Il fatale approdo dei cinque uomini su dieci navi: un enigma in Athen. X 457b

All the solutions of the riddle found in Athenaeus Deipnosophistae X 457b-c ("five men with ten ships landed at one place, / they did battle amidst stones, but no stone could be lifted; / for thirst they perished, but the water rose over the chin") suggested by ancient sources and few modern guesses don't seem very convincing. The explanation hereby proposed is the following: "five molluscs, probably mussels endowed with two black, long-shaped valves (similar in shape and chromatic impact to the hulls of the triremes caulked with pitch) are caught and reach the land. The molluscs-seamen are placed on burning coals (stones that cannot be lifted) and they die of thirst: because of the heat the valves open wide quickening the evaporation of the water contained inside of them, over their 'chin' or 'beard' (that is filaments of byssus)". The association mussels-ships had to be quite present in the Greek imagery, according to what we read in Aelian (NA XV 12).