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A Neglected Medieval Sidelight on the Greek Trireme
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In his recent book, Professor J. S. Morrison has brought to a happy conclusion a quarter of a century and more of inspired research into the problem of how the oars of a classical trireme were arranged. The essence of his solution of this perennial problem is that the fifth-century Athenian trireme had her oars and benches alike disposed at three different levels, each rower having his own oar, and each oar its separate thole set at a distance of feet, not inches, from its neighbours. The evidence is marshalled with such mastery that it may be thought unlikely that there will ever be any general recrudescence of the di (or al) scaloccio and a zenzile (or alle sensile) theories that were as fashionable once as they are seen now to have been unhistorical. In his inquiry, however, Professor Morrison has wisely confined himself to the ancient sources, and no more than touched upon the analogy of the Byzantine dromon, the direct descendant of the classical trireme and to some extent the parent of the a zenzile galley. Other protagonists, and notably Tarn, have been far from sharing his discretion, and there is still room perhaps for a brief note calling attention to the possibility that the dromon of the Middle Ages may shed indirect light upon the trireme of fifteen hundred years earlier.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1971
References
page 285 note 1 Morrison, J. S. and Williams, R. T., Greek Oared Ships 900–323 B.C. (Cambridge, 1968Google Scholar).
page 285 note 2 The cardinal paper is still Morrison, J. S., 'The Greek Trireme', The Mariner's Mirror xxvii (1941), pp. 14–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Most of the intervening literature is admirably surveyed in Casson, L.'s The Ancient Mariners (London, 1959Google Scholar) while also to be consulted with advantage is Anderson, R. C.'s Oared Fighting Ships (London, 1962)Google Scholar.
page 285 note 3 Cf. Casson, (1959), p. 257Google Scholar, and in illustration the disastrous last sentence of the article 'Trireme' on p. 925 of the 1949 edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary.
page 285 note 4 Dain, A., Naumachica (Paris, 1943), pp. 61–8Google Scholar.
page 285 note 5 Ibid.pp. 57–9.
page 285 note 6 Anon PBPP, 2, 7 (Dain (1943), p. 65).
page 285 note 7 Ibid. 2, 12, and 13 (p. 65).
page 286 note 1 Cf. Dolley, R. H., 'The Warships of the Later Roman Empire', Journal of Roman Studies xxxviii (1948), pp. 47–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 286 note 2 On which see now Morrison and Williams (1968), p. 15, which virtually assumes—and rightly so—that parodoi are side gangways running the length of the waist.
page 286 note 3 Cf. Morrison, J. S. (1941), pp. 23, 27, 31, etcGoogle Scholar.
page 286 note 4 Anon PBPP,2, 7 (Dain (1943), p.65)— 
ή ναυς. 'And then [below the rest] it is the "chambermen" if the ship should have three banks of oars.'
page 287 note 1 Cf. Dolley (1948), p. 50.
page 287 note 2 It is likely that the inboard ends were dovetailed into the sterea and the outboard into the katapateton, the tops of the ribs being tenoned into morticed sockets in the bench a foot or so above the peritenon which received the thranite tholes. In this way the thrust of the oars would have been spread over the whole frame of the ship, and the katapateton would have shielded the oars from the glancing blow described above.
page 287 note 3 Anon PBPP, 2, 7 (Dain [1943], p. 65)—
'And the men sitting on the bench are called benchers, and those on the thwarts thwartmen.'
page 287 note 4 On which see Morrison (1941), p. 23 and, definitively, Morrison and Williams (1968), pp. 281–3. For assistance with the Greek passages in this paper I am grateful to my colleague, Dr. D. W. Gooding—but this is not to imply his endorsement of all or any of the conclusions.