Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/342

 a machine to regulate their joint action. Indeed, the ancients practised this art with the greatest care, and the rowers were frequently exercised on benches erected on the shore, and their harmonious movements were sometimes made an object of display in their theatres. In nearly every case they plied their oars to the sound of either vocal or instrumental music, so that a fleet of the larger description of galleys, when under way on the smooth waters of the Levant, must have been, as various ancient authors describe, a heart-stirring and magnificent display.

Vossius, Le Roy, and all who have written on the subject of how the rowers were placed at their oars, though they differ less or more from each other, and fail, as we conceive, to propound a theory applicable to vessels of every class, agree in the opinion that the rowers were divided into classes, and that the thranitæ, who pulled the longest and highest oars and had the greatest amount of labour, "were exposed to the darts of the enemy." For these reasons they received, as we learn from Thucydides, the highest pay; and from the same authority we ascertain that even the largest description of galleys "were not decked throughout."

These statements are important, as they show a thoroughly organized system among the rowers, without which it would have been impossible to make available, in a limited space, large numbers of men, and in so far as they answer objections, frequently raised, to the employing so many men close together in the hold of a ship. In our illustration (p. 293) it will be seen that by our theory the galleys