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ing of birds, by visions, or in dreams. Now we may presume that the gods are more inclined to illuminate the minds of such as consult them not only in urgent necessities, but who at all times, and when no dangers threaten them, render them all the homage and adoration of which they are capable.

It was worthy of this great man to give the most important of instructions to his son Gryllus, to whom he addresses the treatise we mention, and who, according to the common opinion, was appointed to discipline the Athenian cavalry.

SECTION IV.

Of maritime affairs, fleets, and naval forces.

If the Athenians were inferior to the Lacedæmonians in cavalry, they had infinitely the advantage over them in naval affairs; and we have seen their skill in that department make them masters at sea, and give them a great superiority over all the other states of Greece. As this subject is very necessary to the understanding many passages in history, I shall treat it rather more extensively than I have other matters, and shall make great use of what the learned Father Don Bernard de Montfaucon has said of it in his books upon antiquity.

The principal parts of a ship were the prow or head, the poop or stern, and the middle, called in Latin carina, the hulk or waist.

The PROW was the part which projected beyond the waist or belly of the ship: it was generally adorned with paintings and different sculptures of gods, men, or animals. The beak, called rostrum, lay lower, and level with the water: it was a piece of timber which projected from the prow, armed with a spike of brass, and sometimes of iron. The Greeks termed it ußonov.

The other end of the ship, opposite to the prow, was called the POOP. There the pilot sat and held the helm, which was an oar longer and larger than the rest.

The WAIST was the hollow of the vessel, or the hold.

The ships were of two kinds. The one were rowed with oars, which were ships of war; the other carried sails, and were vessels of burden, intended for commerce and transports. Both of them sometimes made use of oars and sails together, but that very rarely. The ships of war are also very often called long ships by authors, and by that name distinguished from vessels of burden.

The long ships were farther divided into two species: those which were called actuariæ naves, and were very light vessels, like our brigantines; and those called only long ships. The first were usually termed open ships, because they had no decks. Of these light vessels there were some larger than ordinary, of which some had 20, some 30, and others 40 oars, half on one side, and half on the other, all on the same line.

The long ships, which were used in war, were of two sorts. Some

had only one rank of oars on each side; the others 2, 3, 4, 5, or a greater number, as far as 40; but these last were rather for show than use.

The long ships of one rank of oars were called aphracti; that is to say, uncovered, and had no decks; this distinguished them from the cataphracti, which had decks. They had only small platforms to stand on, at the head and stern, in the time of action.

The ships most commonly used in the battles of the ancients, were those which carried from three to five rauks or benches of oars, and were called triremes and quinqueremes.

It is a great question, and has given occasion for abundance of learned dissertations, how these benches of oars were disposed. Some will have it, that they were placed at length, like the ranks of oars in the modern galleys. Others maintain, that the benches of the biremes, triremes, quinqueremes, and so on to the number of 40 in some vessels, were one above another. To support this last opinion, innumerable passages are cited from ancient authors, which seem to leave no manner of doubt in it, and are considerably corroborated by the evidence of Trajan's pillar, which represents these ranks one above another. Father Montfaucon, however, avers, that all the persons of greatest skill in naval affairs whom he had consulted, declared, that the thing conceived in that manner seemed to them utterly impossible. But reasoning is a weak proof against the experience of so many ages, confirmed by so many authors. It is true, that in admitting these ranks of oars to be disposed perpendicularly one above another, it is not easy to comprehend how they could be worked; but in the biremes and triremes of Trajan's pillar, the lower ranks are placed obliquely, and as it were rising by degrees.

In ancient times ships with several ranks of oars were not known: they made use of long ships, in which the rowers, however numerous they were, worked all upon the same line. Such was the fleet which the Greeks sent against Troy.* It was composed of 1200 sail, among which the galleys of Boeotia had each 120 men, and those of Philoctetes 50; and this no doubt denotes the greatest and smallest vessels. Their galleys had no decks, but were built like common boats; which is still practised, says Thucydides, by the pirates, to prevent their being so soon discovered at a distance.

The Corinthians are said to have been the first who changed the form of ships;† and instead of simple galleys made vessels with three ranks, in order to add, by increasing the number of oars, to the swiftness and impetuosity of their motion. Their city, advantageously situated between two seas, was well adapted for commerce, and served as a staple for merchandise. After their example, the inhabitants of Corcyra, and the tyrants of Sicily, equipped also many galleys of three benches, a little before the war against the

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Persians. It was about the same time that the Athenians, animated by the forcible exhortations of Themistocles, who foresaw the war which soon after broke out, built ships of the same form, though even then the deck did not reach the whole length of the vessel; and from thenceforth they applied themselves to naval affairs with incredible ardour and success.

The beak of the prow (rostrum) was that part of the vessel of which most use was made in sea-fights. Ariston of Corinth* persuaded the Syracusans, when their city was besieged by the Athenians, to make their prows lower and shorter; which advice gained them the victory. For the prows of the Athenian vessels being very high and very weak, their beaks struck only the parts above water, and for that reason did little damage to the enemy's ships; whereas those of the Syracusans, whose prows were strong and low, and their beaks level with the water, often sunk, at a single blow, the triremes of the Athenians.

Two sorts of people served on board these galleys. The one were employed in steering and working the ship, who were the rowers, remiges, and the mariners, nauta. The rest were soldiers intended for the fight, and are denoted in Greek by the word ἐπίβαται. This distinction did not prevail in the early times, when the same persons rowed, fought, and did all the necessary work of the ship, and this was also not wholly disused in later days. For Thucydides,t in describing the arrival of the Athenian fleet at the small island of Sphacteria, observes, that only the rowers of the lowest bench remained in the ships, and that the rest went on shore with their arms.

1. The condition of the rowers was very hard and laborious. I have already said that the rowers, as well as mariners, were all citizens and freemen, and not slaves or foreigners, as in these days. The rowers were distinguished by their several stages. The lower rank were called thalamitæ, the middle zugita, and the highest thranita. Thucydides remarks, that the latter had greater pay than the rest, because they worked with longer and heavier oars than those of the lower benches. It seems that the crew, in order to pull in concert, and with greater regularity, were sometimes guided by the singing of a man, and sometimes by the sound of an instrument; and this grateful harmony served not only to regulate the motion of their oars, but to diminish and sooth their toil.

It is a question amongst the learned, whether there was only one man to every ear in these great ships, or several, as in the galleys of these days.-What Thucydides observes concerning the pay of the thranitæ, seems to imply that they worked single. For if others

†Thucyd. 1. iv. p. 275.

*Diod. 1. xiii. p. 141. Musicam natura ipsa videtur ad tolerandos faciliùs labores veluti muneri nobis dedisse. Siquidem et remiges cantus hortatur ; nec solùm in iis operibus, in quibus plurium conatus præeunte aliquâ jucundâ voce conspirat, sed etiam singulorum fatigatio quamlibet se rudi modulatione solatur. Quintil. 1. i. c. 10.

had shared the work with them, wherefore had they greater pay given them than those who managed an oar alone, as the latter had as much, and perhaps more of the labour than they? Father Montfaucon believes that in the vessels of more than five ranks there might be several men to one oar.

He who took care of the whole crew, and commanded the vessel, was called nauclerus, and was the principal officer. The second was the pilot, gubernator; his place was in the poop, where he held the helm in his hand, and steered the vessel. His skill consisted in knowing the coasts, ports, rocks, shoals, and especially the winds and stars; for before the invention of the compass, the pilot had nothing to direct him during the night but the stars.

2. The soldiers who fought in the ships were armed almost in the same manner with the land forces. There was no fixed number. The Athenians,* at the battle of Salamis, had 180 vessels, and in each of them eighteen fighting men, four of whom were archers, and the rest heavy-armed troops. The officer who commanded these soldiers was called rgingagxos, and the commander of the whole fleet, ναύαρχος στρατηγός.

We cannot exactly ascertain the number of soldiers, mariners, and rowers, that served on board each ship; but it generally amounted to 200, more or less, as appears from Herodotus's estimate of the Persian fleet in the time of Xerxes, and in other places where mention is made of that of the Greeks. I mean here the great vessels, the triremes, which were the species most in use.

The pay of those who served in these ships varied very much at different times. When the younger Cyrus arrived in Asia,† it was but three oboli, which was half a drachma, or five-pence; and the treaty between the Persians and Lacedæmonians was concluded at that rate; which gives reason to believe that the usual pay was three oboli. Cyrus, at Lysander's request, added a fourth, which made sixpence-halfpenny a day. It was often raised to a whole drachma, about ten-pence French. In the fleet fitted out against Sicily, the Athenians gave a drachma a day to the troops. The sum of sixty talents, which the people of Egesta advanced to the Athenians monthly for the maintaining of sixty ships,¶ shows that the pay of each vessel for a month amounted to a talent, that is to say, to about 1407.; which supposes that each ship's company consisted of 200 men, each of whom received a drachma, or ten-pence, a day. As the officers' pay was higher, the republic perhaps either furnished the overplus, or it was deducted out of the total of the sum advanced for a vessel, by abating something in the pay of the pri

vate men.

The same may be said of the land troops as has been said of the *Plut. in Themist. p. 119. Xenoph. Hist. 1. i. p. 441. This treaty stipulated that the Persians should pay thirty minæ a month for each ship, which was half a talent: the whole amounted to three oboli a day for every man that served on board.

Thucyd. 1. vi. p. 431.

About 8,4002. sterling

Thucyd. 1. vi. p. 415.

seamen, except that the cavalry had double their pay. It appears that the ordinary pay of the foot was three oboli a day, and that it was augmented according to times and occasions. Thimbron the Lacedæmonian, when he marched against Tissaphernes, promised a darick a month to each soldier, two to a captain, and four to the colonels. Now a darick a month is four oboli a day. The younger Cyrus, to animate his troops, who were disheartened by the idea of a too long march, instead of one darick, promised one and a half to each soldier, which amounted to a drachma, or ten-pence French, a day.

It may be asked how the Lacedæmonians, whose iron coin, the only species current amongst them, would pass no where else, could maintain armies by sea and land; and where they found money for their subsistence. It is not to be doubted but they raised it, as the Athenians did, by contributions from their allies, and still more from the cities to which they gave liberty and protection, or from those they had conquered from their enemies. Their second fund for paying their fleet and armies was the aids which they drew from the king of Persia, as we have seen on several occasions.

SECTION V.

Peculiar character of the Athenians.

Plutarch will furnish us with almost all the leading features upon this head. Every body knows how well he succeeds in copying nature in his portraits, and how well calculated he was to trace the character of a people, whose genius and manners he had studied with so profound an attention.

I. The people of Athens, says Plutarch, are easily provoked to anger, and as easily induced to resume sentiments of benevolence and compassion. History supplies us with an infinity of examples of this kind: the sentence of death passed against the inhabitants of Mitylene, and revoked the next day: the condemnation of the ten generals, and that of Socrates,-both followed with an immediate repentance and the most lively grief.

II. They are better pleased with forming a prompt decision, and almost guessing at the result of an affair, than with giving themselves leisure to be informed in it thoroughly, and in all its extent.

Nothing is more surprising than this circumstance in their character, which it is very hard to conceive, as it seems almost incredible. Artificers, husbandmen, soldiers, mariners, are generally a heavy kind of people, and very dull in their conceptions; but the people of Athens were of a quite different turn. They had naturally a penetration, vivacity, and even delicacy of wit, that surprises us.

* Xenoph Exped. Cyr. L vii. † Plut. de præcept. reip. ger. p. 793. † Ο δῆμος ̓Ανθηναίων εὐκίνητός ἐστι προς ὀργὴν, εὐμετάθετος πρὸς ἔλεον. Μᾶλλον ὀξέως ὑπονοεῖν, ἢ διδάσκεσθαι καθ ̓ ἡσυχίαν βουλόμενος.

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