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Introduction: The Blue on the Map The blue on a map of the Mediterranean world represents the lifeblood flow- ing through the body of Hellas, for Hellas is less the acropolises, the moun- tains, and the tiny plains than it is the ports, shipyards and docks, the round ships and the long ships, penteconters, biremes, triremes, and the ­ whole net- work of communities interconnected by sea. Greeks traveled everywhere by sea, they carried merchandise—­some trad- ers regularly voyaged over one thousand miles—­and, with the merchandise, they carried their culture: the Iliad and the Odyssey the songs of individuality by Archilochus and Sappho the beginnings of scientific theory ethical phi- losophy (carried by Plato from Athens to Syracuse) and books brought from all over the Greek world to the library in Alexandria. Greeks delighted in tales of the sea, tales of the foolish pirates transformed into dolphins by Dionysus, whom they had kidnapped tales of that earliest explorer/adventurer, Jason, who went on a quest to the Black Sea to recover the Golden Fleece and discov- ered every­thing an adventurous spirit could wish, exotic places (and creatures), gold, and a barbaric—­and beautiful—­princess and, especially, they delighted in tales of Odysseus, “the many-­sided, who saw the cities of numerous men (and understood their hearts). At sea he suffered many pains in his soul, struggling to preserve the lives and the homecoming of his comrades. . . .” If the Greeks did not quite believe, like the buccaneers of ­later fame, that they could pluck gold from the trees of foreign lands, nonetheless, they knew that one voyage could provide wealth enough to last them the rest of their lives, if they survived. As Hesiod wrote, “It is a horrible death, to die among the waves, but money means life to poverty-­stricken men.” Ancient wrecks litter the floor of the Mediterranean, although, ironically, not wrecks of tri- remes, or other warships, ­because, even punctured by a ram, triremes did not sink to the bottom (­little good that that did their crews). The Greeks divided the sailing year into winter (cheimon) and summer (the- ros), the “bad” season and the “good” season. The most favorable part of the