There is another modern writer who takes the same side of the question who is entitled at least to the merit of originality. In a modern French work entitled, "L'Univers," M. La Croix, the author of the account of Malta, tells us

"Qu'on remarque bien qu'il avait fait halte dans un port de la côte septentrionale de Candie :”

that the wind Euroclydon is

"suivant Pline, Vitruve, Aristotle, et Strabon, un vent qui tient le milieu entre le midi et le levant; c'était donc, pour parler le langage moderne, un vent de sud-est, ou ce qu'on nomme dans la Méditerranée le sirocco. Sur ce point il ne peut y avoir un ombre de doute."

He then asks,

"Dira-t-on que l'Ecriture Sainte a pu confondre la mer de Sicile, où est située Malte, avec la Mer Adriatique? Une telle supposition est inadmissable. D'aborde, Malte est très-eloignée de la Mer Adriatique; ensuite cette mer n'a jamais eu d'autres bornes que celles que les géographes lui as signent aujourd'hui ; elle a toujours été deux cents lieues de longueur sur quarante dans sa plus grande largeur ; dimensions sur lesquelles s'accordent Pline, Strabon, et Thucydide."

The information that Fair Havens is on the north side of Crete; that Pliny, Vitruvius, Aristotle, and Strabo tell us the direction of Euroclydon; and that Pliny, Strabo, and Thucydides tell us that the Adriatic never had other boundaries than its present, requires confirmation.

M. La

Te duce, per pueros hostili more refertur ;

Adversarius est frater; lacus, Adria.

Epist. lib. i. Ep. xviii, ver. 61.

Croix cannot understand how, if Malta had been the island, St. Paul could have been delayed three months. The island, wherever it was, he says, must have been "bien peu frequentée par les navigateurs, ce que n'a jamais été vrai pour Malte;" he should have added, not even in winter. It would be a waste of words to answer such arguments.

173

DISSERTATION III.

ON THE SHIPS OF THE ANTIENTS.

THERE are few branches of classical antiquity of which so little is known as that which relates to ships, navigation, and seamanship; no work written expressly on those subjects by any antient author has come down to us*, and the scattered notices which we meet with in historians and poets often tend to mislead. The representation of antient ships are in a great measure confined to coins and marbles, where we cannot expect to find accuracy of detail, except in detached parts, such as the aplustra or head and stern ornaments, rudders, anchors, &c.

There are, however, two circumstances to which we are indebted for much valuable information respecting the very class of ships with which we are at present chiefly concerned.

The Emperor Commodus, during a season of scarcity, imported grain from Africa; in commemoration of which a series of coins (great and middle brass) was struck, bearing upon the reverse figures of ships under sail; and one of the Alexandrian wheat ships was driven, by stress

* The Emperor Leo, in his Tactics, in treating πepi vavμaxias, makes the same complaint. He says he could find nothing written on the subject by the antients.

of weather, into the Piræus. The extraordinary size of this vessel excited much curiosity on the part of the Athenians; and Lucian, who visited her, lays the scene of his dialogue, entitled "The Ship or Wishes" (201 Euxai), on board of her; in the course of which we learn, incidentally, many interesting circumstances regarding the ship, her voyage, and management.

The marbles and paintings of Herculaneum and Pompeii also afford valuable details, and have the advantage of synchronising perfectly with the voyage of St. Paul, the catastrophe to which they owe their preservation having happened less than twenty years after his shipwreck.

As all these authorities agree very well with each other, we can derive from them what we may consider a tolerably correct idea of a merchant ship of the period.

were.

The forepart of the hull below the upper works differed but little in form from that of the ships of modern times; and as both ends were alike, if we suppose a full built merchant ship of the present day cut in two, and the stern half replaced by one exactly the same as that of the bow, we shall have a pretty accurate notion of what these ships The sheer or contour of the top of the sides was nearly straight in the middle, but curving upwards at each end, the stem and stern posts rising to a considerable height, and terminated by ornaments which were very commonly the head and neck of a water-fowl bent backwards. was called the cheniscus (xvoxos). It forms the stern ornament of the ship on the tomb of Nævoleia Tyche at Pompeii, the stern post of which terminates with the head of Minerva. Lucian, in describing the Alexandrian ship, mentions that the stern rose gradually in a curve sur

This

mounted by a golden cheniscus, and that the prow was elevated in a similar manner. In the coins of Commodus

we find the cheniscus, in some instances, at the head, and, in others, at the stern.

The bulwarks round the deck appear to have generally been open rails. There were projecting galleries at the bow and stern. The stern gallery is often covered with an awning, as in the ship on the tomb of Nævoleia. The galleries at the bow served, as it would appear from Lucian's description, as places where to stow the anchors and also the στροφεια and περιαγωγεις. The exact meaning of these terms is not clear. Some think they meant instruments for heaving up the anchors, others for helping the ship round. I think it not improbable that both were meant. The στροφεία, "winders," were probably windlasses or capstans. We have evidence that both were used by the antients, for in the ship of Theseus, represented in one of the paintings found at Herculaneum, we see a capstan with a hawser coiled round it *; and in a figure of the ship of Ulysses, said to be taken from an ancient marble, in the edition of Virgil, 3 vols. fol., Rome, 1765, we see the cable coiled round a windlass. The replaywyes, "drive περιαγωγεις, abouts," were probably paddles for the purpose of helping the ship round, when "slack in the stays."

The ancient ships were not steered, as those in modern time are, by rudders hinged to the stern-post, but by two great oars or paddles (ŋdaλia), one on each side of the stern: hence the mention of them in the plural number by St. Luke; a circumstance which has caused, as Dr.

* See figure of this ship, ante, page 95.