4. Every galley, from the unireme to the quinquereme inclusive, derived its name or class from the number of horizontal rows.
5. All galleys, above a quinquereme, were likewise classed according to the number of rows. In their case, however, the oblique rows were counted; but, in all cases, from the smallest to the largest, including Ptolemy’s tesseracontoros, each row, whether oblique or horizontal, was a distinct bank of oars, which, like the number of guns, wherever they were placed, in wooden men-of-war, constituted the only basis for their classification.
6. The portion of the galley appropriated to the rowers and their oars was as separate from the other portions of the vessel as is the machinery of a paddle-wheel steamer. The rowers, also, like modern engineers and stokers, were entirely distinct from the seamen and marines; and among them were leaders and crack rowers, who were as indispensable to get the galley under way and keep the rest of the rowers in time as are the engineers of our own day, who start and keep the machinery in proper working order.
In a word, the row-galley constituted the steamship of the ancients, as distinguished from their sailing vessels. She had sails to aid her progress when the winds were fair, as a steamer now has, but the one depended on her oars as much as the other now does upon her machinery; and, however vast the improvements, there is really no difference in principle between the galley of the ancients and the steamship of to-day. In practice they are the same, except that steam is substituted for manual labour. An oar is a paddle, and the blades of the oars fastened together, like the spokes round the axle of a wheel, and projecting into the water, constitute the paddle-wheel of modern times.
FOOTNOTES:
[372] Hom. Il. ii. 510. Od. xii. 409, &c.
[373] Plin. vii. 207, cf. Cic. ad Attic. xvi. 4. The biremis was often a little boat managed by two oars. Horat. iii. 29, 62. Lucan, viii. 562.
[374] Thucyd. i. c. 13.
[375] Athen. v. 37.
[376] Polyb. in Excerpt.