Note 486 — Chapter LI · FROM THE TROUBLES IN KORKYRA, IN THE FIFTH YEAR OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, DOWN TO THE END OF THE SIXTH YEAR.

Thucyd. iii, 98. The epibatæ, or soldiers serving on shipboard (marines), were more usually taken from the thetes, or the poorest class of citizens, furnished by the state with a panoply for the occasion,—not from the regular hoplites on the muster-roll. Maritime soldiery is, therefore, usually spoken of as something inferior: the present triremes of Demosthenês are noticed in the light of an exception (ναυτικῆς καὶ φαύλου στρατιᾶς, Thucyd. vi, 21).

So among the Romans, service in the legions was accounted higher and more honorable than that of the classiarii milites (Tacit. Histor. i, 87).

The Athenian epibatæ, though not forming a corps permanently distinct, correspond in function to the English marines, who seem to have been first distinguished permanently from other foot-soldiers about the year 1684. “It having been found necessary on many occasions to embark a number of soldiers on board our ships of war, and mere landsmen being at first extremely unhealthy,—and at first, until they had been accustomed to the sea, in a great measure unserviceable,—it was at length judged expedient to appoint certain regiments for that service, who were trained to the different modes of sea-fighting, and also made useful in some of those manœuvres of a ship where a great many hands were required. These, from the nature of their duty, were distinguished by the appellation of maritime soldiers, or marines.”—Grose’s Military Antiquities of the English Army, vol. i, p. 186. (London, 1786.)