*Spoiler Warning*

The first couple of episodes of Star Trek: Discovery were full of some great moments. But perhaps my favourite was the use of ancient naval tactics in space.

I’m talking about the fate of the USS Europa, rammed into oblivion by a cloaked Klingon ship…

Ramming was the tactic in ancient naval warfare. The first attested reference to them was in the Battle of Alalia in around 540 BCE, but perhaps their most famous appearance is in the Battle of Salamis. This was the battle that took place between the Greeks and the Persian Empire in 480 BCE. In Aeschylus‘ The Persians, he vividly describes these navals rams and their aftermath…

“Straightaway the ships dashed together their bronze prows. It was a ship of Hellas that began the charge and chopped off in its entirety the curved stern of a Phoenician boat. Each captain drove his ship straight against some other ship. At first the stream of the Persian army held its own. When, however, the mass of our ships had been crowded in the narrows, and none could render another aid, and each crashed its bronze prow against each of its own line, they splintered their whole bank of oars. Then the Hellenic galleys, not heedless of their chance, hemmed them in and battered them on every side. The hulls of our vessels rolled over, and the sea was hidden from our sight, strewn as it was with wrecks and slaughtered men.” Aeschylus, Persians, lines 405-420.

Although perhaps not the best of movies, 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) provides a great visual depiction of these rams working…

One of these naval rams was found off the coast of Israel. Known as the Atlit ram, its blunted edge was designed to break apart the seams between the planks on the target ship. It also dispersed the impact, so that the the ram didn’t twist off during the collision.

Similarly, the Klingon ram in Discovery is designed for maximum impact on the ships it engages. Its knife-like edge cuts through the USS Europa, but doesn’t effect the Klingon ship.

This harkening back to the naval tactics of the ancient Greeks puts Discovery firmly within a long tradition in science fiction.

Some of the earliest science fiction writers used the ancient world as their inspiration, drawing on the same ideas as Discovery. Both naval rams and the Battle of Salamis are used as the basis of one of the first stories by Isaac Asimov, perhaps one of the most influential science fiction writers ever.

In his short story Black Friar of the Flame, published in 1942, the climactic battle is modelled on the Battle of Salamis. In it, the human ships wait until the last moment to reveal their new tactic in space warfare – huge spiked rams on their ships. Their reliance on ancient tactics is what gives them the edge to overcome their reptilian overloads. And it wasn’t the only time Asimov used the ancient world as a model. His first novel, Pebble in the Sky, was based on the Jewish revolt of AD 66-73, and his Foundation series was based around the fall of the Roman Empire.

But Discovery goes a little deeper. Not only do the Klingon ships mirror ancient naval vessels, the battle itself is can be seen as reflecting the ideas surrounding the Battle of Salamis.

Salamis is often seen as the turning point in the Persian Wars, and thus a turning point in Western history, when Greek civilisation wards off the barbarous and tyrannical Persian Empire. This popular sentiment is perhaps best represented in the movie 300 (2006) and its sequel 300: Rise of an Empire (2014).

Similarly, the Battle at the Binary Stars also serves as a turning point in the history of Star Trek. It not only begins the war between The Federation and the Klingons, it dramatically shifts the culture within Starfleet. No longer an organisation that explores in peace, it is now a military geared for war.

Discovery is reflecting a popular narrative about the Persian Wars that is still relatively prevalent, that it was a battle between the civilised, democratic, West (i.e. the Athenians) and the barbarous, oriental, East (i.e. the Persians). In Discovery we see that idea mirrored in the pitting of the civilised Federation against the barbarous Klingons.

The Klingons even engage in that age-old barbarous trait of cannibalism…

However, if we look a little closer, this re-telling of the Battle of Salamis and the Persian Wars can be read a little differently. The ill-fated USS Europa takes its name from the Europa of classical myth, featured in the same text that we get our most famous account of Salamis: Herodotus.

Herodotus’ story of Europa sees her kidnapped from her eastern home by the Greeks, as revenge for a similar kidnapping of the maiden Io by the Persians. Here’s where the intersection between Herodotus and Discovery becomes interesting. If the destruction of the USS Europa serves as a metaphor for the kidnapping of the mythical Europa, it would mean that the Klingons are instead representing the Greeks, not the Persians, in this story.

In some ways, this makes a lot of sense. The Klingons are battling to keep their identity against a pseudo-empire that subsumes individual cultures into a larger political body. Just as the Greeks city-states were fighting for their own independence against the Persian Empire, which engulfed all the individual cultures of the Near East.

Since the Klingons are the ones using the naval rams and win Discovery‘s analogy for Salamis, the Battle at the Binary Stars, equating them with the Greeks seems to be the obvious analogy to draw.

In this way, Discovery plays off the traditional view of the Battle of Salamis. By subtly aligning the stand-in for Western civilisation (the Greeks) with Star Trek’s perennial ‘other’ (the Klingons) we not only emphasise with them more, but we can re-examine those popular perceptions of Salamis as a defensive against the barbarous and oriental ‘other’.

Instead, rather than seeing the conflict as West versus East, or Federation verses Klingon, we can focus on the human cost of that conflict. In history, we can re-think our portrayal of the Athenians as the ‘good guys’ and instead see how Salamis was a step towards the establishment of the Athenian Empire. And in Discovery, we see how conflict not only corrupts good officers, but changes the nature of the Federation, and how righteous causes are corrupted by powerful men in the Klingon empire.

This was far more engagement with the ancient world than I was expecting from Discovery, a tradition I hope they keep up when it returns in January…

There are some more posts on Star Trek: Discovery. For example, you can read about its use of the classical cannibalism trope.

If you want to learn more about the Persian Wars, there is nothing better than going back to the source material. You can read the account in Herodotus, which is freely accessible at Perseus.

For an ancient reaction to the war, it is also worth reading the rest of Aeschylus‘ play: The Persians.

If you want a more modern narrative account, try out Tom Holland’s Persian Fire.

If you want to read about the reception of the Persian Wars, try out Emma Bridges‘, Edith Hall’s, and P. J. Rhodes’ Cultural Response to the Persian Wars: Antiquity to the Third Millennium.

Isaac Asimov’s Black Friar of the Flame can be found in the book The Early Asimov: Volume 1, along with some of his other earliest works.

And if you want to read another interpretation of how Discovery‘s Klingons interact with ancient culture, check out this article from Eve MacDonald.