Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/129

 maritime exploits of Cyrus, and of other great conquerors, partake of the same character as these recorded of Xerxes, and are equally inconsistent, when we look to the capacity of the vessels as compared with the apparent ease with which they could be moved about on dry land. Although the ancients had capstans, of which Herodotus speaks, and were conversant with pulleys, and with the best mode of transporting, by means of manual labour, aided by blocks and rollers, heavy weights across land, it is difficult to understand how any vessels competent to convey between two and three hundred men each, could, just as a storm was coming on, have been hauled high and dry upon a beach with sufficient speed.

A vessel of size sufficient to take that number of men even for a short distance and across a smooth sea, must have been, according to the present mode of measurement, of at least seventy tons register. But no vessel of that tonnage, or of three-fourths that size, could be drawn up on a beach, much less across an isthmus, with the facility the narrative of Herodotus presumes, unless the ancients had methods for transporting their vessels on shore of which no accounts have been preserved. A vessel of fifty-five tons register might hold between two and three hundred men, and transport them, in a calm, across the smooth and narrow waters of the Hellespont; but to attempt to make a voyage of no greater