Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/112

 92 THE DEC^LINE AND FALL accustomed their subjects to tlie exercise of navigation ; and the trade of Venice and Amalfi sujjj^lied a nursery of seamen to the Imperial fleet.'" Since the time of the Peloponnesian and Punic wars, the sphere of action had not been enlarged ; and the science of naval architecture appears to have declined. The art of constructing those stupendous machines which displayed three, or six, or ten, ranges of oars, rising above, or falling behind, each other, was unknown to the ship-builders of Con- stantinf)ple, as well as to the mechanicians of modern daysJ^ The Dromoiies "^ or light galle^^s of the Byzantine empire wei'e content with two tier of oars ; each tier was composed of five and twenty benches ; and two rowers were seated on each bench, who plied their oax-s on either side of the vessel. To these we must add the captain or centurion, who, in time of action, stood erect with his ai'mour-bearer on the poop, two steersmen at the helm, and two officers at the prow, the one to manage the anchor, the other to point and play against the enemy the tube of liquid fire. The whole crew, as in the infoncy of the art, performed the double service of mariners and soldiers ; they were provided with defensive and offensive arms, with bows and arrows, which they used from the upper deck, with long pikes^ which they pushed through the port-holes of the lower tier. Sometimes, indeed, the ships of war were of a larger and more solid construction ; and the labours of combat and navigation were more regularly divided between seventy soldiers and two hundred and thirty mariners. But for the most part they were of the light and manageable size ; and, as the cape of Malea in Peloponnesus was still clothed with its ancient terrors, an Imperial fleet was transported five miles over land across the Isthmus of Corinth.**'^ The principles of maritime tactics had ■^Thc xixth chapter of the Tactics of Leo (Meurs. Opera, torn. vi. p. 825- 848), which is given more correct from a manuscript of Gudiiis, by the laborious Fabricius (Bibliot. Grrec. toni. vi. p. 372-379), relates lo the Naiimachia or naval war. [On the Byzantine navy, compare Appendix 5.] '1^ Even of fifteen or sixteen rows of oars, in the navy of Demetrius Poliorcetes. These were for real use ; the forty rows of Ptolemy Fhiladelphus were applied to a floating palace, whose tonnage, according to Dr. .Arbuthnot (Tables of iVncient Coins, c&c., p. 231-236), is compared as 4! to one, with an English loo-gun ship. ''"The Dromones of Leo, &c., are so clearly described with two tier of oars that I must censure the version of Meursius and Fabricius, who pervert the sense by a blind attachment to the classic appellation of Triremes. The Byzantine historians are sometimes guilty of the same inaccuracy. stratagem as a /?o7.Aj)i' avv(Tv xal <ro<^,;!' ; but the sailing roimd Peloponnesus is described by his ii-rrilied fancy as a circumnavigation of a thousand liiilcs.
 * " Constantin. Porphyrogen. in Vit. Basil, c. Ixi. p. 185. lie calmly praises the