respect were these galleys larger, if we may not increase their freeboard? And where are we to place their banks in excess of five?” He goes on to say the difficulty is increased in the case of the sixteen banked galley: "We may take it that, as ten feet of freeboard represent ten banks, sixteen feet will be needed for the sixteen banks (see Torr, p. 21). An oar fifty feet long might perhaps be pulled from this height by six men, as in the French galley. But here we are brought up by the fact that there is no trace of a suggestion that oars in the ancient galleys were ever pulled by more than one man to each oar. In this all-round strain, in this conflict of impossibilities and inadmissibilities, something has got to give way. But what? Which is the line of least resistance? "Let us look over the main points: "(1) There can be no doubt as to size; the sixteenbanked galley was of almost unmanageable bulk.' (2) This large galley which Mr. Torr, not without reason, conjectures to have had a freeboard of sixteen feet, was propelled by one-man oars. This is as little open to discussion. "(3) Therefore we must look for the solution in the method of handling the oars." Thus far Mr. Marks, but what was the method of handling the oars? I have said with a much more vertical stroke than we have been used to suppose, a stroke in fact in these large vessels which is comparable rather with that of a levered paddle than of an oar. The De re Navali' of Lazari Bayfii indicates in illustrations some traditions of such a mode of propulsion even to rowers facing the bow. The trireme of the Acropolis, as I have shown, depresses the zygite and thalamite oars. This system, if necessary for the trireme, must have applied with greater necessity to larger ships. We have spoken of not alone sixteen banks, but of forty; there must have been some special arrangement and rating in these cases. I suggest, is it to be found in some enlargement of the outside gallery or parados? This cannot in all cases have been no wider than six inches as allowed by Graser. In the trireme it FIG. 7. SHIP OF ESCULAPIUS PONS FABRICIUS must have been wider than that, which would have only represented an enlarged gunwale. In larger vessels it must have been wide enough to allow of the passage of groups of oars through its flooring or cantilevers. This is actually shown in the illustrations to the De re Navali' of Lazari Bayfii, and seems to me to be much more probably based on tradition than a mere invention. If such an arrangement be recognised as feasible, even thirty or forty banks of rowers become possible, but it must be allowed that the rating is no longer longitudinal, but transverse. If it be argued that there is no illustrative evidence of the possibility of the rowing of such large ships, one must ask with renewed interest, what is the FIG. 8. AND VERTICAL OARS. P. H. Newman, inv. and del. meaning of that monumental ship of stone* that was on the island of the Tiber reached by the "Ponte quattro capi," formerly the Pons Fabricius, and the Pons Cestius of republican times? In this vessel (serving as a buttress of a bridge) the projecting gallery from the ship, as shown in an engraving, is capable of supporting a host of men who could work oars vertically dropped through the spaces of the cantilevers and at no great height from the water. But whether the stone ship carried a projection of this width or not its occurrence in an illustration points to some derivative; the substratum of truth is confirmed by other illustrations. A gallery or parados is visible on coins as well as in the Basle book of Bayfii. Jal says, in his Archéologie Navale,' that he does not believe in the great Egyptian galley of Philopater as described by Calixenes or Athenaeus. Indeed, he does not seem to admit as practicable any vessel with more than two ordines of rowers; but then it must be remembered that the sculptured fragment of the Acropolis he had not seen. It was not discovered till 1852. Jal's book was published in 1840, in which he says: "Je crois fermement que jus'que jour ou un Helleniste habile aura par une étude speciale fixé, dois je dire deviné? Les sens des mots de la langue maritimes Greques et Roman restera in Query: Was this stone ship on the island erected in commemoration of that vessel of sixteen banks expressly mentioned in the treaty of the Romans with the Macedonians, 197 B.C.? Her arrival in the Tiber was-as Mr. Torr reminds us-“a memorable event, she afterwards gave her name to one of the docks in Rome." The treaty is cited by Polybius, xviii, 27. Plutarch describes the ship's arrival, |