36 



be found that from almost entire absence of proportion, and little regard to 

 perspective, no reliance can be placed on such delineations, for elucidat- 

 ing and explaining the details, of the rowing arrangements of the Galleys 

 of the ancients. In several medals we see the oars simply projecting 

 through small round orifices — a thing manifestly inconsistent with the 

 necessary power of letting the oar swing alongside, or even stowing it 

 on board, when at anchor, or under sail ; besides, we have many proofs 

 that the ancients worked their oars on a peg, "scalmus," with a loop, 

 or grommet, through which the oar was passed. The term "colligere 

 arma" was applied to the operation of stowing the oars, as well as to strik- 

 ing and stowing the mast and sail. (See Diagram D.) 



DIAGRAM D. 



In that elaborate work, " The Antiquities of Herculaneum," com- 

 piled by some of the most learned of the Italian Academicians of the last 

 century, there are (among many preposterous representations of ancient 

 Galleys) one or two, which greatly favour the opinion, that there was but 

 one range or deck of oars, and that the terms of trireme and quinquereme 

 applied to the number of men who handled each oar, — the only theory 

 which can be reconciled with practical results, and which was exempli- 

 fied in the French, Maltese, and Spanish Galleys of the seventeenth, and 

 early years of the eighteenth centuries. 



Having endeavoured in short compass, and we fear in a very imper- 

 fect manner, to expose the difficulties which attend any attempt to 

 reconcile the theory of banks of oars, one above the other, with the 

 practical use and requirements of the oar, we now proceed to the question 

 whether a solution may not be arrived at, by adopting the proposition (see 

 Diagram C) that the terms " trireme," "quinquereme," &c, meant 

 simply the number of men who handled each oar, and not a number of 

 banks or decks, one over the other, with one man to every oar. 



DIAGRAM C. 



e 



Scale, -|th of an inch to a foot. 



In the first place (taking the case of a trireme), an oar which would 



