espectively. It is
impossible to place any confidence in such statements.

Theophrastus, a botanist who died about 288 B.C., and who was therefore
a contemporary of Demetrios, mentions in his history of plants that the
king built an eleven-banked ship in Cyprus. This is one of the very few
contemporary records we possess of the construction of such ships. The
question, however, arises, Can a botanist be accepted as an accurate
witness in matters relating to shipbuilding? The further question
presents itself, What meaning is intended to be conveyed by the terms
which we translate as ships of many banks? This question will be
reverted to hereafter.

In one other instance a writer cites a document in which one of these
many-banked ships is mentioned as having been in existence during his
lifetime. The author in question was Polybios, one of the most
painstaking and accurate of the ancient historians, who was born between
214 and 204 B.C., and who quotes a treaty between Rome and Macedon
concluded in 197 B.C., in which a Macedonian ship of sixteen banks is
once mentioned. This ship was brought to the Tiber thirty years later,
according to Plutarch and Pliny, who are supposed to have copied a lost
account by Polybios. Both Plutarch and Pliny were born more than two
centuries after this event. If the alleged account by Polybios had been
preserved, it would have been unimpeachable authority on the subject of
this vessel, as this writer, who was, about the period in question, an
exile in Italy, was tutor in the family of AEmilius Paulus, the Roman
general who brought the ship to the Tiber.

The Romans first became a naval power in their wars with the
Carthaginians, when the command of the sea became a necessity of their
existence. This was about 256 B.C. At that time they knew nothing
whatever of shipbuilding, and their early war-vessels were merely copies
of those used by the Carthaginians, and these latter were no doubt of
the same general type as the Greek galleys. The first Roman fleet
appears to have consisted of quinqueremes.

The third century B.C. is said to have been an era of gigantic ships.
Ptolemy Philadelphos and Ptolemy Philopater, who reigned over Egypt
during the greater part of that century, are alleged to have built a
number of galleys ranging from thirteen up to forty banks. The evidence
in this case is derived from two unsatisfactory sources. Athenaeos and
Plutarch quote one Callixenos of Rhodes, and Pli