Ships and Navies

[Jim Webster]

Technically, shouldn't we be treating hepteres as seven-? as the discussion is about whether it was oar banks or rowers (or whatever)

[Patrick Waterson]

We can if you like, Jim, though I would hate to have to write an article full of four-?s and five-?s and nine-?s and ten-?s; I feel we would soon all be at six-?es and seven-?s. 

Patrick

[Duncan Head]

You don't need the question-marks - is it Morrison who just refers to "fours", "fives", and so on? It avoids any assumptions about exactly what the number refers to.

[Erpingham]

This is because the reference is to the Battle of Mylae (36BC)

The reference is Appian Civil Wars 5, 106 (which Patrick will doubtless have to hand).  He'll be even more pleased that it revolves around Greek grammar.  What happens is Agrippa's flagship - rate unknown - hits the ship of one Papias (which is assumed to be a four).  Papias' ship rapidly floods.  The lower deck oarsmen (thalamioi) are trapped and drown but the other oarsmen (hoi heteroi) break through the deck and escape.  Apparently, others here specifically means others of two groups, not others of many, so she was a two tier ship.

The other reference is Livy20.25, 2-8 but as far as I can tell all this says is Roman fives were taller than Carthaginian fours, which could be for a number of reasons.

[Patrick Waterson]

Thanks, Anthony.

Although the battle is 5.106, the actual incident is 5.107:

[107] Agrippa bore down directly upon Papias and struck his ship under the bow, shattering it and breaking a hole in the keel. The men in the towers were shaken down, the water rushed into the ship, and all the oarsmen on the lower benches were cut off. The others broke through the deck and escaped by swimming.

In Greek, 'hoi heteroi' (hoi d'heteroi in the text, which is simply inserting de, 'but', to give 'but the others ...') simply means 'the others': it can mean 'one of two groups', but does not always have the sense of two equal groups (see Perseus lexicon entry, 'heteros' http://tinyurl.com/cmjwlr4).  I think adducing only two banks of oarsmen stretches the concept a bit far: if one wished to stretch with equal facility and less special pleading in the other direction, one could posit two banks of oarsmen being included in the word 'thalamiai', which in origin signifies the men within the 'thalamos', the lower part of the ship.  The Perseus translator has evidently already thought of this.

However nothing in the text identifies the ship as a quadrireme.  I looked back through the text in case a passing reference was made, but there seems to be nothing.

Curiously, Appian has Demochares in charge of the Pompeian contingent in 105 and Pappias in 106.

I am a bit puzzled about the Livy Book 20 reference, as Book 20 is one of the missing books.

Patrick

[Erpingham]

Thanks, Anthony.


I am a bit puzzled about the Livy Book 20 reference, as Book 20 is one of the missing books.

Patrick

A quick cross reference in another book by Morrison to the same incident seems to refer to Livy Book 30 .26. 6.  Does this make any more sense? 

[Patrick Waterson]

Unfortunately not.  Livy is mentioning that despite flooding food was cheap, because a great quantity of grain had been sent from Spain,

and Marcus Valerius Falto and Marcus Fabius Buteo, the curule aediles, distributed this to the populace by precincts at four asses a peck.

If this has been mistaken for a reference to quadriremes, it argues rather poor attention on Morrison's part!

In XXX.26.2-4 Livy is telling us about envoys sent to Philip of Macedon in three quinqueremes to complain about his sending 4,000 troops to help the Carthaginians, but that is as close to the sea as this chapter in Livy gets.

Patrick

[Patrick Waterson]

A source that may have some bearing on the matter is Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, XIX.23.

"Biremes (biremis) are ships having a double bank of oars (remus).  Triremes (triremis) and quadriremes (quadriremis) have three and four banks.  The penteris and hexeris have five and six banks respectively."

Location: http://tinyurl.com/9m9e9bf

Would anyone be in a position to check Isidore's Latin?

Patrick

[Andreas Johansson]

Thanks to the wonders of Google and The Latin Library:

Biremes autem naves sunt habentes remorum ordinem geminum. Triremes et quadriremes trium et quattuor ordinum. Sic et penteres et (h)exeres, quinos vel senos ordines habentes.

[Patrick Waterson]

Thanks, Andreas. 

Crucially, Isidore uses 'ordines remorum' (banks of oars).  This agrees with Livy's 'pluribus ordinibus remorum' (more banks of oars) in XXVIII.30.11, which puts Isidore in the one-man-one-oar camp.  He was writing in the 6th-7th century AD, presumably long after the last polyreme had been broken up for firewood, but before the multi-man-oared mediaeval galleys came into existence.

We may exclude the possibility that Isidore or Livy are referring to benches of oarsmen: 'oarsman' is 'remex, remigius', while 'oar' is 'remus, remi', and 'remorum' is the genitive plural of 'remus', not 'remex' (the latter would be 'remigum'). 

This looks like two classical authorities unambiguously declaring in favour of polyremes having multiple banks of oars - and none against.  I think we could be on to something here.

Patrick

[Jim Webster]

How good was Isidore's latin. I ask because some of the later authors were apparently pretty poor
Also is it possible he was just lifting stuff he'd read from Livy (or some other source) ?

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

Isidore actually defined Latin for his generation (his 'Etymologiae' consists largely of Latin etymology).  From what I have seen, and I was fully prepared to be unimpressed, he is surprisingly good at it.

Patrick

[Jim Webster]

I was just wondering, the other thing I'd wonder about was his sources.

Jim

[Andreas Johansson]

Also is it possible he was just lifting stuff he'd read from Livy (or some other source) ?

As Patrick says, he was writing long after n-remes went out of use, so if he had reliable information he must've got it from earlier authors (archaeology basically not existing in his day).

Alternatively, he might simply have concluded that a triremis "must" mean a ship with three banks of oars, based on the constituent stems. This would be quite in keeping with his general methodology, as I understand it.

Or maybe he read somewhere that, say, a trireme had three banks, and adroitly leapt to the conclusion that a quadrireme must have four, and so on. This would be logical enough, but as I wrote earlier I'm loth to take for granted that logic is necessarily applicable in numerical naming schemes - I've been involved in a few where the significance of the number changed along the way.

[tadamson]

Thanks, Andreas. 

Crucially, Isidore uses 'ordines remorum' (banks of oars).  This agrees with Livy's 'pluribus ordinibus remorum' (more banks of oars) in XXVIII.30.11, which puts Isidore in the one-man-one-oar camp.  He was writing in the 6th-7th century AD, presumably long after the last polyreme had been broken up for firewood, but before the multi-man-oared mediaeval galleys came into existence.

We may exclude the possibility that Isidore or Livy are referring to benches of oarsmen: 'oarsman' is 'remex, remigius', while 'oar' is 'remus, remi', and 'remorum' is the genitive plural of 'remus', not 'remex' (the latter would be 'remigum'). 

This looks like two classical authorities unambiguously declaring in favour of polyremes having multiple banks of oars - and none against.  I think we could be on to something here.

Patrick

Whilst I agree with Patrick that ordines remorum (row, lines or types of oars; banks is a modern term) shows that these authors  see a 5 with 5 identifiable sets of oars etc...  Isidore certainly never saw a polyreme and may well be using Livy (or others) as the source of his definition. Most historians agree that Livy was not a military man, he is noted for mistakes in military terminology etc.  It is entirely possible that he is repeating assumptions that have been made by people who never saw the polyremes. vis a '5' must be called that because it had 5 lines of oars.

I am, naturally, biased by the engineering  - 5 or more banks of oars is physically extremely difficult to do and 7+ mechanically impossible (the ratio between length of oar, position of pivot point, sweep distances and the power one man can provide are the killer factors) .  There have been designs that stagger the banks but you end up with almost the same number of oars as a 3 the same length.

Tom..