A Companion to Mediterranean History

At an early stage in his history, man realized that travel by water offered a relatively easy and safe method of travel compared to the difficulties of travel by land. We know this from the Greek epic bard, Homer, who tells us of the great catalogue of ships, a listing of highly developed warships which occupies almost half of book two of Homer’s Iliad. If we discount Homer’s tale that the ships were sent to rescue the Spartan queen, Helen, from the clutches of her Trojan lover, Paris, it seems likely that around 1200 BCE, the Greeks and Trojans nevertheless...