it

moderate height above it. Experiments of a like character to that on the Tyne-side, alluded to, only tend to increase the difficulty of the question of propulsion of ancient ships by confusing the mise en scene of Salamis or Actium with that of Lepantoand for all question of solution the result is not worth the effort, as the matter remains exactly where it was. As an alternative to the foregoing fruitless mechanical zeal on such independent lines may be deemed worth while to go back, and, so to speak, sit at the feet of recognised authority, and de noro to endeavour to extract from written or other documents the truth at present unrevealed. To do this with any hope of success we must indeed go back to very early times, long, in fact, before triremes were thought of. Some of the earliest ships we know of are those in the Red Sea Fleet of an Egyptian Queen, supposedly 1700 B.C.; some of these vessels showing apertures as for two tiers of oars were necessarily Biremes. We need not go into the question here as to whether the Egyptians invented the bireme or that they derived it from the Phoenicians, who Herodotus tells us came from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Certainly no indication of bireme construction appears in the oldest representation of a naval battle, i. e. that of Rameses III at Medinet Habou, but it is immaterial to our purpose; it is sufficient to know that Phoenician biremes were in the Mediterranean, and though we know little enough about them, they were probably the pirate ships that Thucydides deplores as being the curse of the waters around Greece. These, unlike the ships of

commerce, did not depend upon their sails, but are propelled by oarsmen. Great speed was desired, as they were in all cases provided with a ram (in the form in some instances of an animal's head); they are, frankly, warships. Depicted on the vases, 600-700 B.C., and also on the coins, they indicate very clearly the nature of the navies in the eastern waters of the Mediterranean in early times, and before the introduction of the trireme. Ships were

decked, at least fore and aft, like the black ships of

Homer; the ram constituted their principal weapon of attack; the ends of the vessels generally towered up higher than the waist, the stern being frequently canopied ornamentally and afforded shelter to the steersmen and other officers. A vessel similar in type to these biremes is shown on an Assyrian carved slab from Koyunjik and cannot be later than 700 B.C. Now, it must be noted that these early ships had a gangway down the centre, for it will be remembered that Ulysses when passing Scylla went armed from stem to stern; Jason is said, moreover, to have handed Medea through his ship. There is no evidence that I have traced to show that these ships were double-banked, as in the arrangement of

an Italian galley; on the contrary, the principle of one man to an oar seems always in early times to have been observed. Dr. Warre is of the opinion that the narrowness of the vessels accounts for this.

The natural evolution of the trireme from these more ancient ships is easy to understand when weight and power are considered as essential to the efficacy of the ram, for ages the principal weapon of marine warfare; the more men who used the oars, the greater the force of the impact upon the enemy, and the greater the destruction wrought.

FIG. 2.

GRASER'S ARRANGEMENT OF ROWERS.

The first trireme is said to have been built in Corinth by Amiocles, a Samian, but whether there or in Phoenicia it was speedily adopted by the Athenians, who maintained a fleet in being by constant and continuous construction, and it is stated that they were able, from similarity in size, to interchange parts at will, a manifest advantage in effecting repairs.

The discovery in 1834 (during some excavations in the Piraeus) of the inventories of the Athenian dockyards has afforded information on many details of construction, but it is much to be regretted that the results were so fragmentary, the engraved slates having been used in late Roman times in the making

of a drain.*

As I have already stated, we are indebted to B. Graser, a disciple of Bockh, in his

work, De re Navali,' for calculations as to size,

*Enough remained, however, for the sagacious and erudite Bockh to elucidate many and unexpected details relative to parts and construction of the Greek ships.

tonnage, and arrangement of the Attic trireme, but De re Navali' was completed just at the time we were to learn from a work of Art more than Graser could derive for us from the texts. M. Lenormant, afterwards Curator of Classical Antiquities in the Louvre, discovered a sculptured representation of a trireme in the Acropolis at Athens. True, it is only the central portion-the ends are wanting-but there is enough to give us the best idea we yet have of the ancient ships that at Salamis, the Peloponnesian War, and at Syracuse were fated to play such an important part in Hellenic history. I will leave to others the fascinating task of connecting this piece of sculpture in some way with the chrys elephantine model presented to the Delphic Oracle, size would seem to favour the comparison, but I must not digress. M. Lenormant, I believe, deposited a cast of the trireme of the Acropolis in the École de Beaux Arts, Paris. Our late President, Sir Patrick Colquhoun, brought three to England; one I have seen at the Greenwich Museum, one he presented to the British Museum, and one he retained himself, and we have talked over it in his chambers in the Temple years ago. If one examines this fragment of sculpture or a photograph carefully, an observer will see that the rowers visible above the gallery or parados do not sit far in board, but close to the side. This should once for all dispose of the idea that the upper banks of oars were rowed from positions in or near the centre of the ship, so to obtain greater leverage. It will also be observed that the upper row, or thranite oars, do not lie over a gunwale; but, on the contrary,