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Hemiolia and Triemiolia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

L. Casson
L. Casson
Affiliation:
New York University
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Extract

‘Your coward’, says Theophrastus, ‘is the sort who, when aboard ship, thinks that every headland is a hemiolia.’ The outline of a promontory, in other words, looks to his timid eyes like the low sinister shape of a pirate craft. And the hemiolia was so characteristically the vessel of pirates that Theophrastus could use the term off-handedly, without any qualification; it conjured up in his readers' minds what ‘Jolly Roger’ does in ours.

A hemiolia, then, must have been a ship designed particularly for lightness, speed and manœuvrability. But so were the twenty-oared vessels that Homer's heroes used or the penteconters that appear in subsequent centuries. What were the distinguishing characteristics of the craft that recommended it to pirates in particular?

The name itself is so curious that one instinctively feels it contains a clue. The adjective hemiolios means ‘one and a half’ by analogy with words like trireme, quadrireme and so on, a hemiolia (sc. naus) should hlave a ‘1½-fold’ arrangement of the oars. An ancient lexicographer, Hesychius, describes it as dikrotos, i.e. with rowers in two levels, and with this in mind Lazare de Baif had suggested as long ago as 1537 that perhaps it had one bank of rowers from the prow to the mast amidships and two from that point to the stern. This solution, accepted for some time, has been put aside by modern writers. ‘As no ancient representation [of a hemiolia] has survived,’ observes Ormerod, ‘we are uncertain as to its exact design and rig.’ As a matter of fact, there is an ancient representation of a hemiolia extant. It has been under our noses for years waiting to be recognised.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 78 , November 1958 , pp. 14 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1958

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References

1 Char. 25.2. The following abbreviations are used: Blinkenberg = C. Blinkenberg, Triemiolia, Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Archaeologiskkunsthistoriske Meddelelser ii. 3 = Lindiaka vii (Copenhagen, 1938); Torr = Torr, C., Ancient Ships (Cambridge, 1895).Google Scholar

2 Cf. Diod. xix.65.1–2: The neuter also occurs although much less commonly (Polyb. V.101.2; Papiri greci e latini 551.2).

3 S.v. All passages containing the words and —except those in papyri and a few inscriptions—are given in extenso by Blinkenberg.

4 De re navali liber (Basle, 1537), 47, quoted by Blinkenberg, 20–1.

5 Cf. E. Assman, s.v. ‘Seewesen’ in Baumeister, 's Denkmäler der klassischen Altertums (Munich, 1889)Google Scholar, iii. 1610; Cook, A. B. in Whibley, 's Companion to Greek Studies (4th ed., Cambridge, 1931), 585.Google Scholar

6 Ormerod, H. A., Piracy in the Ancient World (Liverpool, 1924), 29Google Scholar; cf. Blinkenberg, 20–1, 41–2.

Miltner, F. latest explanation (s.v. ‘trihemiolia’ R.E. xxx. 143Google Scholar [1939] which presumably supplants that s.v. ‘Seewesen’ R.E. Supp. v.939 [1935]) that in a hemiolia ‘nur zwei Drittel der Schiffslänge mit Ruderen besetzt waren’ is merely arithmetic with no evidence whatsoever to back it up. Starr's, C. explanation (in ‘The Ancient Warship’, Classical Philology, xxxv [1940], 368–9)Google Scholar that hemiolia is just another name for a two-banked vessel, although partly pure guess and partly based on a misconception of the nature and development of the Greek warship (cf. the next note) comes, as will appear, remarkably close to the truth.

7 In two brilliant articles J. S. Morrison has settled an age-old controversy by proving beyond a shadow of doubt that Greek warships were rowed by oars placed in superimposed banks; see ‘The Greek Trireme’, Manner's Mirror, xxvii (1941), 14–44 and ‘Notes on Certain Greek Nautical Terms’, CQ xli (1947), 122–35. For the place of two-banked ships in the line of development see in particular pp. 39–40 of the first article and 122–5 of the second.

8 Torr, fig. 17, reproduced in Köster, A., Das antike Seewesen (Berlin, 1923), pl. 44Google Scholar and in many general manuals of the history of ships, e.g. Chatterton, E. K., Sailing Ships and their Story (new ed., Philadelphia, 1923)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, fig. 12 on p. 59; Anderson, R. and Anderson, R. G., The Sailing Ship (London, 1947), fig. 14 on p. 39.Google Scholar The cup itself is in the British Museum (B436).

9 Actually, accurate drawings showing the proper number of oars have always been available. The one in Warre's article ‘navis’ in Smith, 's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London, 1891)Google Scholar, figure on page 213, is badly reproduced, but Torr himself included a very good one in his article on ‘navis’ in Daremberg-Saglio, 's Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, fig. 5282 on p. 35Google Scholar, and Cook (see n. 5 above) published another good one in his fig. on p. 585. The mistake in Torr's original drawing was pointed out by Morrison, (CQ, xli. 124 n. 3).Google Scholar

10 Cf. above, n. 4. He was no doubt influenced by Photius’ description (s.v. quoted in Blinkenberg, 5). But Photius' statement makes no sense without emendation, and not much with; cf. Blinkenberg, 7.

11 References in Torr, 86 n. 184. At the ludicrous debacle of Aegospotami, Conon escaped with a tiny flotilla of nine craft. It is easy to see how, even though Xenophon does not supply the details (Hell. ii. 1.27–9). Lysander's fleet, stripped for action, had no sailing gear aboard. Conon must have raised sail and, boiling along down the Hellespont before the prevailing north-easterlies, been able to show his heels to any pursuers. He had so much of a headstart that, in a move which reminds one of the bandits in Western films who loose their victims’ horses in order to prevent a chase, he took the time to cross the straits, stop at the Spartan anchorage for a second, and cart off all the sails that had been left there (Hell. ii. 1.29).

12 Cf. Casson, L., ‘Speed under Sail of Ancient Ships’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, lxxxii (1951), 138–42.Google Scholar

13 Cf. Rodgers, W. L., Greek and Roman Naval Warfare (Annapolis, 1937), 31–3.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Bechtel, F., Die griechischen Dialekte, ii, Die weslgriechischen Dialekte (Berlin, 1923), 634Google Scholar, who cites other examples of such haplology.

Most writers assume that there is a connection between triemiolia and trieres, that the triemiolia was some sort of trireme: cf. Wilcken, U., Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit (Berlin, 1935)Google Scholar, No. 151, note to lines 2–4; Miltner, , RE. xxx. 143Google Scholar; Starr (n. 6 above), 366; Tarn, W. W., ‘The Greek Warship’, JHS xxv (1905) n. 11 on p. 141.Google Scholar Photius, for whatever his evidence is worth, calls the triemiolia a trireme (s.v. ) and a passage in Polybius (xvi. 3.3–5) refers to its thranite oars—although, as Torr points out (15 n. 41), such an expression could just as well be used of the upper oars of a two-banked galley and does not necessarily imply a three-banked one. The question that has never been answered is: what kind of trireme is it?

15 This form actually occurs in Athen, v. 203d.

16 Torr, since he had at his disposal only three instances of the use of triemiolia (one of which he considered a mistake for hemiolia; cf. n. 19 below) argued (15 n. 41) that hemiolia and triemiolia are just two names for the same thing, the latter formed by false analogy with such words as Since the time he wrote, almost two dozen examples in inscriptions and two in papyri have turned up which show a clean distinction between the two words: in all its occurrences, triemiolia refers exclusively to a standard fleet unit, never a pirate craft. Blinkenberg, although he gives the texts of all the passages containing the word—save several in inscriptions and papyri which he missed (see n. 19 below)—failed to see this essential distinction and followed (p. 6) Torr, thereby vitiating much of his subsequent discussion.

17 Cf. the assignment the Rhodians gave to a flotilla of triemioliae during Demetrius' famous siege of their city (Diod. xx. 93.2–3).

18 The earliest mention is in the passage of Diodorus cited in the previous note.

19 For triemioliae in the Athenian navy see Robert, L., ‘Trihémiolies athéniennes’, Revue de Philologie, xviii (1944), 11–17Google Scholar (summarised in Revue des études grecques, lvi [1943], 336), who collects there several inscriptions that Blinkenberg had overlooked. Another published later, also referring to Athenian ships, is in Meriti, B. D., ‘Greek Inscriptions’, Hesperia, xi (1942), 275–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar, No. 57 (268–7 B.C.). In his article Robert concludes by expressing his conviction that the triemiolia would turn up in other navies besides the Athenian and Rhodian. It has, in the navy of the Ptolemies. The evidence lies in two papyrus documents which both he and Blinkenberg missed: Wilcken, U., Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit (Berlin, 1935)Google Scholar, No. 151, 1–4 (259 B.C.) and Meyer, P., Griechische Papyrusurkunden der Hamburger Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (Leipzig, 1911–1924)Google Scholar, No. 57. (160 B.C. The sailors manning the ship in this document were not from the League of the Islands, but from the islands off the Egyptian coast west of Alexandria; cf. Schubart, W. in Gnomon ii [1926], 745.Google Scholar) The passage in Athenaeus (v. 203d) lists triemioliae among the ships in Egypt's navy but Torr (15 n. 41), apparently followed by Blinkenberg (8, 11), argued, citing Appian, Praefatio, 10Google Scholar, that Athenaeus really meant hemioliae. The occurrences in the papyri prove conclusively that there were triemioliae in the Ptolemaic fleet. Athenaeus means what he says.

20 See the collection of inscriptions in Blinkenberg, 13–17. The one valid point Blinkenberg makes is that the triemiolia is intimately connected with Rhodes (Bechtel had earlier suggested this, although with some reserve [see n. 14 above]). His long argument (21–44) that the profile of the hull one sees on the Nike of Samothrace and on certain other monuments made by Rhodians is the distinguishing-mark of the triemiolia is pointless. Any galley that had an outrigger, trireme or quadrireme or what have you, had that sort of profile.

21 Blinkenberg, 47–50.