PHILEBUS OF PLATO, ETC. 167 
expressed his anxiety to obtain some solution of the difficulty ; and 
he, in acknowledging my letter very politely, has condescended to 
express his satisfaction with my explanation. About a fortnight 
after the despatch of my letter, I received a very curious confirmation 
of this derivation, at least in part, from some remarks, which appeared 
in a following number of the Revue, by M. le Contre-Amiral Luigi 
Fincati, of the Italian navy, who has criticised M. de la Graviére’s 
statements. M. Fincati, speaking of the Venetian navy, says that 
the rowers were protected by vertical shields placed above the ‘‘arma- 
tures” (outriggers) on which the oars worked. These shields, he 
says, were successively called talamit, talari, ali and morti ; and the 
Qadapizns was so called, because he sat nearest to the talamii. M. 
Fineati’s view, although pronounced impracticable by the French 
Admiral, is remarkable. He maintains that, wntil the latter half of 
the 16th century, the war-ships of the Mediterranean were always, par 
excellence, triremes. The crew was composed of two hundred men; of 
whom one hundred and fifty were rowers, seated three and three on the 
twenty-five benches placed on either side of the vessel ; he thinks that 
these benches were arranged obliquely, and that each man had a 
separate oar ; so that the oars reached the water in groups of three, at 
intervals corresponding with the distance between the benches: but 
he adds that, about the middle of the 16th century, this arrsngement 
was altered, and the three men rowed with one oar. He cies as his 
authorities the Historie del mio tempo of Natal Conti, ths Armata 
Navale of Pantero Pantera, Cristoforo da Canale, and other writers 
- to which I have not access. However, the probabilities seem to be 
decidedly in favour of M. de la Graviére, who is even less disposed 
to allow the possibility of this arrangement than of the old one. 
Just imagine what would happen, with three men on a bench, each 
having a good long oar in his hand, if one of them chanced to “catch 
a crab,” or was knocked over at a critical moment! his swinging oar 
would throw the whole equipage into a state of disastrous confusion. 
In one of the early numbers of the Revue, M. de la Graviére mentions 
the fact that the Maritime Statutes, of the 14th century, speak of the 
galleys as armatae ad tres remos ad banchum “equipped for three oars 
to a bench ;’ and such passages as this are, in all probability, the 
source of what I cannot help calling the error of M. Fincati and his 
authorities. Barras de la Penne has warned us that we must not 
suffer ourselves to be misled by the word remus. And, besides, a 
passage from Zosimus (flor. A.D. 420) which has otten been cited 
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