Smith, William: A smaller dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (London, 1871)

NAVIS.

260

NAVIS.

propelling the vessel lay in the rowers, who
sat upon benches (/cMji&s). The oars were
fastened to the side of the ship with leathern
thongs (Tpoirol Sep/aa-rii/cu), in which they
were turned as a key in its hole. The ships
in Homer are mostly called black (p.e'A.ati/at),
probably because they were painted or co-
vered with a black substance, such as pitch,
to protect the wood against the influence of
the water and the air; sometimes other
colours, such as hi'Atos, minium (a red co-
lour), were used to adorn the sides of the
ships near the prow, whence Homer occa-
sionally calls ships [Lihio-napyoi, i. e. red-
cheeked ; they were also painted occasionally
with a purple colour (•ItoiviKOTraprjoi). When
the Greeks had landed on the coast of Troy,
the ships were drawn on land, and fastened
at the poop to large stones with a rope which
served as anchors. The Greeks then sur-
rounded the fleet with a fortification to secure
it against the attacks of the enemy. This
custom of drawing the ships upon the shore,
when they were not used, was followed in
Later times also, as every one will remember
from the accounts in Caesar's Commentaries.
In the Odyssey (v. 243, &c.) the building of a
boat ((T^eSi'd) is described, though not with the
minuteness which an actual ship-builder might
wish for. Ulysses first cuts down with his axe
twenty trees, and prepares the wood for his
purpose by cutting it smooth and giving it the
proper shape. He then bores the holes for
nails and hooks, and fits the planks together
and fastens them with nails. He rounds
the bottom of the ship like that of a broad
transport vessel, and raises the bulwark
(Iicpia), fitting it upon the numerous ribs of
the ship. He afterwards covers the whole
of the outside with planks, which are laid
across the ribs from the keel upwards to the
bulwark : next the mast is made, and the
sail-yard attached to it, and lastly the rudder.
When the ship is thus far completed, he
raises the bulwark still higher by a wicker-
work which goes all around the vessel, as a

protection against the waves. This raised
bulwark of wickerwork and the like was
used in later times also. For ballast Ulysses
I throws into the ship uArj, which according to
the Scholiast consisted of wood, stones, and
sand. Calypso then brings him materials to
make a sail of, and he fastens the viripai or
ropes which run from the top of the mast to
the two ends of the yard, and also the xaAoi
with which the sail is drawn up or let down.
The wooes mentioned in this passage were
undoubtedly, as in the later times, the ropes
attached to the two lower corners of the
square sail. The ship of which the building
is thus described was a small boat, a o-xe6i'a,
as Homer calls it; but it had like all the Ho-
meric ships a round or flat bottom. Greater
ships must have been of a more complicated
structure, as ship-builders are praised as
artists. Below (p. 266), a representation of
two boats is given which appear to bear
great resemblance to the one of which the
building is described in the Odyssey.—The
Corinthians were the first who brought the
art of ship-building nearest to the point at
which we find it in the time of Thucydides,
and they were the first who introduced ships
with three ranks of rowers (Vpirjpeis, Tri-
remes). About b. c. 700, Ameinocles the
Corinthian, to whom this invention is ascribed,
made the Samians acquainted with it ; but it
must have been preceded by that of the
Biremes, that is, ships with two ranks of
rowers, which Pliny attributes to the Ery-
thraeans.* These innovations however do not
seem to have been generally adopted for a
long time ; for we read that about the time of
Cyrus the I'hocaeans introduced long sharp-
keeled ships called u-ei/njKoj/Topoi. These be-
longed to the class of long war-ships (i^jes
p.a/<pat), and had fifty rowers, twenty-five on
each side of the ship, who sat in one row.
It is further stated that before this time

* Biremes are sometimes called by tne Greeks SiKpora.
The name biremis is also applied to a little bocr mummed
by only two oars.

Monens, (Montfaucon, vol. iv. pt. u. pi. 142.)