THREE SOURCES AND SOME BOATS

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agesilaos
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THREE SOURCES AND SOME BOATS

Post by agesilaos »

In the Opis thread the siege of Tyre cropped up, and the differences between the accounts of Arrian and Curtius set me wondering in particular Curtius’ statements IV 3 xivff that the Macedonians lashed together pairs of quadrires to make platforms for missile troops but their attack was thrown into confusion by a sudden squall. Arrian has none of this so we may assume it was not in Ptolemy/Aristoboulos, they report the equipping of horse transports and the slower triereis with engines II 21 i. There seem two possibilities; either Curtius found these details in his narrative source, probably Kleitarchos, or he was copying a Roman precedent.

Now the greatest naval siege of the diadoch era must be that of Rhodes by Demetrios Poliorketes, Plutarch gives little detail but in Diodoros/Hieronymos XX 85 iff ‘Demetrius, who had an ample supply of everything required for setting up his engines of war, began to prepare two penthouses, one for petroboloi and the other for oxybeleis, each of them firmly mounted on two cargo vessels (duo ploion) fastened together, and two towers of four storeys, exceeding in height the towers of the harbour, each of them mounted on two vessels of the same size and fastened there in such a way that as the towers advanced the support on each side upheld an equal weight.’ Later chap 86 ‘after both sides had made their preparations in this way, Demetrius at first endeavoured to bring his engines of war against the harbour, but he was prevented when too rough a sea arose;…’

Admittedly these are merchant ships mounting artillery but it may be that Curtius’ Greek was not perfect he could have confused the four storied towers ‘tetrastegous’ to describe the ships making them quadriremes and he may have translated ‘petroboloi’ as slingers, ‘stone throwers’. Tenuous I know, but not impossible.

Curtius could have read Hieronymos account as he seems to follow an account much like his at the close of book X but it seems unlikely that he would plough trough thirty odd books off an unpopular and inelegant writer. More likely is that his source, Kleitarchos, had been influenced by this account and jazzed it up for his naval siege. This would mean he wrote after Hieronymus.

Hieronymos may have published two books with the divide in 301BC and the battle of Ipsos so it is not too great a help though it puts Kleitarchos in the Third Century BC. It is suggestive, however that it is a Demetrian failure that is taken as a model.

On the Roman side I could only think of the attack on Syracuse in 214BC and Livy has XXIV 34 ‘..other quiqueremes were lashed together in pairs, one close alongside the other with the inner banks of oars removed; each pair was propelled, like a single vessel, by the outer banks of oars,and they were employed to carry towers, several stories high, and other devices for breaching the walls.’ Trans de Selincourt.

We know Curtius was familiar with Livy as there are stylistic echoes but this is a different arrangement of ships and he cannot have muddled the Latin . However, can anyone come up with other instances of this use of ships lashed together pre-mid First Century AD?
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