Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/221

 SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAR. 199 be without leaving opportunity to the Athenian assailing ships to practise the manoeuvre of the diekplus, 1 and the interior space was sufficient, not merely for the store-vessels, but also for five chosen triremes, who were kept as a reserve, to dart out when required through the intervals between the outer triremes. In this position they were found and attacked shortly after daybreak, by Phormio, who bore down upon them with his ships in single file, all admirable sailors, and his own ship leading ; all being strictly forbidden to attack until he should give the signal. He rowed swiftly round the Peloponnesian circle, near- ing the prows of their ships as closely as he could, and making constant semblance of being about to come to blows. Partly from the intimidating effect of this manoeuvre, altogether novel to the Peloponnesians, partly from the natural difficulty, well known to Phormio, of keeping every ship in its exact stationary position, the order of the circle, both within and without, pres- ently became disturbed. It was not long before a new ally came to his aid, on which he fully calculated, postponing his actual attack until this favorable incident occurred. The strong land- breeze out of the gulf of Corinth, always wont to begin shortly not so great as it becomes in the line drawn northward from Patrae. "We cannot understand Tropifytof (as Mr. Bloomfield and Poppo do, see the note of the latter on the Scholia) to mean trajectits simply, that is to say, the passage across even the widest portion of the gulf of Patras : nor does the passage cited out of c. 86 require us so to understand it. Hopdftbf, in Thucydides, means a strait, or narrow crossing of sea, and Poppo himself adraits that Thucydides always uses it so : nor would it be reasonable to believe that he would call the line of sea across the gulf, from Patrae to the mouth of the Euenus, a irop&pof. See the note of Go'ller, on this point. 1 Thucyd. ii, 86. pr/ tiidovres tiicKTrhovv. The great object of the fast- sailing Athenian trireme was, to drive its beak against some weak part of the adversary's ship ; the stern, the side, or the oars, not against the beak, which was strongly constructed as well for defence as for offence. The Athenian, therefore, rowing through the intervals of the adversary's line, and thus getting in their rear, turned rapidly, and got the opportunity, before the ship of the adversary could change its position, of striking it either in the stern or some weak part. Such a manoeuvre was called the diekplus. The success of it, of course, depended upon the extreme rapidity and precision of the movements of the Athenian vessel, so superior in this respect to its adversary, not only in the better construction of the ship, bat the excellence of rowers and steersmen.