ny quotes one
Philostephanos of Cyrene, but very little is known about either
Callixenos or Philostephanos. Fortunately, however, Callixenos gives
details about the size of the forty-banker, the length of her longest
oars, and the number of her crew, which enables us to gauge his value as
an authority, and to pronounce his story to be incredible (see p. 45).

Whatever the arrangement of their oars may have been, these many-banked
ships appear to have been large and unmanageable, and they finally went
out of fashion in the year 31 B.C., when Augustus defeated the combined
fleets of Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium. The vessels
which composed the latter fleets were of the many-banked order, while
Augustus had adopted the swift, low, and handy galleys of the Liburni,
who were a seafaring and piratical people from Illyria on the Adriatic
coast. Their vessels were originally single-bankers, but afterwards it
is said that two banks were adopted. This statement is borne out by the
evidence of Trajan's Column, all the galleys represented on it, with the
exception of one, being biremes.

Augustus gained the victory at Actium largely owing to the handiness of
his Liburnian galleys, and, in consequence, this type was henceforward
adopted for Roman warships, and ships of many banks were no longer
built. The very word "trireme" came to signify a warship, without
reference to the number of banks of oars.

After the Romans had completed the conquest of the nations bordering on
the Mediterranean, naval war ceased for a time, and the fighting navy of
Rome declined in importance. It was not till the establishment of the
Vandal kingdom in Africa under Genseric that a revival in naval warfare
on a large scale took place. No changes in the system of marine
architecture are recorded during all these ages. The galley,
considerably modified in later times, continued to be the principal type
of warship in the Mediterranean till about the sixteenth century of our
era.

ANCIENT MERCHANT-SHIPS.

Little accurate information as we possess about the warships of the
ancients, we know still less of their merchant-vessels and transports.
They were unquestionably much broader, relatively, and fuller than the
galleys; for, whereas the length of the latter class was often eight to
ten times the beam, the merchant-ships were rarely longer than three or
four times their beam. Nothing is known of the nature of Phoenician
merchant-vessels.