somehow it came apart. 0:06:56.320 --> 0:07:00.359 So the ram, with its heavy metal sheath, sank to 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:03.080 the ocean floor, and there it was preserved, and the 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.279 rest of the boat, the wooden elements, disintegrated over time. 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:11.800 The ram by itself, according to Delgado, weighs about five 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:16.320 hundred kilograms or about eleven hundred pounds, and the bronze 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:19.160 on it is an alloy of about ninety percent copper 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.480 and ten percent ten Now I found some slightly different 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:25.280 figures about the weight. I was reading about it also 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:29.120 at the website of the National Maritime Museum in Haifa, 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:32.360 where the object is kept, and they say about its 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:35.160 weight that the bronze casting is four hundred and sixty 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:39.080 five kilograms, and then together with the wood inside when 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:42.560 it was discovered, it was six hundred kilograms. That's about 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.520 a third of the weight of a typical mid sized car. 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:51.680 It originally had sixteen timbers from the ship's frame protruding 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:55.880 into the cast bronze fitting, and those timbers were extracted 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.920 by an American nautical archaeologist and named J. Richard Steffi. 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.000 Now the metal part of the ram is preserved at 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:08.160 that museum, the National Maritime Museum in Haifa. But Stephi 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:10.960 went on to publish important work on the Athlete Ram, 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:14.000 which led him to conclude that these rams and the 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:18.480 ships that bore them were carefully engineered to distribute the 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.800 force of an impact into the sturdy bottom of the 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:25.240 ship's hull, so that the ship itself could absorb the 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:29.440 shock of a ramming impact in battle without damaging itself 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:33.120 in the process. There is a quote from Stephie given 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.520 in this book. That is quote, the entire bottom of 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:39.880 the ship was essentially the weapon, so not just the 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.520 bronze Ram, but you should think of the ship itself 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:47.080 as the weapon. Another place, another source I was reading 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:51.800 in the last episode compared the Trirem's hull to an arrow. 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:55.600 It's designed to hit and absorb the shock and deliver 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:57.040 that punch at its tip. 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:01.400 Yeah, listeners should definitely look up images of this ram 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:04.679 and tr rams in general, because I think one of 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:07.640 the most fetching things about them is that there is 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:12.320 this synthesis of elegance and design. Like it is, it's 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:16.560 a beautiful looking artifact, but its function is clear, like 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.280 it's function above everything else. That if you were to 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.480 compare it to something, you might compare it to like 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:26.160 a can opener, but a very elegant can opener, you know, 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:28.160 with some decorative flourishes. 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.160 Yeah, that's right. But I want to get more into 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.640 the design of the bronze part itself in just a minute. 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.240 But first I want to focus on the way the 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:42.480 ram fits into the battle tactics. So, as we talked 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:45.760 about last time, there is a delicate balance in play 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:48.520 with the idea of ramming. It seems kind of an 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:52.120 oxymoron almost, you know, the ramming and delicacy, but there 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:55.160 is actually there's a sweet spot you need to hit 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:57.920 when you are designing a ship to ram and carrying 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.280 out a ramming maneuver talllets that you need to strike 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:04.640 is being able to ram an enemy boat and crack 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.400 its hull causing it to take on water without damaging 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:12.920 your own warship through impact stress and without punching a 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.920 hole through the enemy's hull and getting your ram stuck, 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.480 which was also bad for the attacking ship because getting 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:24.080 stuck means you are immobilized and vulnerable to being hit 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:28.320 on the broadside yourself. And this ties into something we 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:31.560 talked about in the last episode that ramming speed was 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:35.720 not necessarily top speed for these galleys because ramming another 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.480 ship at maximum speed was dangerous to the attacking ship 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.839 for the previously mentioned reasons. Instead, you wanted to hit 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:47.120 another ship with your prow on their broadside within an 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:51.160 acceptable angle of attack, at just the right speed, and 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:54.880 to illustrate the forces in play with combat based on 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:58.920 ramming STEPI, the archaeologist used the analogy of trying to 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.200 knock down a brick wall with a wheeled vehicle. So 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:04.480 he said, you know, if you drive a motorcycle into 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.000 a brick wall at one hundred kilometers per hour, you 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:10.800 might knock down the bricks, but the motorcycle itself is 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.200 going to be destroyed in the process. But if you 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.840 are driving an eighteen wheeler loaded with heavy cargo into 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:22.199 a brick wall, you can limit the risk to yourself 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.800 because you only need a relatively low speed with a 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.880 vehicle that heavy. The example given is like an eighteen 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.840 wheeler full of cargo going at ten kilometers per hour. 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.040 You can knock the wall down and maybe not damage 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.160 your own truck too much in the process. And of course, 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.080 the reason that a larger vehicle can knock down the 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:44.320 wall at a lower speed is that the greater mass 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.480 of the truck results in greater kinetic energy and that's 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.800 converted into force upon impact. So there was a trade 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.680 off with these warships. A heavier ship could do more 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:58.160 damage with a ramming attack at lower speeds. And I 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.000 remember last time, one of the books I was reading 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:04.040 had an estimate of a required ramming speed only around 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:07.640 two to four knots, depending on various factors like the 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.800 angle of attack, and that's between three point seven and 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:13.480 seven point five kilometers per hour, so it didn't have 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.960 to be going amazingly fast. But on the other hand, 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.120 a heavier ship was harder to maneuver, and so it's 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:22.960 harder to get behind the enemy, get to where you 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.600 need to be, and to outflank the enemy in terms 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:30.240 of the ramming approach. So there was an impetus to 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.840 make the ship lighter and more nimble so that it 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:36.400 could maneuver better in battle, but also heavier so that 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:40.640 it could deliver these attacks at lower speed. Now, if 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:43.640 we're thinking about a trireme or any ancient war alley 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.960 that executes a ramming maneuver as an arrow, of course, 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:50.240 a very important thing about an arrow is the arrow 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:54.240 head sort of the war head that delivers the force 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.640 of the attack. On one hand, if you want to 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.959 maximize your damage causing potential, you could have a ram 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:05.120 shaped like a tusk or a tooth, something that narrows 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:08.000 down to a point at its tip, and that of 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:12.360 course really concentrates your impact force over the smallest surface 0:13:12.400 --> 0:13:15.600 area and would be really good at punching a hole 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:18.160 in enemy vessels. You would make sure that when you 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:20.680 hit them it punches through and they take on water, 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:24.200 but again that comes at risk to the attacking vessel. 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.720 Once again, with a spike, you're likely to punch through 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:30.360 and then get stuck, which means there is a good 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:34.640 chance you're dead as well. So the popular Greek design 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.240 for a bronze ram sheath was actually not a spike, 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:43.760 but it was shaped with three narrow horizontal fins in 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:48.120 a kind of rectangular box shape, and this shape delivered 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.600 the ship's punch in a relatively small surface area. A 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:54.760 Delgado says that it's less than half of a square meter, 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:59.840 and it was especially effective at cracking the enemy ship's 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:03.839 pl and making it take on water without stabbing through. 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:06.760 So you have to think of this as like they're 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:10.559 kind of trying to design the perfect bronze hammer. They 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:15.600 want a surface texture that will deliver force well, that 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.680 will really really concentrate that impact force and damage the 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:23.520 enemy hull, but never get stuck. And for some reason, 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.040 this three finned design seemed to work very well, so 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:29.160 they stuck with it for hundreds of years. 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:33.400 Yeah, Like I say, one can imagine a combination of 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:38.120 field experience at sea in battle, and also perhaps some 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.200 harbor experiments as well. Let's try different designs out. Let's 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.240 see which ones are going to succeed, which ones can 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:46.840 punch that hole without getness stuck. 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:49.520 Yeah, it would be fascinating if we could learn the 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:53.239 design process, like you know, what led to this particular 0:14:53.280 --> 0:15:05.640 design that was used over and over. Now, there's been 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.880 some disagreement over the years about how this bronze weapon 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:12.640 was made. The fact that it is a single piece 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:16.360 of cast bronze, of course, is very important. That gives 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:18.720 it strength for battle. You can imagine if it were 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.680 like two halves riveted together or something, it would be 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.000 much more likely to split and fail during an impact. 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:29.640 According to the National Maritime Museum, the idea was once 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:33.280 that it was made using the sand casting method with 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:36.720 a hinged mold, but more recently scholars think that it 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:40.080 was likely made using the lost wax method, which is 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.560 itself a fascinating process that we could talk about at length. 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:47.080 Sometimes it's probably come up on the podcast before years ago, 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:50.720 but anyway, it's worth looking up videos of how the 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:55.480 lost wax method works. It's very interesting. Especially I found 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.600 a cool video of like a small sort of statuette 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.360 of a humanoid figure being made with a lost wax method. 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:07.040 In short, it involves making a wax replica of the 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:11.200 final metal item you want and then tightly encasing that 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:15.480 within plaster or clay with these channels running out of 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.640 the mold, and then you pour the molten bronze into it. 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:22.200 The wax melts and escapes into voids created for the process, 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:25.880 and so the bronze replaces the wax mold. 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:29.680 I recall us talking about this a bit in our episode. 0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:33.760 This is from years back on Tallos, the giant Greek automaton, 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.520 because I believe in some tellings there's this idea that 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:41.400 he has this kind of iCore in his body, and 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.000 there are a lot of comparisons to be made between 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:49.200 this supposed you know, non blood substance running through this 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:54.240 automaton and this method of casting something. 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:58.680 Oh, very interesting. It's funny that actually connects to So 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.840 I mentioned this video watching of making a little bronze 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.120 statuette with the lost wax method. So when they put 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.040 these channels in that are you know, the bronze is 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.760 poured through and the and the wax escapes through. It 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.400 ends up looking like all these sort of veins and 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:19.640 pipes running out of the figure's flesh. You know, you're 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:22.200 making a bronze aphrodite or whatever, and it's just got 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:26.439 these like pipes coming out of its body. So it 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:31.320 looks a very steampunk and suggests some kind of horrific automaton. 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.080 But coming back to the athlete ram, of course, a 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:38.080 good question is when and where does this come from. 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.639 We have a few data points here. Delgado sites a 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:45.600 date range between two oh four and one sixty four BCE, 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.760 and this is based mostly on a collection of symbols 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:52.920 encoded on the bronze ram. So it has these these 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:57.440 designs on its symbols on the surface. What would these be, Well, 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.560 according to the National Maritime Museum, they are first of 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:04.520 all Poseidon's trident. Of course, Poseidon was the Greek god 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:08.200 of the sea and of storms and earthquakes, and his 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:12.320 trident was commonly used as a metonym for his powers. 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:16.119 Like the trident is Poseidon's power that has some relationship 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:19.560 to the power of the sea or power over the sea, 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.320 so you can see why sailors might include that on 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:25.560 a vessel for a kind of magical protection. Second symbol 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:29.600 is a helmet with a star overhead. It's sort of 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.359 a half egg shape of a helmet. It's got a 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:34.600 star over the top of it. Rob, I've got a 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.080 close up of this for you to see. Here. This 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:42.000 helmet is apparently a symbol of the Dioscuri, meaning the 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:46.080 sons of Zeus. These are the twins Castor and Pollux, 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:49.840 who were commonly said to wield power over storms at 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:54.240 sea and to give hope to shipwrecked seamen. There's some 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:57.720 version of the story where they have these special horses 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.800 given to them by Poseidon the gallop the waves and 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:03.000 allow them to rescue sailors lost at sea. 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:05.600 Yeah. In Latin, these are the Genini. 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:09.600 A third symbol is an eagle's head, and the fourth 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:12.520 symbol is the Cadusius. This is the staff of the 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.359 god Hermes, which has many meanings. We could probably come 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:17.159 back and have we ever done an episode on the 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:18.040 Cadusius before. 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:21.120 I don't think we have, But yeah, there's a number 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:22.359 of rich traditions behind it. 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:26.879 Yeah, it is a mini meaning thing, but one of 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:29.000 the meanings of it was that it was regarded as 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:33.720 sort of the wand of the herald and symbolized diplomatic protections. 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:35.760 On your nautical ram. 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:39.040 I don't know exactly the best way to interpret it here, 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:41.960 but it might be seen as a kind of general apotropaic, 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.280 you know, a general protective symbol. But I don't know, 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.800 maybe there's something more specific at work anyway. According to 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:53.280 the National Maritime Museum, this collection of particular symbols means 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:57.960 the ram likely originated on the island of Cyprus between 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:02.119 the dates previously given, because the same collection of symbols 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.359 appears on coins minted in Cyprus during this period. So 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.400 if this is correct, the galley probably would have belonged 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.399 to the fleet of either Ptolemy the fifth Epiphanes or 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:19.680 Ptolemy the sixth Philometer. However, they also mentioned that radiocarbon 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:22.960 dating of the wood that was initially embedded inside the 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:26.639 bronze ram gave an estimate of four hundred BCE plus 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:29.600 or minus one hundred and thirty years, So the estimate 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.720 based the radiocarbon estimate based on the wood is a 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.359 little bit older than the estimate based on the symbols. 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.040 By the way, if you're keeping score with your Ptolemies, 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:42.840 that would be Ptolemy the Glorious and Ptolemy lover of 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:43.240 his mother. 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.040 These would both be coming after the guy who made 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.919 the really big ship. Correct, We're coming back to that 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:53.040 lover of his father. Yeah. Now, multiple sources have also 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:57.480 suggested that this galley was not a trirem. Maybe it was, 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.479 but some say it was more likely a four banked 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:05.640 galley called a tetraris or a quadra reem. But then 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:10.920 Delgado also cites another archaeologist, a scholar named William Murray 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:16.200 into quote Delgado here quote analyzing the symbols and pondering 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.080 how the ship came to be lost near Athlete. Murray 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:22.679 feels it was a smaller warship based on the Levantine 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:25.680 coast that may have been lost in a storm or 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:30.440 during an unrecorded naval skirmish during Dynastics struggles for control 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.760 of Phoenicia. But ultimately, we're probably never going to know 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:37.600 with certainty where and when exactly this ram came from 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.359 or how the ship that it belonged to was destroyed. 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:43.040 But we've got some good guesses here. 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.880 Yeah. In one of the books that I was sourcing 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:50.919 for this series, Lionel case Ses the Ancient Mariners, he 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:54.280 gets into discussing this ram a bit and using it 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.879 to talk about using it as a data point to 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:03.040 try and understand exactly what naval combat consisted of in 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:07.240 like the age immediately following the dominance of the Trirem, 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:09.520 which we'll be getting into here in a bit. But 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:11.040 I guess one thing to keep in mind about all this, 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:12.440 and I guess this. I mean, this is true of 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:16.760 any archaeological endeavor, but they're a finite number of data points, 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:20.480 and a lot of the scholarship it seems to be 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:22.960 about like connecting all of those lines and trying to 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:25.960 sort of triangulate a probable truth based on it. 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:28.359 But of course, Rob, you mentioned that there was an 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:32.120 age after the age of Trirem dominance when there when 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:35.520 the ships just kept getting more and more extra. 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:38.680 Yeah, yeah, this is really fascinating. You're going to see 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:43.200 the Trirem dominance last for a while, but then the 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:46.560 designs begin to get bigger, and this is going to 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:49.679 of course change the way combat occurs at sea and 0:22:49.760 --> 0:22:53.199 the way military endeavors in general are carried out in 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:59.600 the Mediterranean. So basically we're looking at some changes beginning 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:02.639 to take in the fourth century BCE. This would be 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:07.639 the development of fours, fives and polyrems, so Brian Fagan 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:11.879 and Boris Rhankoff in their section on these ships in 0:23:11.920 --> 0:23:14.960 the seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World, they point 0:23:15.040 --> 0:23:18.520 to Syracuse in Sicily as being the main place where 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:22.199 this innovation is chiefly cited. The innovation here does not 0:23:22.760 --> 0:23:25.919 entail the addition of a fourth and fifth level to 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:28.399 a galley, though we talked previously about how it's like 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:31.080 you start with one level and then the next evolution 0:23:31.200 --> 0:23:33.240 is you do two levels, and then you got three levels. 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:36.840 Well we're not doing that anymore at this point, no 0:23:36.920 --> 0:23:42.720 fourth and fifth levels. Historians have worked this out over time. Instead, 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:46.199 what it constitutes is more men to each or. 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:52.399 So you could still add additional rows of oarsmen, but 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:55.960 they're just not each getting their own or right. 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:59.479 And to be clear, this was not necessarily just a 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:02.879 matter of cramming in extra guys, as we discussed, the 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:07.720