Boarding a cruise ship in antiquity

Archimedes and his “Eureka” are common knowledge, but few people know that he designed an enormous cruise ship, the Syracusia.

It happened during the reign of King Hieron II of Syracuse, who in 240 BC ordered Archias of Corinth to execute the plans. The design was a very ambitious one, and we may wonder how on earth anyone in antiquity could possibly build the biggest and largest vessel ever. Money clearly was not an issue, for it seems that even the best was good enough! What’s more surprising is that the project was completed in one year by 300 craftsmen.

Athenaeus gives us a very detailed description of the Syracusia and its cargo. She could carry 1940 passengers, soldiers, and crew, and boasted plush stables for twenty horses, each with its own stall. Next was a storage room for the horses’ fodder and the quarters reserved for the riders and their slaves.

Figures from antiquity are not always reliable, but it is generally accepted that the Syracusia had a length of 110 meters, which is more than twice the largest merchant ship in those days.

Wood from the Etna was implemented, and the doors were made of cypress and citrus wood. Hemp had been imported from Iberia to make the cables, whereas pitch and more hemp came from the Rhone Valley. As soon as one deck of the ship was completed, it was covered with slabs of lead. 

The upper deck was supported by three-meter-high Atlantes or Telamones, replacing regular columns (see: The Valley of Temples at Akragas). The very top of the ship was a promenade reserved for the guests who could wander through gardens filled with different species of trees and flowers. These were watered through well-hidden lead pipes. Individual sections of this deck were made more comfortable with shaded roofs or tents covered with branches of ivy and vine. The layout inevitably led the guests to the Temple of Aphrodite, paved with agate. It was furnished with statues, and its walls were covered with frescoes. The entire ship was further adorned with statues and vases, painted walls, and fancy earthenware. Ivory and precious marble were lavishly used.

The second deck served as lodging for the passengers and counted 142 cabins, all paved with mosaics. Together, these individual pavements told the whole story of the Iliad. The guests could enjoy the comforts of a bathroom and a gymnasium, relax in a common dining room, or withdraw in the serene setting of the library and drawing room. The entertainment of the passengers was guaranteed!  

An onboard kitchen was a must, and Athenaeus confirmed that there were ovens and mills. Freshwater was stored near the head of the ship in a cistern that could hold as much as 78,000 liters. This water tank was caulked with pitch and covered with tarpaulins. Another cistern contained seawater to store the cook’s fish supply. This one, in turn, was coated with lead. Nothing is said about the service on board, the people responsible for the maintenance, and the cleaning.

The Syracusia also had its own army on board,  which, according to the sources, varied between 200 and 400 men. They were housed on a special deck in front of the ship where a giant catapult was mounted. This machine could shoot a stone weighing ninety kilograms to a distance of 200 meters. Eight towers, each manned with two archers and four men in full armor, further assured the defense of this unique vessel against any possible attack. The ship was additionally equipped with four wooden defense towers. The crew to steer this oversized ship was probably handpicked. It is said there were twenty banks of rowers. The entire ship was protected by a surrounding palisade, making enemy boarding impossible. 

All the components of the Syracusia were beyond normal proportions as Archimedes clearly thought out of the box! Besides, this is one example where his famous screw was successfully implemented to pump out the bilge water.

The number of provisions on board was equally huge. Athenaeus once again provides the facts and figures: 90,000 bushels of grain, 10,000 amphorae of Sicilian salt fish (is this the famous garum?), some 500-600 tons of wool (for what purpose?), and 20,000 talents were spent on “other cargo”. All these goods were stored in the lowest deck.

To ensure safe anchoring, the Syracusia counted eight iron anchors. Unfortunately, these were used only once because that huge ship made only one single trip across the Mediterranean to Alexandria in Egypt. It is important to realize that only a few ports were large enough to receive this size of vessel. As far as I know, besides Syracuse, only Rhodes, Pergamon, and probably Portus/Rome offered the necessary space and maneuverability for the Syracusia. 

In the end, all King Hieron could do, it seems, was to present the Syracusia as a gift to Ptolemy III Euergetes. It was eventually renamed Alexandreia. Otherwise, nobody knows what happened to this proud, colossal ship afterward.

[The picture of the mosaic representing the Death of Archimedes is from NYU Mathematics]

The Ephemerides of Alexander’s Expedition by C.A. Robinson

The History of Alexander the Great and the Ephemerides of Alexander’s Expedition by C.A. Robinson (ISBN 0-89005-555-6) is a most precious source of information for whoever wants to dig further into the literature related to Alexander that has come to us through authors from antiquity.

This is by no means an easy, coherent reading, for it has taken me some adjustments to get a hold of the pattern that F. Jacoby established in his Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, edited in 1929, which Robinson translated into English.

Robinson starts by explaining that all we have about Alexander the Great are the stories told by “Extant Historians” like Arrian, Diodorus, Justin, Curtius, and Plutarch, followed by a great many “Fragments” from the Royal Journal kept by his court historian Callisthenes of Olynthus and later by his secretary Eumenes of Cardia. Also included are surviving parts from the books written by Alexander’s contemporaries like Ptolemy, Nearchus of Crete, Onesicritus of Astypalacea, and Archias of Pella, as well as from many later Greek and Roman historians.

This book respects Jacoby’s scheme, including the numbering of the authors (which does not really make sense in Robinson’s book but probably does in Jacoby’s), the references to them, and how he splits the texts in “Testimonies” and “Fragments.” Once I got used to juggling around in this wealth of information, I found it terribly exciting to discover all those bits and pieces of history that I came across occasionally, not knowing if they were based on actual existing sources or were the simple imagination of some modern writer. Afterward, it is entirely understandable that these bits and pieces are not mentioned in the average book about Alexander simply because they don’t add much, if anything, to the story or would not fit in Alexander’s conquests proper.

Personally, I found Nearchus’ naval expedition along the coast of the Indian Ocean highly interesting, and also the wide-ranging reports about Alexander’s death in Babylon, including the last days leading up to his untimely death.

A handy Itinerary of Alexander is attached, showing names and places in a comparative table aiming to match many of the events and locations mentioned by Arrian, Diodorus, Justin, Curtius, and Plutarch, placing them in the same time frame. The names are not arranged alphabetically as one would expect, but chronologically, meaning that you need to know enough about Alexander’s campaign to start your search. 

And finally, there is an Appendix in which Robinson tries to make sense of the confusion about Alexander’s whereabouts in the winters of 330-329 and 329-328 BC and his crossing of the Hindu-Kush. I remember how difficult it was to match the accounts of Arrian and Plutarch during my trip through Central Asia, where, in the end, I was not able to sort out these dates. It looks like Robinson made an instrumental analysis that is absolutely worthwhile reading.