Dr DONALDSON, ON THE STRUCTUftE OF THE ATHENIAN TRIREME. 91 



To«'^oi; ecTo? elvai Trji vews, — and at the end he adds : 6id tovto oi fxeaoveoi fiaXiaTa 

 KivovGiV [jieyiffTov yap ev fxecrr] vr)i to airo tow (TKaXfxou t^s Kwjnr)^ to ci'tos' ecmv. To a 

 strange misunderstanding of these statements respecting the oars at the middle of the trireme 

 combined with the remark of the Scholiast on Aristophanes (above, p. 4) that each zygite 

 sat between the thranite and thalamite immediately next to him, and the words of Pollux 

 (above, p. 7) that the ^vya were to. fxecra t^s vew^ {i. e. considering the three tiers as hori- 

 zontal lines), we owe the perplexing theory, first started, I believe, by Schneider in his Lexicon, 

 s. V. ixeaoveoi, that the ssygites, as a body, sat in the middle of the ship, and that their oars 

 were the longest ! The inferior position of the thalamites as compared with the other rowers 

 is coarsely intimated by Aristophanes (EancB 1074), and implied in the fact that they were left 

 on board when the rest of the crew disembarked to serve on shore (Thucyd. iv. 32). And 

 from what Aristophanes says, in his description of the bustle in the dockyard which attended 

 a sudden preparation for sea, I am disposed to infer that the first step in the equipment of a 

 trireme was to provide it with oars for the thalamites, who navigated the vessel provisionally, 

 and until it got its full complement or fighting crew ; for, in immediate connexion with making 

 the spars into oars (Kwrrewv irXaTovfxevwv), he speaks of fitting the lowest oars with thongs 

 {Iddkanitov TpoirovfjLevcov, Acharn. 552, 553). The interval between two oar-ports on the same 

 tier was two cubits (Vitruv. i. 2), or three feet six inches, and as the thranite sat before (i. e. 

 nearer to the stern than) the zygite, and he than the thalamite, it is not difficult to conceive 

 an arrangement by which the bodies of the lower rowers would have free play as they 

 bent forward to their work. The measurement, which I have proposed (p. 6), leaves ample 

 room for the thalamites to pull under the platform for the epibatae. It is not impossible 

 that the thranus rested on the selis, so that there were xyga or cross planks only where the 

 zygites sat. This seems to be suggested by the explanation in Julius Pollux (i. 87): to ^e 

 irepi TO KaTaaTpwua Opavos, oil o'l Opavtrat, for the only KaraaTpwixa was the gangway. 



I will now apply these considerations to the removal of some difficulties which have 

 been very troublesome to editors. 



(o) The conjecture that the interval between the ends of the upper benches or thranos was 

 intended to leave a passage along the cyeXiuara or i[vyd is supported by the fact that the 

 special name for this passage was aeXk, a name also given to the spaces between the benches 

 in the theatre. Hesychius defines the aeXiSas as ret fxera^u ^laCppaytiaTa rwv oiacrrrjiJLdTcov 

 T^s i/e<os, " the middle partitions of the passages in the ship." And that this was the primary 

 meaning is clear from the glosses in Eustathius and Julius Pollux, which connect aeX/s with 

 aeXfxa. In later times aeX'i's was commonly used to denote the blank space between two 

 columns in a written page. When Phrynichus says (Bekk. Anecd. 62, 27) : aeXh (iifiXiov 

 XeyeTai ce Kal creXh QeaTpov, like a grammarian, he confuses between the primary and the 

 secondary meaning. The application of this term to the intercolumnal space in a manuscript, 

 and hence to the page of a book in general, is due to the resemblance between the KepKiSes of 

 the theatre, which were divided by the creX/^es, and the lines of writing divided by the inter- 

 vening space of blank paper; and the corridors of the theatre again were called aeXiSei, 

 because they were flanked on each side by seated spectators, just as the creXi^es in the trireme 



12—2 



