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weapon of attack, a condition which rendered it necessary that, when in an attitude for battle, the weapon should be pointed towards the enemy; and on this theory their system of tactics was based.

The battle once joined, it was by extraordinary strength and precision of rowing, by rapid and sudden turns, by feints, and skillful handling generally, that the Athenian trierarch, or captain, sought to drive the sharp beak of his vessel, against his enemy's side, or stern, or to cut away his oars. Nor was its facility for stern-board the least noticeable feature of the trireme. In a fight off Corcyra (Corfu), Nikostratus, commanding a squadron of but twelve Athenian triremes, did not hesitate to engage a force of thirty three Peloponnesians, although the latter had a division of twenty more near at hand.

The Athenian, having plenty of sea room for manœuvering, disregarded the numerical superiority of his adversary, more particularly as two of his twelve triremes were the picked vessels of the Athenian navy-the Salaminia and the Paralus. Nikostratus, avoiding entanglement with their centre, hung on their flank, and as he presently managed to ram and sink one of their vessels the Peloponnesians formed in circle and stood on the defensive.

The Athenians rowed round and round this circle trying to cause confusion by feigned attacks, and they might have succeeded, if the remaining twenty Peloponnesians, seeing the proceeding, had not hastened to join their comrades. The entire fleet of fifty-three triremes now assumed the offensive, and advanced to attack Nikostratus, who retired before them by backing astern and keeping his ships heading towards the enemy. In this manner he succeeded in drawing them away from the harbor so as to enable most of the allies, the Corcyreans, to get safely into port.

In the military schools of Greece the instruction was not confined to the elementary branches of the art of war. Those who would excel in the art were obliged not only to be tacticians but to understand the greater and more remote objects of tactical movements, of a battle, a campaign, or of a war. The general of an army was therefore called Strategos, whence our word strategist; while the commander-in-chief of a fleet was termed Nauarchos Strategos, naval strategist. Indeed there is abundant evidence to show that the Greek nauarchos, or admiral, was very far from being ignorant of those principles on which the science of war depends. From the battle of Lâdé to that of Salamis during the miserable Egyptian compaign, from the fatal disasters of Syracuse to the final catastrophe at Egos Potamos, it will be found

that most of the movements belonging to the grand tactics of the present day were not unknown to the Greeks.

Severing an enemy from his base of operations, cutting off his supplies, breaking and doubling ou his line, diversions, flank attacks, turning the flank, throwing a heavy force on a single point and thus beating him in detail, all seem to have been well understood; while boarding, the use of boarding bridges, ramming, crippling by various methods to prevent escape, grappling, surprises, feints, fire-ships (as at Syracuse), nearly all the expedients, in short, known to naval battles of modern times, save such only as depend on explosives for their action, were practised at one time or another by the Greeks. They may well be termed our masters in the art of war.

The Romans took their system of naval tactics from the Greeks. In their first essay in sea fighting, however, being totally inexperienced in the management of fleets, they attempted no maneuvering; but, closing at once with the enemy, they reduced the issue of the battle to a hand-to-hand conflict, in which Roman valor was sure to prevail over the less hardy Carthaginian. Their earliest effort, on opening the first Punic war, was not encouraging; but Duilius soon after gained off Myle, one of those great victories which serve to mark an era.

It was here that the Corvus, or boarding bridge, "invented by some one in the fleet,"-Polybius says,-but used by the Spartan Leotychides, at Mycale, some 200 years before, mainly contributed to the splendid success. (260 B. C).

The Phoenicians were, by far, the better seamen; but, besides their greater energy and intellectual superiority, the Romans brought their thorough knowledge of, and wide experience in military affairs to bear upon their naval enterprises. Four years after the above, we find the Romans to have greatly improved in their tactics. At the battle of Ecnomus the Roman fleet, having on board the choice of Roman troops, was separated into four grand divisions, each bearing a double name. The first division was called the first legion and first squadron, the second and third were similarly named; while the fourth was styled the triarii, the name given to the last division of the army. The first and second squadrons, composed of men-of-war alone, formed the right and left wings of the line of battle. The two admirals were in the centre of the line; the one, Marcus Atilius Regulus, (of unhappy memory), Roman cousul and admiral, being on the left of the right wing; the other, Lucius Manlius Volso, on the right extremity of the left wing. In anticipation of an engagement, the two admirals drew

ahead, the ships of their respective wings following in succession, in close order, bringing the two wings into the double echelon formation, with the two admirals at the apex.* The third squadron, in line, and having the transports in tow, formed the base of, and completed the triangle.

The triarii, also in line, and so extended as to cover both flanks of the advance, followed as a reserve. The Roman fleet numbered 330 line-of-battle ships-mostly quinquiremes (such had been the advance in Naval architecture) and carried about 140,000 men.

The Carthaginian fleet, consisting of 350 ships and about 150,000 men, had three squadrons in line, their right extending well out to sea with the view of enveloping the Roman left. The fourth division on the left of the line, was well in with the coast of Sicily, and formed in column of ships, concaved from the shore;* its design being to pull up along the coast, and fall upon the right flank of the Romans. The object of the wedge form of the Roman advance was to pierce and break the enemy's centre; but the skillful and wily Carthaginians retreated, in conformity to previous orders; drawing on the 1st and 2d legions and separating them from the line of transports and the triarii. When the separation was deemed sufficient, the Carthaginians, upon a signal from Amilcar, suddenly assumed the aggressive, and fell upon their pursuers with the utmost fury. Hanno, in command of the right, now bore down on the left flank of the triarii, while the inshore division, moving by the oblique into line,* fell upon the Roman third legion and transports. Thus three separate and distinct battles were raging at the same time. The fight was obstinate, and the issue for some time doubtful. The Carthaginians were far super ior in the lightness of their vessels, and in their skill and rapidity of advancing and retreating, and attacking on every side; while the Romans relied for success on their steadfast courage and on their corvi. The latter prevailed; and having gained the victory and refitted, Regulus steered for Africa, the objective point of the Roman army.

In the history of the Alexandrian war we have an account of an enSignal No. 240, or perhaps from Regulus No. 229, and from Manlius Volso, No. 228.

† In Mr. Hampton's translation of Polybius (London 1773) this squadron is said to be formed in the shape of a forceps. It is hardly necessary to explain that no such order existed. It was the concave line pulling by the right flank, thus forming a concave column.

‡ Signal No. 304.

gagement in which Caesar himself commanded the fleet; but as the plan of the battle seems so similar to that of the Athenians at Arginuse, further description is unnecessary. In the history of the Great Civil War there is much to interest the naval student, but little insight into the prevailing system of tactics is given beyond the examples already cited. It is much to be regretted that none of the writers of antiquity thought it worth while to transmit to posterity a dissertation on naval warfare; but it was doubtless considered that a treatise on the art of war embraced both the land and the sea forces.

The battle of Actium scarcely comes within the range of critical notice. Anthony, indeed, so disposed his fleet as to extort the commendation of his great rival; while the genius of Marcus Agrippa, who handled the Roman fleet, was never more conspicuous,* yet the battle was thrown away. While victory still wavered in the balance Cleopatra sailed away and was speedily followed by "the noble ruin of her magic, Antony." Perhaps the only useful tactical lesson taught by this battle is in the advantage gained by the use of the light and swift liburna, adopted by the Romans from the Liburnians, over the heavy and unwieldy galleys of Anthony's fleet..

We have seen in the great "three-decker" and in the huge five masted iron-clads of our own days the same tendency to over-growth in ships of war, that existed among the ancients.

The foregoing examples have been selected from the history of naval battles covering a period of nearly five hundred years, without regard to order or political importance, and with the sole view of arriving at `some conclusion in regard to the system of naval tactics which prevailed with the ancients; or, more particularly, with the Greeks and Ro

* Plutarch has assigned to Augustus the command of the Roman fleet. He did so command theoretically, by virtue of his position; but he had no capacity for naval affairs. Agrippa on the contrary was one of the most renowned and successful naval leaders of his age. Virgil, who wrote the Eneid to please and do honor to Augustus, says, or sings, in allusion to the battle:

"With favoring gods and winds to speed,
Agrippa forms the line:

The golden beaks, war's proudest mead,
High on his forehead shine."

The latter is an allusion to the corona navalis bestowed for a great victory over the fleet of Sextus Pompey. For the victory of Actium, he received the vexillum cæruleum, or sea-green flag.

mans. The reader, we think, will have already anticipated us in the deduction that their elementary tactics comprehended the three simple orders of line, column and echelon, with the circular formation (equivalent to the hollow square) for resisting the attacks of a superior force; and that their line of battle was, what has been familiarly known in modern tactics under sail, as the line abreast, every ship heading for the enemy, or in the direction of the attack. There were, also, flank, oblique and perpendicular movements. The Greeks seem to have separated their fleets into the three divisions of van, centre and rear, when in column; and right and left wings and centre, when in line.

The Romans had four divisions. The line, with both flanks thrown forward, so as to form the concave order or crescent shaped line, was often made use of, as it enabled the admiral, in the centre, to see both wings, and facilitated the transmission of signals.

One of the most graphic descriptions of an ancient Sea-fight is given by Polybius in his account of a battle between the fleets of Philip of Macedon and Attalus king of Pergamus. "Both flects, he says, "turned their prows the one against the other and, amidst the sound of trumpets and the noise of animating cries, engaged in set battle." The crushing in of the sides of great quinquiremes, and octoremes, the clashing of huge oars as they intermingled in the fray, the shouts of the soldiers and the cries of despair as the shattered wrecks subside beneath the wave all the din and confusion of a great battle in which the loss to Philip alone was nine thousand men, are plainly discernible in the picture he has so vividly drawn. Add to this the bursting of monster shells, the explosion of torpedoes and the roar of escaping steam, and one may gain some faint idea of what a modern fleet fight would be. In an account by the same author of the bold operations and final capture of a Rhodian blockade runner, one might almost fancy the scene taken from the history of the blockade during the late civil war.

With the breaking up of the Roman Empire and the disappearance of the ancient civilization, naval tactics with many other arts was buried amid the crumbling ruin. What those arts must have been we may judge from the universal concurrence, of modern writers in comparing productions of modern art with the master-pieces of antiquity as the highest standard of excellence. A modern historian, describing the battle of Sluys, exhausts his praises when, in commenting on the skillful combinations that distinguished the movements of the English fleet, he compares it to "some master-piece of the Athenians." He could have paid no higher compliment to the tactical skill of the English king.

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