Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/112

 the Red Sea, Thus Egypt, mainly through his instrumentality, enjoyed a line of commerce to India uninterruptedly until the period of Augustus Cæsar, when Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire.

Although, as we have seen, the Egyptians were not naturally fond of maritime occupations, it is certain that, during the sway of the Ptolemies, an Egyptian fleet was maintained in the Mediterranean of sufficient size to command that sea, and to afford effectual protection to their merchants and ship-owners. Appian, in his preface, enumerating the naval and military forces of Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, says that he had five hundred galleys, two thousand smaller vessels, and eight hundred thalamegi, or pleasure boats; and Lucian states that he saw in Egypt a vessel of the country, one hundred and twenty cubits long, thirty broad, and twenty-nine deep.

Again, another Ptolemy (Philopator) appears to have been no common enthusiast in ship-building, for he constructed vessels of a size far in excess of any before his day, either in his own or in any other country—ships, indeed, as much larger than any then known, as the Great Eastern is larger than any vessel built in modern times.

One of these extraordinary vessels is described at length in Athenæus, from an Alexandrian historian named Callixenus. The following are some of her chief peculiarities: she is said to have been two hundred and eighty cubits long, thirty-eight broad, and fifty-three from the highest part of the stern to the water; she had four rudders, each thirty cubits long ; and the oars of the thranitæ were thirty-*