Member Ep. 015 – The Ship(s) of Theseus

Welcome, crew. Today we depart slightly from a focused look at ships, and branch out to consider mythology that has some loose ties to ships. The Greek mythological king and hero Theseus of course slew the Minotaur, but today we explore the ties of that story, and others, to Athenian naval ambition. Later politicians like Pisistratus and Cimon used the myths of Theseus to help promote the spread of the Delian League, and today we consider this evolution. We also consider the myths, and ties they might have to sacred ships in Athenian history. We also discuss a philosophical question that is known as 'The Ship of Theseus,' although we really don't find any answers. But it's fun to think about.

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Episode Transcript

An Opening Roadmap

Ahoy crew, and welcome to installment number 15 of our crew member only episodes. The best name I could come up for today’s episode is simply, The Ship(s) of Theseus. Today we are going to consider a most famed of Ancient Greek heroes and just how his mythology may have been used by Cimon and by Athens to cement their imperial ambitions and their leadership of the Delian League throughout the 400s BCE.

The nutshell version of where I think we will end up is something along these lines, although along the way we will also cover the myths tied to Theseus and perhaps some others too, just so that we can more fully appreciate why he became a focal point for Athens during their imperial growth. And then we’ll also tie the mythology to how it was depicted and used by ancient Athenian leaders.

In short, there is a solid argument to be made that our modern perspective on the Greco-Persian Wars as a whole is skewed because ancient writers in the centuries afterward were trying to draw a clear and obvious thread through their own history up to the point they were writing, with the goal being to explain a few things: namely, to explain how and why from the Persian Wars down to the Peloponnesian War Athens became a sea power, why that was crucial to the defeat of Xerxes and Persia, and then to make it seem as though Athens was always destined to become a sea power empire and that Athens was the main reason why Greece was not subsumed by the Persian Empire.

Especially concerning the Peloponnesian War and how Athens grew into an empire through the Delian League’s evolution, ancient myths were utilized by Athenian leadership to make their position popular and widely accepted, at least among their citizens and their allies. It is effectively a branding campaign in many ways, or even propaganda if you want to go so far as to use that label.

As we’ve said throughout the podcast thus far, Persia was always cast as the sole foreign specter against which all Greece had to stand. That thread is clear throughout Herodotus, and then in the Pentacontaetia Thucydides also indicates that the Delian League used this threat as its unifying focus. As we’ve begun to see in the main podcast episodes, at some point in the 460s BCE, Persia was driven from Anatolia, they were pretty soundly beaten, and then despite the Greek misstep in Egypt against Artaxerxes, Persia largely ceased to be a direct threat to Greek interests in the Aegean world.

So the question emerged: what is the Delian League doing if Persia isn’t a threat? Why is Athens continuing to build up naval and imperial ambitions if the supposed threat is extinguished? One answer to these questions evolved in the 5th century BCE and that is what we’ll try to cover today. It’s essentially Athens plucking from myths that already existed at that time to give their naval power a creation story, roots in Greek history, and a banner for the common people to rally around and support the continued expansion and necessity of Athenian naval ambition.

Plutarch's Life of Theseus

To get the ball rolling today, let’s jump right in with a passage from Plutarch, taken from his Life of Theseus. In the first portion of the episode today we’re going to consider the Theseus myths just straight down the line, we will consider the ancient sources at face value to help get our feet wet, but then later on we’ll circle back to look at things through a more critical lens and to consider how the Athenians may have used and perhaps even altered the mythology to serve as propaganda supporting their imperial expansion.

So then, here is that passage from Plutarch. It’s a little long, but useful still. He writes:

And after the Median wars, in the archonship of Phaedo, when the Athenians were consulting the oracle at Delphi, they were told by the Pythian priestess to take up the bones of Theseus, give them honourable burial at Athens, and guard them there. But it was difficult to find the grave and take up the bones, because of the inhospitable and savage nature of the Dolopians, who then inhabited the island. However, Cimon took the island, as I have related in his Life, and being ambitious to discover the grave of Theseus, saw an eagle in a place where there was the semblance of a mound, pecking, as he says, and tearing up the ground with his talons. By some divine ordering he comprehended the meaning of this and dug there, and there was found a coffin of a man of extraordinary size, a bronze spear lying by its side, and a sword. When these relics were brought home on his trireme by Cimon, the Athenians were delighted, and received them with splendid processions and sacrifices, as though Theseus himself were returning to his city. And now he lies buried in the heart of the city, near the present gymnasium, and his tomb is a sanctuary and place of refuge for runaway slaves and all men of low estate who are afraid of men in power, since Theseus was a champion and helper of such during his life, and graciously received the supplications of the poor and needy. The chief sacrifice which the Athenians make in his honour comes on the eighth day of the month Pyanepsion, the day on which he came back from Crete with the youths. But they honour him also on the eighth day of the other months, either because he came to Athens in the first place, from Troezen, on the eighth day of the month Hecatombaeon, as Diodorus the Topographer states, or because they consider this number more appropriate for him than any other since he was said to be a son of Poseidon.

Plutarch, The Life of Theseus, ¶ 36.

An 18th century German etching of Kimon carrying the bones of Theseus into Athens.

Now to unpack things a little. In essence, Plutarch’s version indicates that at some point following the Persian War in Greece, Athens consulted the Delphic oracle. That was a pretty popular pastime in Ancient Greece as you no doubt have heard. The oracle told Athens that they had to find, recover, and worship the bones of Theseus, in essence. This seemed like a tall task at first, given that no one knew by then where he had been buried. But, during the campaigns of the Delian League around the Aegean, an omen in the form of an eagle happened to lead Cimon straight to the spot, where he duly unearthed the gigantic bones of the hero along with his weapons. And the rest is history. Or we’ll at least scrutinize that later on today, anyways.

Before we can really appreciate why the oracle and Cimon and Athens even cared so much about the bones of this dude Theseus, maybe we should take a stroll through the high points of his mythical life.

Theseus' Mythical Life

If we try to cobble together a rough chronology of Greek myth, then Theseus probably lived and did his heroic deeds in the generation right before the Trojan War, or somewhere thereabouts. If he was even an actual person, we must keep in mind. He was revered by later Athens as being the one who unified the various tribes or demes of Attica into a single political unit, so in many ways Cimon and Athens chose to focus on re-elevating the Theseus mythology because it contained that element of unification behind a single leading city. Athens was again trying to unify a wider number of Greek cities behind themselves as the leader of the Delian League, or as the leader of the empire in some ways too.

There is a lot of backstory about how he unified Athens, etc., but for both ancient audiences and then us today, his more heroic and dramatic acts are certainly those that hold the most interest, so let’s talk about those for a bit.

For starters, he was partially descended from Poseidon, in addition to his human royal lineage, so from the very start was can see the connection to the sea god of Ancient Greece alongside his ties Athens. It is a lot more complicated than that to be honest, but getting tangled up in the intricacies of the various versions of the myth and all that is not the goal today.

Rather, I think it will be most useful to fast forward to the most well-known myth that is tied to Theseus and to Athens. You may know it already, the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. A brief recap is almost always beneficial though, so let’s do that.

The myth goes that in the ancient past, Athens engaged in a war against Crete and the mythical King Minos. We’ve discussed in episodes a long while back how Minos may be the mythological image of the time when Crete and the Minoans were indeed the maritime masters of the Aegean, so this myth involving Theseus goes all the way back to those times and no doubt also involves later writers attempting to tie a thread from the ancient Minoan thalassocracy down to the Athenian seapower empire.

In any event, Athens was defeated by Minos in that mythical war, and one of the punishments was that Athens had to pay an annual tribute of seven maidens and seven young men to Minos so that he could keep a steady food supply coming in to keep his Minotaur fed. The Minotaur was a creature that was half-man, half-bull, and that apparently ate humans. The Minotaur had been locked inside the palace labyrinth at Knossos, and each year this ritual was played out.

Well, Theseus when he learned of what Athens was forced to do, he determined himself to put an end to it all. He volunteered to be one of the youths sent as tribute, but since he knew what he was getting into, he also determined to slay the Minotaur and free Athens from this tribute. Before he left Athens, it was agreed that if he was successful, the ship’s crew was to use a white sail upon their return to Athens; but, if Theseus were to die in his effort to kill the Minotaur, the crew was to fly a black sail upon their return voyage.

A 17th century etching of Theseus and Ariadne, based on the Greek mythology.

The short version of the remainder is that he did indeed succeed in killing the Minotaur, thanks in part to the fact that he fell in love with the daughter of King Minos, Ariadne, who herself helped Theseus use the ball of yarn trick to navigate the labyrinth and then find his way back out in the end. But on the return voyage from Crete, Theseus left Aridane on the island of Naxos, and various versions of the myth pop up from that point.

Theseus as he approached Athens at the conclusion of his journey apparently forgot to raise the white sails that had been agreed to at the start, and since the king of Athens saw black sails, he assumed that his son was dead and in a wave of grief, King Aegus threw himself off a cliff into the sea and died. It is from King Aegus that the Aegean Sea derived its name, supposedly. And it is from that event as well that Theseus became the mythical king of Athens and was able to unify everyone thereafter.

So despite the main focus of this myth being on a showdown with a mythical monster, we can see that a sail and a ship play a role in the myth. Not to mention the ties back to the ancient origins of Aegean Sea power with the connections to Crete and the Minoans.

There are a fair few other myths that involve Theseus undertaking heroic exploits around the Aegean, and the Six Labours, as they are called, actually took place before the Minotaur myth if we are sticking strictly to the mythological timeline. There are parallels between the heroic acts of Theseus in those “labours” and the way that the heroic labours of Heracles/Hercules also unfolded, so some historians have argued that both of these heroes have similar roots and roles in the mythology of the ancient Near East.

Usage of Theseus Mythology in Classical Athens

All that is great, but what then is the point as far as Theseus and his myths concerned Athens and Cimon? It all ties back to that passage from Plutarch where Cimon and Athens fortuitously discovered the bones of this great ancient Athenian hero at the same time that they were rather brutally laying siege to the island of Naxos, a place that had been part of the Delian League but then was among the first islands to try and leave the league altogether. Athens moved to put down this rebellion (as they saw it) and then Plutarch describes that during the campaign, they also moved to take advantage of local mythology tied to Athens and to thereby try and justify everything they were then doing.

It’s quite likely that the timing was not actually as is described by Plutarch, he was in fact writing his history at least 250 years after the fact and he was no doubt basing his versions on the writings of others who had come before him, so it seems entirely reasonable and possible that the co-opting of the Theseus mythology to justify Athenian imperialism probably unfolded and grew over the course of decades and even centuries. Cimon may have been involved in the process, but he was not the only one.

Be that as it may, we do know that a shrine to Theseus existed in Athens at least as early as 550 BCE, and we will circle back later on to look at the possibility that a ship used by Theseus, or at least attributed to him, was also present in Athens in a place of public worship. But the artistic depictions of Theseus are really the thing that allows us to see how his image evolved in Athenian public life and what the evolution might signify.

I’m rather woefully unqualified to begin wading into these waters, but there is a fair bit of research available out there about Greek pottery and the art that decorates it. That is one big source for this discussion, but there are some others.

In short, the majority of Theseus depictions prior to 525 BCE or so focus on that myth we ran threw concerning his defeat of the Minotaur. That is not at all surprising given that myth’s popularity and clear staying power. Around 525 the depictions and the stories to which they are connected begin to grow a bit more diverse, they begin to incorporate references to the various heroic deeds of Theseus which we said are vaguely similar to those of Heracles. There are some scholars who connect this shift to political usage of Theseus and his image as a way for the Athenian leader Pisistratus to help his own star rise.

The theory goes that “Pisistratus was the first to transform Theseus into a pan-Athenian hero” because he encouraged “Athenians to identify his actions and accomplishments with the deeds of Theseus.” And then the next step further gets us to the way in which myth becomes reality and they inform one another: If precedents were lacking for Pisistratus to model his deeds after those of an ancient hero, “myths were invented and were often modeled after those of Heracles, so that Theseus came to be dubbed “this other Heracles” by the historian Plutarch.”

There is of course much more to it than this, but the consensus among scholars who study the iconographic evolution alongside the political is that the growth of democracy in Athens in the mid-sixth century BCE can also be seen in the increased use of mythical heroes and other myths to represent the new Athenian institutions, lending those institutions a borrowed heritage and popularity among the people on the whole. So on one level Theseus became an Athenian hero, depicting how they unified tribes and then unified cities under the banner of the Delian League. On another level Theseus was used by politicians to show their personal heroism as they undertook deeds similar to those of Theseus, conquering territory, etc. Or they just borrowed myths to loosely fit something they had already done. What’s the difference, right?

That is the rough evolution, but it is fair to say that this all came to a crescendo when Cimon took power in Athens and when the Delian League and Athenian influence was truly expanding under his oversight. A prime example is of course seen in that myth from Plutarch we read earlier where Cimon apparently found the bones of Theseus on Skyros and brought them back to Athens. The Pythia had prophesied this, and in taking that step, Cimon then made the worship of Theseus and his elevation as an Athenian hero formal and indisputable.

The art and iconography that surrounded the elevation of Theseus in Athens at that time, the time of Cimon, is particularly interesting and worth examining. Remember, Cimon followed in the wake of the Athenian naval leader Themistocles, and in many ways stood opposed to the policy choices of Themistocles. However, Cimon became the leader who made continued expansion of the Delian League a reality, and in so doing he gave the common Athenian more outlets to prosper. In some ways his military exploits undercut his own domestic policy positions, but that’s a separate discussion.

No, today we care about how Cimon used art and mythology to lend the image of Theseus toward justifying the expansion of the Delian League. Well, after the bones of Theseus were supposedly brought back to Athens and there enshrined, Cimon ensured that art decorated the shrine to serve as a front and center reminder to the worshippers of what Theseus had done and why it mattered. 

The overall mythology is too complex for us to worry about deeply, I think. A portion of it that was often depicted in public art in ancient Greece is known as the Amazonomachiai, which means the “Amazon battles” It alludes to a variety of Ancient Greek myths involving their conflict with the Amazons, a group of all-female hunters and warriors who often came into conflict with famed Greek heroes of myth. They are mentioned all through Greek mythology, but they come into particular focus here because they were said to have crossed paths with Theseus. Theseus actually abducts Hippolyta in one version and claims her as his wife, which touches off an entire war where Athens defeats the Amazons too. Athens rarely loses wars in their own mythology I’ve noticed. Surprising.

The reason that these depictions of the Amazons are consequential is because the Amazons were often cast in the role as being the the savage or barbarian race, as opposed to the civilized and progressive Athenians or Greeks. Perhaps you can already guess where this is going then. Following the Greco-Persian Wars, and as the Delian League sought to expand, their nominal enemy was still Persia, the empire and people who Herodotus often referred to as the barbarians, that foreign culture from the east.

Once Cimon was in power in Athens and the goal of that city and its alliance came into focus, they began to use Theseus as the figure-head of representations of the Amazonomahiai, but the Amazons in these artworks were understood to represent the Persians. In either case, Athens was the victor of the barbarian warriors of the east. There were specific murals painted in the shrine to Theseus that depicted:

“Theseus’ recovery of King Minos’ ring from the bottom of the sea; . . . a battle against the Amazons; and probably the rescue from Hades, drawing parallels between Cimon and Theseus, who triumphed at sea over Minos and overcame foreign/Eastern enemies.”

We do not unfortunately have any remaining depictions of this artwork save for textual descriptions by ancient writers who saw the place described, and this also goes for the place built by Cimon that came to be known as the Stoa Poikile, or the Painted Porch. This was also built in Athens by Cimon during this same timeframe, and it famously contained other paintings that depicted mythical heroes, including more depictions of Theseus and the Amazons. In the same stoa was a predominant painting of the Battle of Marathon, which I think is the best tie we have between Athenian ideas about the Amazons and then putting those depictions alongside a depiction of their victory of Persia. Ships don’t really factor too heavily other than some Phoenician ships appearing on one end of the mural as Persian soldiers try to flee and escape by ship, but are cut down before they can get away.

There are a lot more rabbit trails we could pursue, including similar depictions of Theseus later in the Parthenon and in the Hephaestion, but for now I think the point has been made and we can re-focus on one last ship myth before we wrap things today. My final point is to say that there is a cynical jab we could take at Athens by realizing that this myth-making and temple-building was really only possible because of the wealth they had gotten access to through the Delian League. Promoting myths and building grandiose temples to try and justify the League’s expansion and existence was really a move to try and convince Greece that it had all been necessary, it was perhaps a bid to seize control of the religious narrative. We haven’t mentioned it on the main podcast yet, but Greece concluded a treaty with Persia in 450 BCE, and it was only 4 years before this that Athens had moved the league’s treasury back to Athens.

After concluding peace with the only enemy of the Delian League, Athens then invited all the Greeks to Athens for a congress to agree on a way forward. One scholar then says this: “Pericles had plans for the funds accumulated in the treasury. Shortly before, he had proposed a congress that a congress of Greek cities gather at Athens in order to deliberate, among other topic, the rebuilding of the temples. It was a master stroke of propaganda: by attending the congress, the other Greeks would effectively cede to Athens the hegemony over relations with the gods.” The temple building campaign that resulted produced the temples that are still visited to this very day, so I would say indeed that Pericles pulled off a master stroke here.

Anyways, back to ships.

The Ship of Theseus

The most famed myth involving Theseus and ships is both a myth and a philosophical thought-experiment. It’s not too deep though, so hopefully that statement alone did not scare you off.

The place in the overall mythology is fairly straight-forward. If you recall, an element of the Minotaur story involved Theseus leaving Athens on a ship and arranging to return with either a black sail or a white sail, depending on how things turn out for him on Crete. The ship was also the transport for most of his other exploits around the Aegean, so in time it became known simply as the Ship of Theseus. Plutarch then says that in time, that specific ship was preserved in Athens as a memorial to the great hero, but it also served a practical purpose which required practical attention.

The portion of the Francois Vase depicting a triakonter tied to the Theseus mythology.

The ship was described by Plutarch as a “30-oared galley,” so in that way it does indeed resemble the smaller oared galley style that was used during Mycenaean times prior to the invention and spread of the trireme. This specific triakonter was possibly the same one that Classical Athens knew as the Delias. This association is a smidge speculative, I want to make sure that is clear, but the theory is mostly reasonable and it definitely helps tie the discussion together.

Here’s why the ship Delias matters, though. The mythology includes the point that Athens made a pledge if Theseus did indeed succeed in his mission to slay the Minotaur and free Athens from the burden of Cretan tribute. They pledged to honor the god Apollo every year, so when Theseus did indeed slay the monster, Athens began the annual practice of sending a delegation to the island of Delos, the same island where the Delian League later was founded and centered. One of Apollo’s most sacred sanctuaries was on this island, and that fact likely contributed to the league’s focus on that location and to Athens sending their sacred ship there each year to commemorate the victory of Theseus.

In time, the ship that made this voyage came to be known as the Delias. Although we cannot of course prove a connection between the ship Delias, some have proposed that this was indeed the same ship of Theseus, preserved in Athens and used every year to make the voyage in worship of Apollo. Theseus may be just a myth, so the ship may have been conveniently invented by an Athenian leader who elevated Theseus mythology into a more prominent role and then also whipped up traditions to lend it all a more accessible aura. Who knows.

But by the time Plutarch was writing several centuries later, the mythical and the practical seem to merge a bit, and that is how we arrive at the thought experiment involving the Ship of Theseus. To use the same ship to make an annual sacred voyage would obviously require some practical maintenance, the components of a wooden vessel are not impervious to time or nature. Repairs were done and rotten or damaged planking replaced as needs required.

To read the conclusion of that passage from Plutarch, then, we find:

“the 30-oared galley was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers of the logical question of things that grow, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel.”

Plutarch, Life of Theseus, ¶ 23.

He obliquely alludes to it all, so what is the question he references there? It is essentially a question of identity: as a thing changes over time, as pieces of the whole are replaced by new pieces fashioned to fit the same space and function, when does the object or person as a whole cease to become itself? In theory, if every component of the Ship of Theseus is replaced over a long span of time, is it still the Ship of Theseus? Or is it a new ship that merely appears the same? And where is the line when, which crossed, denotes the shift? If there even is such a line.

I’m no philosopher, among the many other things which I’m not, so to delve into this much would probably be painful for all of us. Simply put, the thought experiment applies to inanimate objects and to people, and it has obviously then been a question among philosophers for millennia now. There really isn’t a clean answer either, it is debated and probably will always be. The myth and the question are discussed by Socrates in in Plato’s Phaedo, and the sacred ship was actually at Delos on the day before Socrates was put to trial in this version. The reaction of Socrates to the question of whether it is or is not the same ship was, rather cryptically: “Theoretically it is still the same ship.” Based on that answer, some also refer to this ship as the “theoretical ship.”

The Francois Vase and a Ship of Theseus

There is one particular ancient depiction that likely shows a version of the Ship of Theseus. It appears on the Francois Vase and is painted in the Attic black-figure style, this specific piece having been dated to around 565 BCE. So clearly even before the time of Themistocles and Cimon, the Theseus myth was well enough known to be depicted on pottery.

A close-up of the portion of the Francios Vase that depicts a triakonter and a scene tied to the Theseus mythology.

In this depiction it clearly seems to be a triakonter just as was described by Plutarch. The sternpost of the ship is shaped like the heads of two swans, and the prow has a boar’s head decoration. Beyond this though, we can see that the ship is making landfall, the mast is lowered and one person is already rushing on to the shore. The rest of the people aboard the ship appear to be thanking the heavens that they have landed, and the general interpretation is that this shows the Ship of Theseus and the 11 youths that he rescued by slaying the Minotaur. They may be landing after the return voyage to Athens, thankful for their fortune.

The Francois Vase overall is a fascinating piece, it depicted a ton of Ancient Greek myths all around the entire vase, which was used for holding wine. The vase was discovered in an Etruscan tomb in central Italy, so it’s also a prime example of the spread of Greek mythological symbolism even prior to the rise of an Athenian Navy, a testament also to the spread of Attic pottery trade at the time. Images will be available on the website notes for this episode, as always, if you’d like to check it out.

Beyond that though, the Ship of Theseus paradox as a question and debate exists and finds relevance even still today.

I haven’t watched the show yet myself, but apparently the Ship of Theseus paradox and the later treatments of it by Thomas Hobbes and Plato are plot points in the show WandaVision, which does intrigue me. Maybe if any of you watched that show and want to share you thoughts about how they used the Ship of Theseus there, that’d be quite interesting to hear about.

There are many other examples to illustrate this paradox, but it has indeed been widely known simply as the Ship of Theseus problem, so once again Greek mythology and Athenian naval strength shows its staying power.

One modern example and then I think we’ll have exhausted the points I had prepared today. We can see a modern example of this paradox in the deep-ocean research sub that was used to explore the wreck of the Titanic, it’s named Alvin. The sub was also used to explore hydrothermal vents deep in the Pacific Ocean.

What does Alvin have to do with any of this though? Well, like the Ship of Theseus, Alvin has over the course of its career had every single component replaced at least one time. And in this case it is well documented and thus a surety. So is Alvin still Alvin? The overall design is the same, everyone calls the sub by the same name too, and it serves the same function. Tough question, that’s all I really know.

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