144 david abulafiasignificant Carthaginian presence on Ibiza. The foundations had been laid by their
Phoenician forebears, but it was surely in the heyday of Carthage, before the Second
Punic War resulted in the loss of the city’s prize possessions across much of the west-
ern Mediterranean, that a thalassocracy existed, combining political and commercial
power (Miles, 2010). Even so, we are left with the question whether mastery of ports
and coastlines meant control of sea passages, and it will be necessary to return to this
problem later.
The Etruscans provide a particularly intriguing example of what has sometimes
been termed a thalassocracy. The problem here is that Etruria consisted around
500 bCe of a very loose religious confederation of 12 major cities, whose inhabitants
apparently spoke the same language of unknown, non-Indo-European, origins and
thought of themselves as a single people known as Rasna. But of these cities only
Populonia, which grew rich on iron from Elba and copper from Sardinia, stood on the
seashore, and derived its name from that of the sea-god Fufluns (Neptune), though
Caere had an outport at Pyrgoi (Santa Severa) and Tarquinii used some roadsteads on
its own coastline. Vetulonia evidently had regular means of access through some port
or other (perhaps Pisa) to Sardinia, whence came not just metals but Sard workers and
their distinctive style of bronze-cast figurines. When Thucydides refers, as he does
several times, to the arrival of Tyrrhenian, that is, Etruscan, ships in Sicily during the
Peloponnesian War, we can only speculate whether they were sent by the league of
12 cities, though we do know that later on some cities, such as Caere, followed dif-
ferent policies to their neighbors. The Etruscans do seem to have controlled the sea
between their part of Italy and Corsica, because the Caretans expelled a Phokaian
Greek colony from Alalia in eastern Corsica in 540, prompting the Phokaians to con-
centrate their energies at Massalia (Marseilles), which was also, however, visited by
Etruscan merchants. What applied to this stretch of water did not long apply to waters
further south. The British Museum possesses an Etruscan helmet dedicated at Olympia
following a crushing defeat of Etruscan shipping at Kyma (Cumae), near Naples, at
the hands of Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse; this was in 474 bCe, and it decisively shifted
the balance of power in the Tyrrhenian Sea, greatly reducing Etruscan influence in the
lands either side of Naples. Yet we could say that the name of this sea is itself testimony
to the power exercised within it by the cities of Etruria, while the wealth of those cities
provides clear testimony to the existence of regular commerce through the protected
waters of this area (Cristofani, 1983).
The other outstanding case of an ancient thalassocracy is Athens. Here again we
have to wonder what the balance between genuinely maritime interests and the wish
to control land and obtain tribute might have been. In the fifth century the Athenians
showed that they could impose and maintain empire by brutal force; they seized land
in Euboia, which they needed in order the feed their city, and they enserfed the inhab-
itants of Lesbos, wondering during the Peloponnesian War whether to kill all male
Lesbians, following a revolt on the island (428 bCe). The Aegean islands brought
under Athenian control provided career opportunities for Athenian citizens desirous
of acquiring land of their own. During the Peloponnesian War these ambitions spi-
raled out of control and they conceived a desire to conquer Syracuse, situated in the
most promising granary of all, Sicily. This led Athens to unmitigated disaster. In the
end Sparta, not Athens, became master of the seas to the east of Greece, which might
appear an unexpected outcome for a land power, but less so if its dominion over other,0002063951.INDD 144 2/17/2014 11:36:30 AM