Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/222

 200 HISTORY OF GREECE. after daybreak, came down upon the Peloponnesian fleet will usual vehemence, at a moment when the steadiness of their was already somewhat giving way, and forced their ships more than ever out of proper relation one to the other. The triremes began to run foul of each other, or become entangled with the store- vessels : so that in every ship the men aboard were obliged to keep pushing off their neighbors on each side with poles, not without loud clamor and mutual reproaches, which prevented both the orders of the captain, and the cheering sound or song whereby the keleustes animated the rowers and kept them to time, from being at all audible. Moreover, the fresh breeze had occasioned such a swell, that these rowers, unskilful under all circumstances, could not get their oars clear of the water, and the pilots thus lost all command over their vessels. 1 The 1 See Dr. Arnold's note upon this passage of Thucydides, respecting the keleustes and his functions : to the passages which he indicates as refer- ence, I will add two more of Plautus, Mercat. iv, 2, 5, and Asinaria, iii, 1,15. When we conceive the structure of an ancient trireme, we shall at once see, first, how essential the keleustes was, to keep the rowers in harmonious action, next, how immense the difference must have been between prac- tised and unpractised rowers. The trireme had, in all, one hundred and seventy rowers, distributed into three tiers. The upper tier, called thra- nitse, were sixty-two in number, or thirty-one on each side : the middle tier, or zygitse, as well as the lowest tier, or thalamitse, were each fifty-four in number, or twenty-seven on each side. Besides these, there were belonging to each trireme a certain number, seemingly about thirty, of supplementary oars (KUTrai irepivEu), to be used by the epibataj, or soldiers, serving on board, in case of rowers being killed, or oars broken. Each tier of rowers was distributed along the whole length of the vessel, from head to stern, or at least along the greater part of it ; but the seats of the higher tiers were not placed in the exact perpendicular line above the lower. Of course, the oars of the thranitse, or uppermost tier, were the longest : those of the thalamitse, or lowest tier, the shortest : those of the zygitae, of a length between the two. Each oar was rowed only by one man. The thranitae, as having the longest oars, were most hardly worked and most highly paid What the length of the oars was, belonging to either tier, we do not know, but some of the supplementary oars appear to have been about fifteen feet in length. What is here stated, appears to be pretty well ascertained, chiefly from <he inscriptions discovered at Athens a few years ago, so full of informa- tion respecting the Athenian marine, and from the most instructive com- mentary appended to these inscriptions by M. Bocckh, Scewescn dor