HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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board works were frequently inlaid with ivory; and, if we may credit the hyper-bolical description of the ancients, have been sometimes studded with preciousgems. The sails were not uncommonly striped with various colours : and,more particularly on board the admirals or commanding gallies, they wereentirely purple, which appearing to have been the colour esteemed the mostsumptuous, was consequently most in estimation on such occasions. Such, fromthe testimony of Athenaeus, were those of Alcibiades, and, from that of manyother authors, of Cleopatra also. Flame coloured sails were occasionally infashion ; as were, particularly in the time of Alexander, those formed out ofmaterials tinged with different dies, which being seen in varied directions, pro-duced a changeable appearance like the silks of modern invention, and recentuse. This species of splendor was in some instances carried to a still higherextent than has been already pointed out. In the time of Trajan, it was notuncommon to have the name of the emperor embroidered on the sails in goldor silver; and the use of a kind of tissue, in which those valuable metals wereintroduced, was no less frequent.

That the general costume might be equally magnificent in all its parts, theoars, particularly of the Praetorian, or admiral gallies, were most generallygilt, and the rigging formed of painted or coloured ropes : a multitude of suchexamples being related by Plutarch, Athenaeus, Maximus Tyrius, and others.They are, however, of little other use than to shew, that ancient folly is notsurpassed by modern frivolity,. and attention to exterior ; but that if the expen-sive and cumbrous ornaments, with which the ships of all maritime powerswere decorated at the commencement of the eighteenth century, be condemnedas an act of unnecessary, and even inconvenient extravagance, the system isby no means a new one, the same censure having been equally well meritedtwenty centuries since.

Attentive, however, as the ancients might be to external magnificence, even onboard vessels intended merely for war, they appear to have been by no means neg-lectful of every contrivance human ingenuity could suggest, in aid of the naturalpowers of man, when directed either in offence against his enemy, or in resist-ance of his attack. Among the most simple, and consequently the most ancientof these happily destructive contrivances, is the asser, or lever, the form anduse of which is described by Vegetius in the following terms:—“ Trabs subtilisac longa, ad similitudinem antennae, pendet in malo, utroque capite ferrato.Hanc sive a dextra, sive a sinistra parte adversariorum se junxerint naves,Vol. I. R pro