Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/561

 Provincial Fleet APPENDIX 539 The Imperial fleet in the tenth century was larger than the Provincial. Thus in the Cretan expedition of a.d. 902 — for which Gibbon gives the total figures (jj. 93) — the contingents of the fleets were as follows : — T • 1 17.1 i. r 60 dromonds. Imperial Fleet | ^^ pamphylians. rt-u 1 -nu ( 15 dromonds. Cibyrrh. Theme | ^^ j.^^^pi^j-ii^ns. c _ f 10 dromonds. " I 12 pamphylians. . / 10 dromonds. Aegean ,, ^ ^ pamphylians. Total / '"^'^ dromonds. 'Sri pamphylians. (HeUadic Theme, 10 dromonds. ) But, though the provincial squadrons formed a smaller armament, they had the advantage of being alwa3's prejiared for war. The causes of the decay of the Byzantine navy in the eleventh century have been studied by C. Neumann, in the essa}- cited above. He shows that the antimilitary policy of the emperors in the third quarter of that century affected the navy as well as the army (cp. aliove, vol. 5, p. 222, n. 67). But the main cause was the Seljuk conquest. It completely disorganized the themes which furnished the contingents of the Provincial fleet. In the I2th century the Emperors depended on the navy of Venice, which they paid by commercial privileges. The dromonds or biremes were of different sizes and builds. Thus the largest size might be manned by a crew of 300 or 290. Those of a medium size might hold, like the old Greek triremes, about 200 men. There were still smaller ones, which, besides a hundied oarsmen who propelled them, contained onh- a few officers, steersmen, kc. (perhaps twenty- in all). Then there were a special kind of biremes, distiuguislied by build, not by size, called Pamphylians, and probably remarkaV)le for their swiftness. The Emperor Leo in his Tactics directs that the admiral's ship should be ver}* large and swift and of Pampliylian build. ^ The pamphylians in the Cretan expedition of a.d. 902 were of two sizes : the larger manned b)' 160 men, the smaller b}- 130. The importance of these Pamphylian vessels ought, I think, to be taken in connexion with the importance of the Cibyrrhaeot theme (see above, App. 3), which received its name from Pamphylian Cib^Ta. We may suspect that Ciljj'ra was a centre of shii)building. Besides the biremes, ships with single banks of oars were used, especiallj' for scouting purposes. They were called galleys.'' The name dromond or "runner " was a general name for a warship and could be applied to the galleys ■' as well as to the biremes ; but in common use it was probabl3' restricted to biremes, and even to those biremes which were not of Pamphylian build. Gibbon describes the ^vKoKarnpov, an erection which was built above the middle deck of the largest warships, to protect the soldiers who cast stones and darts against the enemy. There was another wooden erection at the prow, which was also manned by soldiers, but it served the sjecial purpose of protect- ing the fire-tube which was jilaced at the jirow. The combustible substances on which the Byzantines relied so much, and ap- parently with good reason, in their naval warfare, were of various kinds and were 7 ig, $ 37, TO Or) Xeynixevov wdu.-hvXoi'. Gfriirer attempted to prove that the pamphylians were manned by chosen crews, and derived their name from vaixibvKo<; (" belonging to all nations "), not from the country. Hut the passage in the Tactics does not support this view. The admiral's ship is to be manned by if an-aiTos toO mptnoii fmAe'/cTou? ; but this proes nothing for other pamphylians. But the large number of pamphylians in both the Imperial and the Provincial fleet (cp. the numbers in the Cretan expedition, given above) disproves Gfr5rer's hypothesis. 8 Tactics, ig, § lo, yaKa.i.a<; ^ fiofiipeif. ^ Ibid,