As the galleys of the ancients must have varied very much in their capacity and dimensions, it would be more reasonable to suppose that, from the unireme to the quinquereme inclusive, they derived their names from the number of oars placed horizontally over each other, rather than from the number of oblique rows as suggested by Mr. Howell. That is to say, though a trireme bore that name because she had three tiers of oars placed thus:—
she was, nevertheless, still a trireme, if she had four, five, ten, or even twenty oblique rows of oar-ports, only she would be a trireme of a larger size, just as we have or had frigates—single-decked vessels, which have varied in size from 600 to 6,000 tons. A trireme might therefore be a much more powerful vessel than a quadrireme or quinquereme. On a similar principle, a quadrireme would have four horizontal tiers of oars, as follows:—
but, as in the case of the trireme, she would still be a quadrireme, only of a larger size, if she had more than four oblique rows. There is, however, a limit beyond which oars could not be worked when placed over each other in any fashion. That limit would be reached at the fifth horizontal row, and, for the reasons already named, a sixth row, however obliquely placed—for obliquity has also its limits—would be useless. Therefore, while a quinquereme had five horizontal rows, and the same number of oblique rows, forming a quincunx thus:—
a galley must have acquired another name when she had more than five of these oblique rows. For instance, vessels with six oblique rows were, in our opinion, called hexiremes; with seven rows, septiremes; with eight rows, octoremes, and so forth; up to Ptolemy Philopator’s tesseracontoros. That the number of men placed on board the ships of the ancients was regulated, as at present, by the work they had to perform, and by the size of the ship, there can be no doubt; but the number of men had nothing in itself to do with the class or grade of the galley. In some triremes there may have been only fifty rowers, in others five hundred. Our theory does not require the number of men to harmonize with the number assigned by Polybius, Athenæus, and other authors, to differently-rated galleys. Thus, in the trireme, with the thirty oars and one hundred and fifty rowers, it would not be necessary to place five men at each oar, as Mr. Howell has proposed.
TRANSVERSE MIDSHIP-SECTION OF A QUINQUEREME.
Suggested plan of placing the rowers.