Page:Boating - Woodgate - 1888.pdf/32

 like the horns of oxen. And withal they are rounded on both sides, and well timbered and hollowed out, and roomy, having by the gift of the poet a facile combination of all the opposite qualities, so desirable and so difficult in practice to unite. As yet there is no spur or ram, but round the solid stempost shrieks the wave, as the vessel is urged onward either by the mighty hands of heroes, or the god-sent breeze that follows aft. Wor is the vessel decked, except for a short space at bow and stern, where it had raised platforms. On the quarter-deck, so to speak, of the stern sat the great chiefs, whose warriors plied the oar, and there they laid their spears ready for use, There also was the standing place of the steersman who wielded the long paddle which served to guide the vessel. ‘The thwarts which tied the vessel’s sides together (yokes or keys as they are called) served as benches for the oarsmen; those amidships had the heaviest and longest oars, so that they were places of honour reserved for the heaviest and strongest men, e.g, for Hercules and Anceus in the Argo. Whether the ‘sevenfoot,’ to which Ajax retreats from the stern deck, when defending the Greek ships against the Trojans and bard pressed by them, be bench or stretcher, it gives us an idea of the breadth of the Homeric vessel at or near the place of the stroke ‘oar. Long low galleys they must have heen, with a middle plank running fore and aft, interrupted by the ‘tabernacle,’ in which the mast when hoisted was secured, haying fore and back stays. ‘The warriors were oarsmen, the oarsmen warriors. ‘The smallest complement, as Thucydides observes, was fifty, the largest one hundred and twenty.

It is doubtful how far the Alexandrine poets can be relied upon as giving accurate information respecting details of ancient use, Yet we have many lifelike pictures and a great profusion of details, drawn no doubt from the ample stores of antiquarian knowledge which these laborious men of letters had at their service in the great Alexandrine library, and these go to fill up that which is lacking in the Homeric picture. And so when Apollonius the Rhodian paints for us such scenes as those of