were content with two tier of oars; each tier was
composed of five-and-twenty benches; and two rowers were seated on each
bench, who plied their oars on either side of the vessel. To these we
must add the captain or centurion, who, in time of action, stood erect
with his armor-bearer on the poop, two steersmen at the helm, and two
officers at the prow, the one to manage the anchor, the other to point
and play against the enemy the tube of liquid fire. The whole crew, as
in the infancy of the art, performed the double service of mariners and
soldiers; they were provided with defensive and offensive arms, with
bows and arrows, which they used from the upper deck, with long pikes,
which they pushed through the portholes of the lower tier. Sometimes,
indeed, the ships of war were of a larger and more solid construction;
and the labors of combat and navigation were more regularly divided
between seventy soldiers and two hundred and thirty mariners. But for
the most part they were of the light and manageable size; and as
the Cape of Malea in Peloponnesus was still clothed with its ancient
terrors, an Imperial fleet was transported five miles over land across
the Isthmus of Corinth. [74] The principles of maritime tactics had not
undergone any change since the time of Thucydides: a squadron of galleys
still advanced in a crescent, charged to the front, and strove to impel
their sharp beaks against the feeble sides of their antagonists. A
machine for casting stones and darts was built of strong timbers, in the
midst of the deck; and the operation of boarding was effected by a crane
that hoisted baskets of armed men. The language of signals, so clear and
copious in the naval grammar of the moderns, was imperfectly expressed
by the various positions and colors of a commanding flag. In the
darkness of the night, the same orders to chase, to attack, to halt, to
retreat, to break, to form, were conveyed by the lights of the leading
galley. By land, the fire-signals were repeated from one mountain to
another; a chain of eight stations commanded a space of five hundred
miles; and Constantinople in a few hours was apprised of the hostile
motions of the Saracens of Tarsus. [75] Some estimate may be formed of
the power of the Greek emperors, by the curious and minute detail of the
armament which was prepared for the reduction of Crete. A fleet of one
hundred and twelve galleys, and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian
style, was equippe