126

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

some enquiries respecting other instruments of warfare, as the et^ctyi ando-lStjqovy which have been sometimes known under the general name of corvt .These have a claim to notice in this place, as well on account of their connec-tion with the vessels of the ancients, as of the error by which they have beenconfounded with the invention of Duilius.

The use of grappling irons was of very antient date: they are said to havebeen originally employed by the Greeks, and seem to have been of two differentkinds, one of which was called x^xy^, the contrivance of which is attributedby Pliny to Anacharsis, the celebrated Scythian philosopher, who lived in thetime of Croesus, and repaired to Athens about 548 years before the Christianaera; the other, which was called ^sib triS^ov, is reported by the same author tohave been contrived by Pericles, the Athenian. The fashion, and indeed use,of these two engines, taken in the most extensive sense, was widely different:the served not only for a grappling iron, as the term itself demonstrates,

but as a species of catapulta, according to the ancient contrivance, used for thepurpose of casting stones of considerable weight on the decks of the vesselsassailed. Authors indeed have varied as much in their account of the formof this destructive machine, as they have been thought to do in regard to itsuses. Quintus Curtius * and Livy '}-, in one part of their history, seem tosuppose it to have in no degree differed from the common grappling iron ;but the latter, in a former chapterdescribes it to have been a beam, orlever, to the ends of which iron hooks were strongly bolted, and being sus-pended either from the mast, or stout spar fixed for that purpose, was thrownwith considerable force on the deck of the assaulted galley by the elevation ofthe unarmed end.

The intentions of the inventors appear, however, to have been very different,and by no means misunderstood by the historians who have made mention ofthem, though the cursory or abstract manner in which they are on some occasionsnoticed, may have caused some doubt in more modern times* This imperfect de-scription has been undoubtedly owing to a very natural belief, that there was littleoccasion to be minute or particular in an account of a machine at that time inuniversal use, and which, on account of its supposed perfection, was consideredas very little likely to grow into disuse. Taking the context of Curtius himself,who may be thought on first inspection to represent the more complex machinecalled the x^irxyy, as a mere grappling iron, the matter will appear very different.His words are-■“ Harpagonas vocant, quas operibus hostium injicerent

a

* Lib. iv. cap. 2.

f Lib. xxxvii. cap. 10.

X Lib. xXx. cap. 11.

they