Quinqueremes.
Hexiremes and larger galleys. over each other in any fashion. That limit would be reached at the fifth horizontal row, and, for the reasons already named, a sixth row, however obliquely placed—for obliquity has also its limits—would be useless. Therefore, while a quinquereme had five horizontal rows, and the same number of oblique rows, forming a quincunx thus—
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a galley must have acquired another name when
she had more than five of these oblique rows. For
instance, vessels with six oblique rows were, in
our opinion, called hexiremes; with seven rows,
septiremes; with eight rows, octoremes, and so forth;
up to Ptolemy Philopator's tesseracontoros. That
the number of men placed on board the ships of the
ancients was regulated, as at present, by the work
they had to perform, and by the size of the ship,
there can be no doubt; but the number of men had
nothing in itself to do with the class or grade of the
galley. In some triremes there may have been only
fifty rowers, in others five hundred. Our theory
does not require the number of men to harmonize
with the number assigned by Polybius, Athenæus,
and other authors, to differently-rated galleys. Thus,
in the trireme, with the thirty oars and one hundred
and fifty rowers, it would not be necessary to place
five men at each oar, as Mr. Howell has proposed.
Six men to each of the oars of the highest bank,
