Paralos : La città è una nave, la nave è la città

During the fifth century BCE, Paralos is, primarily, the name of the sacred ship devoted to ceremonial functions and diplomatic missions. However, according to the sources, ‘Paralos’ was also the name of a minor god, ‘inventor of navigation’, who had his own sanctuary in Piraeus. The same name also appears as the name of a son of Pericles, the youngest, who died in the plague of Athens shortly before his father. However, Paralos represents, above all, a great figure – the ship par excellence. In 480 BCE, investment in the naval fleet had been Themistocles’ decisive move for the victory of Salamis. However, the shifting of perspective towards the sea is also a geopolitical move, essential for the affirmation of the hegemony of Athens from the time of the Persian wars up to the end of the fifth century. Indeed, Paralos is the ‘sacred ship’ but, as evident also from the texts of Aeschylus, it is also a figure of the democratic city: on board the Paralos, there is an ‘absolute Athens’, which, without territorial roots, sails freely on the sea, even when the city is occupied by tyrants. By cross-referencing literary, historical, archaeological, and iconographic sources, the essay reconstructs the conceptual value of the ‘ship’ and in particular of the ship par excellence, Paralos, in the Athenian imagination of the fifth century BCE.