HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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ordines, et remigum gradus terms which many critics will not suffer us toapply in any other sense than as signifying so many distinct rows, or tiers ofoars. This explanation is, indeed, strongly confirmed by the collateral dictionand phrases used by the ancient poets and others. Virgil in particular thusexpresses himself in the fifth ^Eneid :—

“ Ingentemque Gyas (agit') ingenti moli chimteramUrbis opus, triplici pubes quam Dardana versuImpellunt, trino consurgunt ordine remi.”

The learned insist, with much peremptoriness, that the vessel above describedwas a mere Trireme; but to this assertion it must be objected, that to call it achimaera, an ingens moles , would have been a ridiculously affected, and pompousphrase in so great a poet, which it can scarcely be supposed he could have used.As to what the term terni ordines appears to imply, it cannot be by any meansestablished on the boasted evidence of coins and ancient sculpture, that anyvessel had more than three complete and perfect rows of oars, so that, grantingto antiquarians those points they insist on as positive evidence, the distinguishingterms of Quadriremes and upwards, must be referred to some other regulationsthan the tiers of oars, or to certain particulars relative to construction, withwhich points, moderns are not as yet very accurately acquainted.

It is rather a singular circumstance, that, as has been already said, no coin,or piece of sculpture, at present existing, or of which the representation, orverbal description, has descended to the present time, conveys any proof of vesselshaving had more than three banks of oars—by far the greater part have only one.In proof of this, twelve Figures in Plate 2, are all of them representations,taken from coins, of ancient gallies, Phoenician, Grecian, and Roman, struck, asthe fashion and appearance may easily convince the greatest sceptic at a longinterval of time from each other, nevertheless, they wonderfully agree in thispoint. Fig. 13 and 14 are galleys of Sidon. Fig. 15 is the form of avessel taken from an Athenian coin. Fig. 16 a vessel of Chios; 17 and 18two differing very immaterially, in form from the rest, though belonging tosome country, the name of which is not, with any degree of authenticity,correctly known.

* The latter term, however, is perhaps not unsatisfactorily explained away by Yossius, and otherantiquarian commentators or researchers.

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