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To lay their vessels aboard the enemy with as little delay as possible, and leave the rest to the soldiers, was now the chief object of the Athenian captains; and the better to effect. this, men were stationed on the prows, armed with grappling-irons, to hold the attacking trireme fast, and prevent her from backing away after the first shock of collision.
There are cases of expenditure which we call honourable, such as are dedicatory offerings to the gods, and the furnishing their temples, and sacrifices, and in like manner everything that has reference to the Deity, and all such public matters as are objects of honourable ambition, as when men think in any case that it is their duty to furnish a chorus for the stage splendidly, or fit out and maintain a trireme, or give a general public feast.
This I think I am able to show, without offense to any other man who has a plan to offer. My promise indeed is large; it shall be tested by the performance; and you shall be my judges. An ordinary trireme carried two hundred men, including the crew and marines.
Of course they were not driven by steam, nor did they rely as much on sails as modern sailing ships do. They had sails, but were driven forward mostly by their oars. The trireme, or ordinary war-ship, had its oars arranged in three banks, fifty men rowing at once.
The first omen and a fair one.” The word ran in whispers down the benches, and every soul on the trireme rejoiced. How long did they sit thus? An æon? Would Eurybiades never draw out his line of battle? Would Adeimantus prove craven at the end? Would treachery undo Hellas to-day, as once before at Lade when the Ionian Greeks had faced the Persian fleet in vain?
Aristeides told his story, and how his vessel to Salamis had scarce escaped the Egyptian triremes, and how by this time all entrance and exit was surely closed. But even now many an angry captain called him “liar.” The strife of words was at white heat when Eurybiades himself silenced the fiercest doubter. “Captains of Hellas, a trireme of Teos has deserted from the Barbarian to us.
On receiving this welcome summons Brasidas lost no time, and crossed over by night in a skiff, which was convoyed by a trireme, so that if any hostile vessel appeared in sight, it might be engaged by the trireme, and leave him free to escape.
Now, however, occurred one of those sudden turns of fortune so frequent in the course of a sea- fight. The Athenian trireme which had been left far behind in the chase, made a sudden sweep round a merchant-vessel anchored at the mouth of the harbour, struck her pursuer amidships, and sank her.
A tall trireme was bearing down on them in full charge even while the Nausicaä drifted. They were as helpless as the Sidonian they had sent to death. One groan broke from the Athenians. “Save, Athena! Save! It is Artemisia! The queen of Halicarnassus!” The heavy trireme of the amazon princess was a magnificent sight as they looked on her. Her oars flew in a flashing rhythm.
This fair water, extending from Med to Melita, was greenly shored and dotted with strange little pleasure crafts with exquisite sweeping prows and silken canopies. Before a white temple, knee-deep in whose flowered ponds the ibises dozed and contemplated, was anchored the imperial trireme, with delicately-embroidered sails and prow and poop of forgotten metals.
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