One mistake, a blunder, can sink an otherwise excellent documentary.
The documentary was Athens Birth of Democracy, which I watched the premier when it was broadcast on PBS Nova, on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. ( Video geoblocked on the website)

The blunder was this sentence which refers to the Athenian navy and how citizen rowers helped shape democracy in that ancient city.

NARRATOR: Unlike Roman galleys, which were mainly manned by slaves, Athenian triremes were operated by citizens.

PBS Nova is the premier science documentary series in the United States, with a reputation for accuracy, although that may be changing thanks to Trump and Republican budget cuts.

The mistake left me wondering if any of the credited executive producers, producers, fact checkers, advisors and script consultants had bothered to fact check the documentary.

Clearly, they didn’t bother to even check Wikipedia, much less the academic literature on the Roman navy.

Fact: Despite the belief in popular culture the historic reality is that the Roman Navy was a professional military, no different from the Roman army and its famous legions.

Checking the credits, I found that PBS Nova was not the originator of the documentary. It was a co-production that was created by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC. (Disclosure I worked for CBC News for most of my career)

Produced with the Participation of the Canadian Film and Video Production Tax Credit, and the Manitoba Film and Video Production Tax Credit.
Original production funding for Athens: Birth of Democracy was provided by the Canada Media Fund, Creative Europe MEDIA, Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, Hellenic Film & Audiovisual Center, Rogers Documentary Fund, and Procirep – Société des Producteurs & Angoa.

The other participants in the co-pro as well as PBS include France Television, RTS-Radio Télévision Suisse and Cosmote TV, a Greek telecom streamer. The actual producer was YUZU Productions, Athens Films Inc. and Anemon Productions.

As Wikipedia says

The bulk of a galley’s crew was formed by the rowers, the remiges (sing. remex) or eretai (sing. eretēs) in Greek. Despite popular perceptions, the Roman fleet, and ancient fleets in general, relied throughout their existence on rowers of free status, and not on galley slaves.

In his book Sea Eagles of the Empire, British archaeologist Simon Elliot says

Only in extremis were drafted into service (and as indicated by historical precedent) only after being made freedmen. (Appian)

Elliot lists the ranks, duties and assignments in the Roman navy, which would be familiar to any modern navy. The naval sailors were organized into centuries, just like the Roman army. As well as the remiges, the free and professional oarsmen, velarrii, handled the sails, vularius were the deckhands, the marines consisted of propugnates, deck soldiers, ballistarii, who handled catapults the equivalent of gunners, and sagittari archers.

The captain was called a trirarchus (a term that originated with Greek navies) two officers supervised the rowers, gubernator, also a navigator and supervising the steering oar ( a sort of combintion sailing master and quartermaster) and pausarius (rowing master)

There is one man probably responsible for the popular, continuing, erroneous and misinformed view that the Roman’s used galley slaves, a perception then made worse by Hollywood movies. That man was Lew Wallace, the American Civil War soldier, governor of New Mexico, diplomat to the Ottoman Empire and author who wrote Ben Hur, one of the biggest best sellers in American history.

The well-known story is based around events at the time of Christ in the Middle East and Rome.

Although Wallace claimed to have done extensive research for the novel, mostly in the Library of Congress, the galley slave sequences are a stain on history that persists today. Most of the public perception, including the perception that evades fact checkers, comes mainly from the four movies, including the1959 blockbuster directed by William Wyler, starring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd which won eleven Oscars.

A movie about free, professional naval sailors on Roman galleys unless it had a good script and director would not appeal to the public who believe the opposite.

The irony of all this that it wasn’t the pagan ancients, who were slave holding societies, that used galley slaves. Galley slaves were introduced and used by the Christian and Muslim states of the Mediterranean beginning in the mid sixteenth century, just at a time when the new introduction of gunpowder meant there was less of a need for all crew on the ships to be combatants as had been the practice in the ancient world.
The slaves were convicts, prisoners of war, and enslaved Africans and indigenous Americans.
At the height of the galley slave era, tens of thousands of men were enslaved by the warring states.

References

Sea Eagles of Empire, The Classis Britannica and the Battles for Britain, Simon Elliot, Stroud, History Press, 2016

The Roman Navy, Ships Men and Warfare, 350 BC – AD 475, Michael Pitassi, Barnsley, Seaforth Publishing, 2012