90 Dr DONALDSON, ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE ATHENIAN TRIREME. 



from the side of the vessel. Consequently the passage for the officers, &c. along the ^vyd 

 would be as narrow as possible. Now the minimum breadth for the free and rapid passage of 

 a man up to his knees is two feet. With seven feet then for each of the benches, and two 

 feet at least for the passage between them, we require sixteen feet for the minimum breadth of 

 the trireme, and I am informed by travellers, who have just returned from Athens, and who 

 have measured the slips in the docks of the Piraeus, that this was precisely the breadth allowed 

 for a Greek war galley under the water-line. Adding two feet for the breadth between 

 the tops of the ribs, we shall get the means of passing the mast, and the whole beam will be 

 eighteen feet, or, including the projecting gangways for the epibatcB, twenty-four feet over all. 

 For the height of the trireme's sides and its draught, we have no authority. I conjecture that 

 it drew about six feet, and that there was about the same depth from the platform of the 

 Epibatae to the water-line. Considering that the trireme was a sea-boat, and that the ports for 

 the oars were large enough to admit of a man's head being thrust through them (Herod, v. 33), 

 and to expose the rowers to missiles from boats rowing along-side (Thucyd. vii. 40), it is 

 extremely unlikely that the lower ports would be less than two feet above the water. And as 

 the oars were not too long to be carried by a single man on a march across the Isthmus 

 (Thucyd. n. 93) even those of the thranitcB must have been less than twenty feet long. The 

 inscriptions mention the length of the supplementary oars only, and these seem to have 

 varied from nine to nine and a half cubits. I have no doubt that the thranitic oars were 

 longer than this, and the epithet IdKi-^rtpeTnoi which Pindar applies to ^gina {01. viii. 20), 

 indicates that the length of the working oars in a trireme was as considerable as that of 

 the long spear which was similarly designated (Hom. //. xxi. 155 : ^oXiyeyKyK, iii. 346, &c. : 

 ^oKiyocTKiov eyKo$). And this must have been the case if they were pulled with a good lever- 

 age. The best result that I can obtain by conjectural measurements gives about fifteen feet 

 for the thranitic oars, of which five feet were within and ten without the ship; twelve feet 

 for the zygitic oars, and nine or ten for the thalamitic. That there was a great difference 

 between the length of the thranitic oars and those of the lower tiers is implied by what Thu- 

 cydides says (vi. 31), as illustrated by the Scholiast: o\ ^e dpainrai ixerd fxaKpoTepwv kwttwv 

 epeTTovTei TrXeiova kottov e'^ovai tuov oKKuiv' oia tovto tovtok ij-ovoi^ eTricocreK enoiovvTo oi 

 Tpirjpdp^ai ov-)(t ^e irdai toI^ eperai^. It appears that all the oars were longest at the middle 

 of the ship. For though the oar-blades touched the water in the same line, the trireme was 

 broader in the middle, the thranus was longer there, and the rower sat farther from the side. 

 This is clear from what Galen says, when he compares the oars to the fingers of the human 

 hand when clenched (de usu partium corporis humani, I. 24, Vol. iii. p. 85, Kuhn) : KaOdirep 

 oi/xai Kav Tats Tpitjpecri Ta ireipara twv kcottoov eis tcrov e^iKveiTai kui toi y ovv ovk tcrwv 

 diraaoov ovawv, Kal yap ovv kuksi tos jueffas (leyieTTas- Aristotle makes a similar comparison 

 (de partibus animalium, iv. 10, ^ 27 : 6 /xeaoi [5a/cTuXoj] fiuKpos, uxnrep Kiiirt] fieaovewi) ; and 

 he enters more fully into the subject in his Mechanica, c. 4, where he answers the question : 

 Ota Ti o\ fxeaoveoi (xakiaTa xjyi/ vavv Kivovatv ; by referring to the principle of the lever — 

 though he takes the water as the weight and the rowlock as the fulcrum — and having asserted 

 the principle, he says : kv neari oe Trj vrfi irXelcTTov rfj^ Konrri's evros ea-riv' kui yap r; i/avs 

 TavTri evpvTUTrj effxtV, wcrre TrXeiov eir a/n(poTepa ei/oe^ea^at /mepo^ rijs koSttt)^ eKarepov 



