and poop.  The flute player is blowing his loudest.  The marines stand on the forecastle in glittering armor.  A great column of foam is spouting from her bow.[+] Her oars, eighty-seven to the side, pumiced white and hurling out the spray, are leaping back and forth in perfect unison.  The whole vessel seems a thing of springing, ardent life.  It is, indeed, a sight to stir the blood.  No later sailing ship in her panoply of canvas, no steam battleship with her grim turrets and smoking funnels can ever match the spectacle of a trireme moving in her rhythm and glory.

[*]The Greek ships seem to have been named either for mythological characters, or for desirable qualities and virtues.

[+]At her best a trireme seems to have been capable of making 8 to 9 knots per hour.

112.  The Tactics of a Naval Battle.—­Imagination can now picture a Greek naval battle, fifty, a hundred, two hundred, or more of these splendid battleships flying in two hostile lines to the charge.[*] Round and round they will sail, each pilot watching the moment when an unlucky maneuver by the foe will leave a chance for an attack; and then will come the sudden swinging of the helm, the frantic “Pull hard!” to the oarsmen, the rending crash and shock as the ram tears open the opponents side, to be followed by almost instant tragedy.  If the direct attack on the foe’s broadside fails, there is another maneuver.  Run down upon your enemy as if striking bow to bow; the instant before contact let your aim swerve—­a little.  Then call to your men to draw in their oars like lightning while the enemy are still working theirs.  If your oarsmen can do the trick in time, you can now ride down the whole of the foemen’s exposed oar bank, while saving your own.  He is left crippled and helpless, like a huge centipede with all the legs on one side stripped away.  You can now back off deliberately, run out your oars, an in cold blood charge his exposed flank.  If he does not now surrender, his people are dead men.  Excellent to describe!  Not always so excellent in performance.  Everything depends on the perfect discipline and handiness of your crew.

[*]A more detailed picture of an ancient naval battle and its tactics can be found in the author’s historical novel, “A Victor of Salamis” (Chap.  XXIX).

113.  The Naval Strength of Athens.—­The strength of Athens is still upon the sea.  Despite her defeats in the Peloponnesian War she has again the first navy in Hellas.  All in all she can send out 400 triremes and since each trireme represents a crew of over 200 men, this means that Athens can dispose of over 80,000 souls in her navy, whereof, however, only a minor fraction are Athenian citizens.  Athens is quite right in thus laying stress upon her sea power.  Her long walls and the Peireus make her practically an island.  Even after Cheroneia, Philip of Macedon will be obliged to give her honorable terms,—­she has still her great navy.  Only after the defeat of her fleet at Amorgos in 322 B.C. will she have to know all the pangs of vassalage to Macedon.