Note 2 — Chapter XI · SAMOS.

“The real battle now raged fiercely. Rushing forward with loud shouts, the Samian galleys and our own dashed impetuously into each others ranks, so that every Attic ship attacked, every Samian one defended itself, on both sides. If the Samian vessels resembled menacing swine’s snouts, ours looked like sea-serpents, nimbly winding between these snouts and dealing fatal bites on the right and left. In the closer order, the terrible engines of war began to play from ship to ship, catapults and scorpions2 hurling missiles, and the horrible dolphins, long beams tipped with blocks of metal, which raised above the hostile vessel, by a well-calculated fall shattered the mast or crushed the deck, and holding the ship like an iron grapple, made it the prey of the assailant. While the attention of the crew of a hostile galley was occupied by a shower of arrows that covered its deck, light boats swarmed around it below, whose crews shattered its oars with axes.