Before Chrift 700. 31 



ing the ifthmus between two inlets of the fca, whereby Greece is al- 

 moft cut afunder, poflefled a mofl: commanding fituation for fuch. a 

 trade. Indeed the obvious advantage of having harbours in two feas, 

 wliereby Italy and Afia were equally acceflible to them, appears to 

 have induced the Corinthians in very early times to turn their attention 

 to commerce and navigation ; for we learn from Thucydides, that foon 

 after the Trojan war they kept up fome naval force for protedling their 

 trade againft pirates : and there is reafon to believe, that they were dif- 

 tinguifhed by fome degree of opulence, even in that age, or at leaft in 

 Homer's time, as in his catalogue of the Grecian forces he bellows up- 

 on Corinth the epithet of the wealthy, which it retained through all the 

 viciHitudes of its fortune, at leafl till the firfl century of the Chriftian 

 sera. \_Strabo, L. v\n,p. 586.] Befides the profit of their own trade, the 

 Corinthians had a very conliderable advantage by landing goods in the 

 one harbour and re-fhipping them in the other, which, Strabo fays, was 

 a common pradlice : and they alfo levied a duty upon all goods carried 

 by land through their territories. 



700 — The Corinthians have the credit of having introduced in Greece 

 a mofl important improvement in the conflrudion of fhips or gallies of 

 war, by fubftituting for the fmall, and very narrow vefTels with one tire 

 of oars on each fide, hitherto ufed, a larger and loftier kind, called 

 trieres or triremes, which were worked by three tires, or rows, of oars 

 on each fide *. It cannot be doubted, that this improvement in their 



* The nature of the antient fliips or gallies, fifty decks, of wliich, even the miJdIe one, in or- 



called triremes, quadriremes, quinqueremcs, isfc. has der to allow fufficient voom lor tlie lengtli and 



exercifed the induftry of many learned men, who, fweep or revolution of the enormous oars in the 



being genei?lly unacquainted with naval affairs, infide of the veflel, mufl have been vaftly higher 



have run into fome very grofs abfurdities. than the topgallant mall of a modern tirft-ratc 



The literal meaning of trirernii feems to be a fliip. 



vefFel with three oars, or with three oars on each Another fuppofition has been, that the antient 



fide : but no fuch interpretation is adniiffible ; be- gallies were called triremes from having three men 



caufe it is known, that in very early times the to each oar, quadriremes from foiu', and fo on to 



Phosnicians had veflels of fifty oars, in one of which the highell rate. In fupport of this hypothefis it 



Inachus is faid to have arrived in Greece ; and be- may be alleged, that the famous quadraginlaremis 



caufe the triremes, now firll conftruC^ed, or now firft of Ptolemy Philopator is thus accounted for by 



introduced in Greece, by the Corinthians, mull fuppofing fifty oars with 40 men to each, which 



have been veflels uiperior to all that had ever been thus require 2,000 men ; and a fecond fet, or 



feen hitherto. watch, to relieve them, makes 4,000, the number 



The mod general fuppofition has been, that the of rowers, which, according to Athenxus, ac- 

 triremts had three tires of oars, the tires being tually belonged to that great floating palace. The 

 perpendicularly above each other, like the three ordinei remorim raifed above each other, frequent- 

 tires of guns in a modern (liip of t'ne firfl rate, the ly mentioned by the Roman writers, are fuppofed 

 quadriremes four tires, and fo on. But, admitting to mean the railed benches, on which each rower, 

 (what perhaps no feaman will admit) the poflibi- according to his diftance from the fide, was ele- 

 lity of working three tires of oars fo placed, what vated above his next neighbour, agreeable to the 

 lliall we fay oi forty at ffty tires ? And (to fay angle formed by the oar with the furfacc of the 

 nothing of Pollux's hekatonteres, or Ihip of a hun- water. 



dred tires, which is furely fabuhms) there was The folution of this Gordian knot appears to 



certainly a quadragintaremis, and even, accordinor have been relerved for General Melville, governor- 



to Pliny, [[Zr. vii, c. 56] a quinquagmiaremis, or, general of Grenada and the other ceded illands, a 



agreeable to thin fuppofition, vefleU oi forty and gentleman, who, by having frequent occafion U) 



