The Persian Navy and Fleet: Phoenician Triremes, Ionian Sailors, and the Defence of the Persian Gulf
In late September 480 BCE, off the island of Salamis, the Greek fleet under Themistocles attacked the Persian fleet in the narrow strait between the mainland and the island. The Persian fleet was, by any ancient standard, large. Herodotus’ number — 1,207 ships — is inflated; the modern consensus is between 500 and 800, with most scholars favouring the lower end. But the number is the wrong question. The right question is: who were these people? The answer matters because it tells us what the Persian navy actually was.
It was not, in any meaningful sense, a Persian navy. It was a federation of subject fleets: Phoenician, Egyptian, Ionian, Cypriot, Cilician, Carian, Lycian. The Phoenicians of Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Arvad contributed the largest single contingent and provided the most experienced crews. The Ionian Greeks of the coast of Asia Minor contributed a substantial number of ships — the Ionians had been the centre of Greek seamanship for a century, and the Ionian revolt of 499–494 BCE had been a major naval operation. The Cypriots, the Cilicians, the Egyptians, the Carians, the Lycians each contributed a fixed number of ships, drawn from a quota assigned to their city or kingdom. The King of Kings did not command fleets in person; he appointed senior admirals, of whom the most famous is the Greek renegade Demaratus, and the operation of the fleet was delegated.
The Achaemenid state, in other words, was a thalassocracy as well as a land empire, and the technical core of its naval power was the Phoenician maritime tradition of the eastern Mediterranean. That is the starting point of the article. The standard works in English are the relevant chapters in Pierre Briant’s From Cyrus to Alexander (2002); the older but still useful E. E. Lipiński, The Phoenicians (1996); and for the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, the essays of Steven Sidebotham on the Red Sea and the Periplus Maris Erythraei (first century CE). The wider context is in the Persian Military and Warfare survey.
The Phoenician core
The Phoenician cities of Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Arvad were the principal naval powers of the eastern Mediterranean in the Achaemenid period. Their combined fleet included some 300 to 500 triremes and other warships, and the Phoenician admirals were the most experienced in the eastern Mediterranean. The Achaemenid dockyards of Sidon, Tripoli, and the Phoenician coast produced the triremes, quadriremes, and penteremes of the imperial fleet, and the Phoenician merchant marine supported the imperial fleet with a network of bases, harbours, and supply depots that stretched from the coast of Lebanon to the western Mediterranean.
The Achaemenid policy toward the Phoenician cities was a commercial bargain: the Phoenicians paid tribute in ships and crews; the Achaemenid king guaranteed the Phoenician trade with the inland empire and the protection of the Phoenician cities from the Greek and Roman naval rivals. The bargain worked well for nearly two centuries. It broke down in the 340s BCE, when the last great Achaemenid king, Artaxerxes III, reconquered Egypt with a Phoenician fleet and then attempted to reduce the Phoenician autonomy; the revolt of Sidon in 351 BCE, suppressed with notable brutality, was the consequence. By the time of Alexander’s invasion, the Phoenician cities were still loyal to the empire in form but were actively looking for an exit. The surrender of the Phoenician fleet to Alexander after Issus in 333 BCE, reported by Arrian and Quintus Curtius, was the moment when the Achaemenid naval policy collapsed.
The Ionian sailors
The Ionian Greeks of the coast of Asia Minor contributed a substantial part of the Achaemenid fleet. The Ionian revolt of 499–494 BCE, in which the Greek cities of Ionia attempted to throw off the Persian yoke, was a major event in the history of the Persian navy; the suppression of the revolt by the joint land and sea forces of the Persian empire was a major operation in its own right. The Persian fleet that suppressed the revolt, under the command of the Median general Mardonius and the Ionian Greek tyrants, included a substantial number of Phoenician, Egyptian, Cypriot, and Cilician ships. The Greek cities of the coast, after the suppression of the revolt, were required to provide a fixed number of ships to the imperial fleet as a condition of their autonomy.
The Ionian and Greek sailors, although they served the Persian crown, retained a substantial degree of autonomy in the management of their own cities. The Greek cities of Ionia, Cyprus, and the Aegean, under the Achaemenid administration, were governed by their own laws and administered by their own magistrates, and the Persian kings, in the tradition of Cyrus the Great, were careful to respect the customs of the subject peoples. The fact that the Ionian Greeks continued to serve the Persian fleet with a measure of loyalty, even after the defeats of the Greco-Persian Wars, is a measure of the success of the Achaemenid policy of accommodation.
Salamis in the technical sense
The Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE is usually read as a Greek tactical victory. The Greek triremes, manned by experienced crews, were able to use the narrow strait to ram and disable the Persian ships, and the Persian fleet suffered a decisive defeat. Herodotus gives the Greek fleet at 378 triremes; the modern consensus is in the range of 300–350. The Persian fleet was larger but was unable to deploy in the narrow strait, and the larger ships of the Phoenician and Egyptian contingents were less manoeuvrable than the Athenian and Corinthian triremes.
I think the standard reading is right on the tactical level and wrong on the strategic level. The Greek victory at Salamis did not end the Achaemenid war effort; the Achaemenid fleet continued to operate in the Aegean for nearly half a century after 480 BCE. The Persian naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean was a structural feature of the Achaemenid state, and the structural problem — the absence of a Greek navy that could replace the Phoenician fleet — did not change after 480. What changed was the political will of the Phoenician cities to risk their fleet for an empire that had just suffered a serious defeat. The collapse of the Phoenician commitment in the 330s BCE was the consequence of Salamis, not its direct result.
The Egyptian, Cypriot, and Cilician fleets
The Egyptian fleet of the Nile, although it was a substantial force, played a smaller role in the imperial navy than the Phoenician or Ionian fleets. The Egyptians contributed a small number of triremes to the Achaemenid fleet, and they provided dockyard facilities, supplies, and trained crews, but their principal naval role was in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Egyptian port of Berenice, on the western coast of the Red Sea, was an imperial naval base, and the Egyptian fleet, together with the fleets of the Arabian and Ethiopian coasts, protected the Red Sea route to the Indian Ocean.
The Cypriot fleet, based on the island of Cyprus, was a substantial part of the Achaemenid navy. The Cypriot kingdoms of Salamis, Kition, Amathus, and Paphos each contributed a fixed number of ships to the imperial fleet, and the Cypriot sailors, who were a mixture of Greek and Phoenician origin, were renowned for their seamanship. The Cypriot contingent of the Persian fleet fought at Salamis, and the episode of Onesilos, the king of Salamis who led the Cypriot revolt against Persia in 499 BCE and died fighting the Persians at the Cypriot battle of Salamis (a different battle from the Greek Salamis of 480), is one of the better-attested moments in Herodotus’ account of the revolt (V.104, V.110–115).
The Cilician fleet, based on the coast of Cilicia in southern Asia Minor, was a smaller but strategically important part of the Achaemenid navy. The Cilician fleet controlled the approaches to the Levantine coast, and the Cilician coast, with its excellent harbours and its well-watered hinterland, was a major base for the Achaemenid fleet. The Cilician city of Tarsus, in particular, was a major naval base, and the Cilician shipwrights and crews were a substantial part of the imperial fleet.
The Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean
The Achaemenid empire was not only a Mediterranean power. The Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean were all part of the imperial maritime system, and the Achaemenid government maintained fleets and bases in all three. The Persian Gulf, in particular, was a major theatre of imperial operations. The Achaemenid navy in the Persian Gulf was based at the ports of Gerrha, in eastern Arabia, and at the island of Bahrain (the Tylos of the Greek sources), and the gulf fleet protected the trade routes to India, controlled the pearl fisheries of the gulf, and projected Persian power into the Arabian interior.
The Greek admiral Nearchus, who commanded the fleet of Alexander the Great on its return from India in 325 BCE, has left a detailed account of the gulf coast. His descriptions of the ports, the harbours, and the maritime customs of the gulf are a major source for the history of the Achaemenid navy in the region. The Achaemenid government, according to the Greek sources, planned a major expedition to circumnavigate Africa under the command of Sataspes, a Persian nobleman, in the early fifth century BCE. Herodotus (IV.43) reports the expedition, and although it was eventually abandoned, the plan itself is a measure of the geographical reach of the Achaemenid state. The Egyptian port of Berenice, the Arabian ports of Leukê Kômê and Muza, and the Indian ports of Barygaza and Barbarikon were all part of the imperial maritime system.
The Parthian and Sasanian gulf
The Parthian navy, by comparison with the Achaemenid, was a much smaller force. The Parthians, who inherited the Seleucid empire in the third to second centuries BCE, did not maintain a substantial Mediterranean fleet and were unable to project naval power into the eastern Mediterranean. The Parthian government maintained a substantial flotilla in the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and it was a major naval power in the Indian Ocean trade. The Parthian navy protected the gulf trade with India and east Africa, controlled the pearl fisheries of the gulf, and projected Persian power into the Arabian interior.
The Sasanian navy was a major restoration of Persian sea power. The Sasanian government, in the third to seventh centuries CE, maintained a substantial fleet in the Persian Gulf, with bases at the ports of Rev Ardashir, on the Shatt al-Arab, and at the island of Hormuz, in the strait of Hormuz. The Sasanian fleet protected the gulf trade with India and east Africa, defended the Iranian coast against the Lakhmid and other Arab client states, and projected Persian power as far as the mouth of the Indus. The Sasanian control of the gulf trade was a cornerstone of the late antique economy, and the Sasanian silver drachm, the principal currency of the gulf trade, was a major medium of exchange across the region.
The ships of the Persian navy
The principal warship of the Achaemenid navy was the trireme, a three-banked oared vessel with a bronze ram at the prow. The trireme, which had been developed in the eastern Mediterranean in the sixth century BCE, was the standard warship of the Achaemenid navy, and the Achaemenid dockyards of Sidon, Tripoli, and the Phoenician coast produced the triremes in large numbers. The Achaemenid fleet also included smaller vessels, including the pentēkontoros, a fifty-oared vessel, and the triakontoros, a thirty-oared vessel, as well as transports and supply ships. The Achaemenid navy also included a number of quadriremes and penteremes, larger vessels that were used for transport and for the support of the triremes in battle.
The Sasanian navy included a different mix of vessels. The principal warship of the Sasanian fleet was a smaller oared vessel, based on Indian and Arab designs of the gulf. The Sasanian fleet also included transports, supply ships, and a small number of dhows, the traditional Arab sailing vessels of the gulf. The Sasanian navy, in addition, included a substantial flotilla of small craft that were used for the patrol of the gulf coast, the protection of the pearl fisheries, and the support of the army in Mesopotamia.
The Sasanian maritime vocabulary persisted in the early Islamic fleets of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, and the persistence of Iranian maritime vocabulary in medieval Arabic is one of the markers of this continuity.
What we don’t know
The hardest question in the field is the question of who paid for it. The Achaemenid naval establishment was, on the evidence we have, paid for by a combination of satrapal tribute and Phoenician commercial surplus, but the relative weights of these two sources are not documented in the surviving administrative record. The Persepolis Fortification Tablets, which give us a vivid picture of the Achaemenid economy in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, do not contain naval accounts. The Athenian trierarchies, the public-private arrangements by which the Athenian navy was funded, are well documented; the Achaemenid equivalent is not. The question matters because it tells us whether the Achaemenid navy was, in the long run, sustainable. The answer, on the evidence, is: probably yes, until the political will of the Phoenician cities collapsed. After 351 BCE the bargain was visibly breaking down; after 333 BCE it was over.