Hemiolia and Triemiolia
1958; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 78; Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/628918
ISSN2041-4099
Autores Tópico(s)Marine and environmental studies
Resumo‘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.
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