Note 341 — Chapter XLIX · FROM THE BEGINNING OE THE SECOND YEAR DOWN TO THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
Reading edition
See Dr. Arnold’s note upon this passage of Thucydidês, respecting the keleustês and his functions: to the passages which he indicates as reference, I will add two more of Plautus, Mercat. iv, 2, 5, and Asinaria, iii, 1, 15.
When we conceive the structure of an ancient trireme, we shall at once see, first, how essential the keleustês was, to keep the rowers in harmonious action,—next, how immense the difference must have been between practised and unpractised rowers. The trireme had, in all, one hundred and seventy rowers, distributed into three tiers. The upper tier, called thranitæ, were sixty-two in number, or thirty-one on each side: the middle tier, or zygitæ, as well as the lowest tier, or thalamitæ, were each fifty-four in number, or twenty-seven on each side. Besides these, there were belonging to each trireme a certain number, seemingly about thirty, of supplementary oars (κῶπαι περινέω), to be used by the epibatæ, or soldiers, serving on board, in case of rowers being killed, or oars broken. Each tier of rowers was distributed along the whole length of the vessel, from head to stern, or at least along the greater part of it; but the seats of the higher tiers were not placed in the exact perpendicular line above the lower. Of course, the oars of the thranitæ, or uppermost tier, were the longest: those of the thalamitæ, or lowest tier, the shortest: those of the zygitæ, of a length between the two. Each oar was rowed only by one man. The thranitæ, as having the longest oars, were most hardly worked and most highly paid. What the length of the oars was, belonging to either tier, we do not know, but some of the supplementary oars appear to have been about fifteen feet in length.
What is here stated, appears to be pretty well ascertained, chiefly from the inscriptions discovered at Athens a few years ago, so full of information respecting the Athenian marine,—and from the most instructive commentary appended to these inscriptions by M. Boeckh, Seewesen der Athener, ch. ix, pp. 94, 104, 115. But there is a great deal still, respecting the equipment of an ancient trireme, unascertained and disputed.
Now there was nothing but the voice of the keleustês to keep these one hundred and seventy rowers all to good time with their strokes. With oars of different length, and so many rowers, this must have been no easy matter, and apparently quite impossible, unless the rowers were trained to act together. The difference between those who were so trained and those who were not, must have been immense. We may imagine the difference between the ships of Phormio and those of his enemies, and the difficulty of the latter in contending with the swell of the sea,—when we read this description of the ancient trireme.
About two hundred men, that is to say, one hundred and seventy rowers and thirty supernumeraries, mostly epibatæ or hoplites serving on board, besides the pilot, the man at the ship’s bow, the keleustês, etc., probably some half dozen officers, formed the crew of a trireme: compare Herodot. viii, 17; vii, 184, where he calculates the thirty epibatæ over and above the two hundred. Dr. Arnold thinks that, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the epibatæ on board an Athenian trireme were no more than ten: but this seems not quite made out: see his note on Thucyd. iii, 95.
The Venetian galleys in the thirteenth century were manned by about the same number of men. “Les galères Vénitiens du convoi de Flandre devaient être montées par deux cent hommes libres, dont 180 rameurs, et 12 archers. Les arcs ou balistes furent préscrits en 1333 pour toutes les galères de commerce armées.” (Depping, Histoire du Commerce entre le Levant et l’Europe, vol. i, p. 163.)