SYRAKOUSIA IV

Now we have to work out how to reconstruct the topsides for the Syrakousia.

Just a simple matter of putting the top bits on...

Now it is necessary to refer back to Athenaeus for what he says about Syrakousia.

 ' with three gangways. the lowest gangway which it contained led to cargo, the descent to which was afforded by companion-ways of solid construction; the second was designed for the use of those who wished to enter the cabins; after this came the third and last, which was for men posted under arms. .'

 ' On both sides of the ship were projecting beams, at proper intervals apart; on these were constructed receptacles for wood, ovens, kitchens, handmills, and several other utensils. Outside, a row of colossi, nine feet high, ran round the ship; these supported the upper weight and the triglyph, all standing at proper intervals apart.

' A wall with battlements and decks athwart the ship was built on supports; on this stood a stone-hurler, which could shoot by its own power a stone weighing one hundred and eighty pounds or a javelin eighteen feet long. 

Á lot to take in ..and there is more we will consider later.

The first part to look at is the RED text about projecting beams. These would be thwarts set across the topwale of the main hull. This had been launched after it was sheathed in lead to protect it against ship worm. These thwarts would support the main deck. This level was above normal wave height and we might imagine it  a metre or so above the waterline.

These beam ends could project out a metre or so. On these beams were booths and huts for the various ancilliary functions of baking, and food preparation and storage of gear. There is no need to imagine that these lockers ran the whole length of the ship.

Also standing on these beams were 'kolossoi' - male statues in conservative poses - These were like caryatids, they had a structural function as pillars or columns. They were 6 cubits high or 3 metres.
This gives a height for the next deck over the main deck - maybe. All around the main deck were these male statues - painted wood, one presumes. They must have stood higher than the booths  or lockers we mentioned before, or they stood outside of them.

karyatids on the Erectheum at Athens. The male version resembled Rhodes' famous statue to Helios maybe.

The kolossoi supported 'the triglyph'. This is part of the entablature of a classical temple.  This must have been a detail around the overlying deck edge. Only the Doric order has a triglyph so we must assume other ornament would be as severe and simple as to fit with this style.

Triglyph with metopes - gaps between - Kolossoi would replace the column here shown

 HOW MANY DECKS? - A VERTICAL CROSS-SECTION

Athenaeus (or Moschion) tells us (BLUE text above) there were three gangways, one above the other.
If we take one to be at the level of the main deck then there were two above that one.

The word used is parados - which, on a warship, meant a walkway on the exterior of the ship, later, sometimes formed by the top of an oarbox The parados in a Greek theatre is a side entrance where the chorus can walk out in front of the stage. Again the meaning is that it is open to the view.

Some translations interpret these as entrances or access gangways but this makes no sense if they are side by side when the meaning is obviously that they are above one and other.

So we seem to have a series of verandah-like open-sided decks with rooms/cabins inboard. We must assume a balustrade surrounded the whole to avoid too many man-overboard incidents!

If the gangways/paradosoi are on the outside this adds to the ship's stability because the mass of the cabins is nearer to the centre line.

The hold was reached by 'companionways' or ramps leading down into it from the main deck.

Access between levels must have been achieved by similar sloping ways between the overlying decks, Cargo and passengers cannot have been expected to negotiate ladders adequate for sailors and deck fighters.

The lockers/booths on deck 1 could be inside the supports but I suspect they should be between them and not necessarily all the way around the ship. 'Outside' means the kolossoi were on the exterior of the superstructure. I think.

This arrangement differs somewhat from that proposed by the most recent reconstruction by Makintosh et al.

Makintosh et al have no main deck - no deck which is secured on the thwarts and topwale of the hull construction before the superstructure is constructed upon it. But they did not construct a vertical cross-section to allow us to see exactly how they configured the decks.


DECK PLANS - HORIZONTAL SECTIONS

The deck we have most information about is the third one, with its stables etc. But we have no information as to how the different facilities were laid out.

The second - middle - deck has a large state room and 30 smaller cabins.

The upper deck has a temple, stables etc !!! How could they be laid out ?

Makintosh et al made a basic guess without going too much into details..

CABINS SPLIT TO BOTH SIDES, STATEROOM PUT IN CENTRE ( no galley for state suite ? )

 DECK 2

After Moschion's account, Athenaeus writes ....

  Belonging to the middle gangway were cabins for men ranged on each side of the ship, large enough for four couches, and numbering thirty. The officers' cabin could hold fifteen couches and contained three apartments of the size of three couches; that toward the stern was the cooks' galley. All these rooms had a tessellated flooring made of a variety of stones, in the pattern of which was wonderfully wrought the entire story of the Iliad; also in the furniture, the ceiling, and the doors all  these themes were artfully represented.

The gangways I already decided were on the outside.
The cabins divided in two rows, back to back, with doors to the outside gangways, formed the main area and then, to the stern was the larger cabin with its smaller ancilliary rooms, including the kitchen.

The couches spoken of were couches on which one reclined to eat or sleep. Their size can be found in other ancient sources and by supposition.
A couch should be at least 2 metres long and 1 wide, say. Makintosh et al used a size of 6 x 2.5 feet. - 180 by 75cm. A crucial thing might be to include some space to move around in the cabin - which Makintosh et al did not do....jokes about modern shoebox houses aside.. this is surely wrong.

cat swinging somewhat restricted in second class

We must allow at least the same space as a couch to allow people to actually move around the cabin.
Notwithstanding they also got the calculation wrong - using 4x6x2.5 as 102 square feet rather than 60, for example, a cabin with 4 couches 1.8 by .75 metres plus an equivalent amount of floorspace comes out at 10.8 square metres. (116.25 square feet).

The couches referred to here are the bed-like furnitures used for eating in a reclined posture - and for sleeping on at a pinch.

 A room could be decsribed as having space for x couches. even if there was no standard couch size the approximation was useful for comparisons.

A cabin with couches arranged like this would have space under the couches for gear and a central table plus space to moave around.

Our ypothetical cabin with additional floorspace alongside each couch equal to its area

1,8 x ,75 =  2.7 square metres per couch

Ancient examples give larger figures for palatial dining rooms...

At Vergina, the Macedonian Royal Palace,  7 couches per 25 square metres = 3.6 square metres per couch +/-

At  Perachora, Corinthia, 11 couches per 40 square metres = 3.6 square metres per couch

 A four-couch cabin on Syrakousia could look like this...

14.4 square metres : cabin side 3.8 metres

Let's take 3 square metres per couch....this means 12 square metres which is a nice approximation of a 3m square for each cabin's footprint. (square root of 12 is 3.4 - allows for walls )


Our overall deck area is 64 metres length minus 1/7 for bow and 1/7 for stern by 16 metres wide.
 9 metres at each end is lost as bow-stern areas, for now.
 64 - 18 (x 16) gives us 736 square metres  minus a 9 metre bow and stern section.

30 cabins this size(12 sq m)  use up 360 square metres. We have to add the stateroom so maybe our size estimates should be pared down, but we are in the right ball-park.


The parados around the deck - could be now 5 metres on each side ...lots of spare room to play with.

So let us relax constraints on the cabins to make them 4 metres wide by 3 metres . More room to swing the proverbial cats in now. Leaving 2metre exterior gangways on each side..

DECK CONFIGURATIONS : A) CABINS,B)  ADDING STATE ROOM, C) FINAL VERSION

Now for the state suite. Captain's cabins?

This is a biggy with 15 couch space and 3 cubicles of 1 couch size - or of each 3 couch size...depending on translation.

This is 15 x 2.5 square metres plus 3 cubicles of (3 x 2.5) sqm. 37.5 plus 22.5 = 60 sqm c. 8m square

W can shove the 4-couch cabins along a bit and still have space for the state-rooms AND the galley on the end.....

 - Makintosh et al  place the stateroom in the centre line of the deck . If it is square this is about 8 metres wide . Add 2 gangways at 1.5 metres and two 4-couch cabins as per their diagram - this is 3.5m width each -this is 10 metresof width, we have 18 metres of deck width. Somehwat exceeding their calculated width of 50 feet or 15 metres. They also go in for ball-park-ism.

To this we must add a kitchen at the rear - galleys seem to have usually been located aft in ancient freighters. In size terms it could be reckoned at another 4-couch cabin maybe.


Makintosh et al calculated Deck 2 as extending to 720 square metres (just 700 metres in another place..quite confusing) ......with the facilities taking up 461 square metres.

If we want to add the foreship and aftship areas we can count them as simple triangles and consider half of these parts of the simple rectangle available ..

This extends our deck square metres available by 219.

There is ample space for a gangway if we squish the cabins out to the ends of deck 3 and slim them down a smidgin...

64 x 2 x 1.5 = 196 square metres needed for gangways/paradosoi

SEE C) ON FIGURE ABOVE

 The height of the overhead on this deck does not have to be the 3 metres - 6 cubits given for Deck 1 which was surrounded by the kolossoi. We could redcue overheads to 2 metres - or 2.5 with no great problem. Thus saving on top weight.


In summary : our deck arrangements have been worked out to be economical with space.
The basic principle is to imagine the ancient ship as more of a Nile steamer than a modern cruiser with internal gangways.

Syrakousia was not so much this........

..but this.....

M.V. Sudan is 72 metres long. Not so different from Syrakousia.  She is slimmer than Syrakousia - only 10 metres in the beam. She has 23 cabins, 5 are large state suites. I would suggest that this is the more accurate impression of what Syrakousia looked like rather than HMS Victory or Noah's ark.

NEXT : DECK 3

SYRAKOUSIA III

NE PLUS ULTRA !  - The Lines of...

The form of the hull of Syrakousia was probably relatively simple compared to modern - post medieval - ships.

The shell-built, draw-tongue edge-fastened hulls of ancient ships tended to take simple forms before frame-building allowed for much more secure and variable shapes to be tried.

The two main forms were long parallel hulls used for war galleys and rounded elliptical hulls  used for sailing freighters.

Syrakousia was a sailing freighter not a rowed galley. Her hull was therfore of the elliptical type.
Exactly what form it took, though, needs a closer look.

Athenaeus tells us that the Syrakousia was built after the pattern of an eikosoros. This is sometimes mistranslated as a 'twenty' and therefore misconstrued as a galley. In fact, the eiksoros was a slang name for a type of common freighter which got their name from the fact they had 20 oars  - in all - which could be deployed when needed. This type is mentioned in the Iliad and was apparently an early form from before the extended narrow galley hull had been developed. These ships could carry freight and sail and also be moved under oars more successfully than the freighters which Aristotle describes as being like beetles in water flailing ineffectually with their legs.

The ship Tim Severin built for his Jason Voyage project is something in this vein even though it was not built strictly after an ancient plan.

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Nemi ships. A quick glance at them shows they are unseaworthy. They are flat barges even though the techniques used were the same as for ocean going freighters.

Nemi 1

Nemi 2

They have no keel and are so flat that swell and waves would have quickly worked them to pieces.

Warships tend to having parallel sides because oars must all reach the water together and guns must be able to be aligned. Freighters can have curved sides. - but not to the extreme of the Nemi barges !

Ocean class 3-decker. parallel -sided. Bluff, with fine tail.

We have no complete wreck of a Greek or Roman freighter to work from but the small Uluburun ship from 1300BC and the Kyrenia ship from 400AD show us the general form remained over the whole of the ancient era.

 

A thousand years apart but hull construction and form are the same !.

Viking ships give us an parallel example of narrow long warships and rounded freighters.

Ottar - Skuldelev 1 - fat for freight (reconstructed modern shape with widest beam forward!)

Gokstadskibet : elongate, a jack of all trades

Long ships and round ships - viking style

 Medieval sailing ships were built after the principal of being 'cod-headed and mackrel-tailed' which meant they were bluff in the bow for stability and had sleek after-lines to allow water to slip away past them without creating slowing eddies.

Matthew Baker's naturalistic hull design. Tudor tech.

Ancient ships do not appear to ever have this contrast in form from bow to stern. Near-symmetry seems to have been the rule.


In addition, the bow is made high enough to be mostly out of the water when under way to avoid taking water in if a wave is broached.

The dangers of taking waves over the stern when under way in a high sea are an existential threat to sailing ships and for this reason we also see that ancient freighters have a raised stern.

The ship from Madrigue de Giens near Marseille - 1st century BC - seems to be a  good pattern to incorporate in our exercise, too. It is a good size and exhibits a form which is neithr to narrow nor to broad. The stem is near vertical and the stern was probably high.The high stern sweep achieved a clean exit from the 'hole' the vessel creates in the water.

Medieval and later sailing ships tend to have the broadest beam midships or nearer to the bow.
Finely designed yachts can have the broadest point midships, carefully incorporated in the design.


Ancient ships seem to have gone with the idea that the broadest point should be midships or slightly aft of there.

reconstruction of freighter Isis -

In summary, we should have a generally elliptical form at the waterline which could be almost parallel down the beam for a distance on the basis the length of this ship.

The bow should rise up, being relatively sharp with a near vertical stem. The stern should be higher than the bow and upswept.

We should also remember that ancient ships have large steering oars at the rear - one on each side. These were mounted on a frame built onto the hull so they could be balanced well enough that one man could control the pair from the poop deck.

 LASTLY! Not LEASTLY

The narrowing to the bow and stern typically takes up about 1/7 of the shull length. We must remember that we want to preserve as much deck space as possible to build all the superstructure and install all the towers and weapons and good stuff! 

PRACTICAL STEPS FOR MODELLING

What I did next was to draw a few profiles on card.

I used strips of correct length and folded them in half over the length. Draw and cut form so so you then open  both sides and see the symmetrical hull form. Don't try to draw both sides freehand !

Try to preserve as much beam as possible down the length.
Try to give it an historically authentic look.
Try to give it a curve pleasing to the eye.

After doing a few of these and comparing them to some of the profiles above I ended up with a waterline hull shape to use for the model.....

A was too sharp and lost too much deck space.

B was too narrow forward of midships.

C was just right. For my purposes.

The waterline shape for my Syrakousia model



 Ne plus ultra! I accept this main deck template for the model of Syrakousia  Next... what is on the decks ?

SYRACOUSIA II

Just what Hieron II wanted with a monster grain freighter requires some explanation.
Why should an hellenistic monarch seek to extol his own and his kingdom's power and virtue by means of a massive maritime corn carrier ? 

South eastern Sicily is fertile. It was also under peaceful control of Hieron. It was a grain basket of the ancient world.  In the mid 3rd century BC there was much money to be made from selling corn abroad or largesse to be shown by giving it away to places with poorer agriculture or smitten by war pestilence or earthquake. If Hieron could safely despatch corn around the Mediterranean there was a fortune to be made.

Hieron made a name for humself by attacking the Mamertines. This was a public service because these were a collection of brigands slaves pirates and freebooter who had settled in the city of Messana. The Mamertines called themselves 'the people of the war god' after Mamers an Oscan war god.The menfolk of Messana were descendents of mercenaries hired by the tyrant Agathokles, himself an infamous  fore-runner of Hieron at Syracuse. They gained the city by murdering the citizens one night and siezing their women and treasure. Their subsequent behaviourtowards the neighbours was no better. Forget ideas about Johnny Depp in big boots and a bandana. Mediterranean pirates of the classical world ranked with the lowest form of humanity to emerge anywhere.

Mamertine warrior c. 220AD - could be Mamer?

Being an island and a colony of Corinth it was vital for Syracuse to keep the sea lanes open. If piratical activity became to intense the island was effectively blockaded. Mamertine and Tyrrhenian pirates harassed Hiero's trade but they were difficult to eradicate.

a pirate galley intercepts a grain freighter : Attic vase c.450BC

So for Hieron moving his grain safely was a big deal.

To move grain safely by sea requires certain things of the transporter.


Size : better to move a lot in 1 go - the hamster foraging  principle.

 

Speed- do it fast to avoid predators - again a lesson from hamsters. A longer hull gives higher speed .

Stability - bulk cargo is dangerous to move in bad weather. A broad stable hull is better. (Also for wealthy passengers...)

Bulk carrier Stellar Banner after cargo of ore shifted

Defence - pirates could descend in hoards. Any freighter had to be able to defend itself against several other ships and perhaps hundreds of attackers.

Manouverability - this would be limited by the size of the ship but the ability to manoeuvre into harbour was vital,  or to evade pursuers.

Servicability - the hull and rig should be robust and not require anything out of the ordinary to keep it in running order.

All of these factors mitigate for a large ship rather than a small fast one or a flock of small ones.

Galleys were reliably fast and could sail through calm but they had a limited freight capacity in their slim shallow hulls and so the ship should obviously be a sailing ship or 'round ship' 'strongylos'.

THE DIMENSIONS OF THE SHIP

Just how big was this 'monstrous mass' ?

From Athenaeus we get to know the following:

• it required the wood for 60 triremes to construct the whole thing
•  the sacred trireme built by Antigonos and victorious off Kos was not a quarter of Syracousia

In addition we can note that

• the Nemi vessels, the largest found, are 70mx30m and 73m x24m 
• grain freighter Isis from Lucan's poem 'The Wishes' , 55m by 13.5m or so, hold 4 - 5m deep
• Caligula's obelisk-transporter was 104m long -  but only made 1 voyage
• Ptolemy II's '40' could have been about 100 metres long 
• Ptolemy IV's Thalemagos was 30 cubits by half a stadion i.e c.15m by 90m !!
• longest wooden ships without steel bracing < 80m WIKI LIST HERE

Largest wooden ship - Wyoming in 1917 - 140m x 15.5m : ships this big had steel hull bracing (still failed)

Taking the wood used first. If we consider the project as a 3 dimensional mass of wood with a similar density of wood involved within the whole structure then 60 times the mass of a trireme from Coates this would be about 30 tonnes of wood.So...30 x 60 = 1800 tonnes.

The trireme occupies circa 35m by 6m by 4 m of space.840m3

840 cubic metres x 60 is 50,400.

If we take the cube root of this we can get the block equivalent of the monster...Yes, very simplified...
 

The cube root is 36.Double the length to half the width and get the profile more elongate.

Interestingly, if we double the length we get about the length of the Nemi ships. And the longest modern era wooden ships.

We must then halve another dimension, shall we use the height, to get an 18m high structure.

This ballpark model is a block 72metres long by 36metres wide and 18metres high.

Very rough, and we should expect more wood goes to strengthening the hull and reducing the interior volume. If we reduce the interior volume by a quarter, conservative, to allow for a heavier structure, we have our block model as 65metres by 32metres by 16metres. Or so.

Now, typically, sailing freighters have a length to breadth ratio around 4:1. As per the Nemi ships which were for use on a confined lake, this falls to 3:1 or less.

VIKING ERA SHIPS ILLUSTRATE THIS WELL

WARSHIPS  L:B RATIO                                   CARGO SHIPS   L:B RATIO
Ladby                   7.4                                         Klåstad                          4.4
Hedeby 1              11.4                                       Skuldelev 6                   4.48
Roskilde 6             9.3                                        Skuldelev 3                   4.24
Skuldelev 5          7                                            Skuldelev 1                   3.44
Sludelev 2            7.5                                         Hedby 3                        3.55

Aslak - Ladby replica and Nidhug( L:B 4)

ANCIENT EXAMPLES
CARGO

Kyrenia Ship   2.5
Isis                   4.5
Nemi 1              3
Nemi 2              3.5
WAR GALLEY
trieres Olympias  7

The same relationship holds.

But our ship must sail the high seas so we must drop the width of 36m down somewhat to a quarter of 65 i.e. 16metres. Following the block model would now mean we stretch the heigh to maintain the timber mass...adding a third or so to the height to give keel to top deck height of 20metres or so.

Mackintosh et al (Syracusia as a giant cargo vessel, IJNA 1999) arrive at dimensions of 61.5metres  length   15.5metres beam  by 10metres high. Not a million miles away.

So we have a length and beam that is useable. I will take 64metres and 16 metres as nice round figures to base my model upon.

The rather top-heavy figure of 20 metres for keel-to-top deck can be controlled by Athenaeus' statements that there were three exterior gangways - parados - plus a hold.  This means 3 decks with ceilings (terrestrial use of the word..) at 2 to 2.5 metres. and a hold of simliar depth would give 10 metres keel to top. Height above water level would therefore be around 7 metres ?

If the topsides were too high then Vasa-Mary Rose syndrome could occur.

Vasa had a poop deck 19 metres above the keel and c.15m above the waterline. In addition, it had a very high centre of gravity. Ancient ships tended to have little superstructure, keeping their centre of gravity low. There was no incentive to have several decks for guns and massively strong superstructure.
 A schooner of similar dimensions from 1920 was c.8m waterline to deck.

A similar sclae vessel for comparison can be provided by the French 118 gun Ocean class warships from c.1800. Larger than the Victory, these were 3-deckers with similar domensions to our prospective Syracousia. at  65.18 metres by 16.25m in beam. They were massive platforms for 118 cannon and survived in service until 1860 or so.

Ocean class 118 gun French warship c. 1800 

These ships stood about 10.5 metres from the waterline to the poop deck.
Their holds were 5 metres deep - most below the waterline.
They had four deck levels above the waterline but these had overheads at under 2 metres each.
These would not be appropriate for the Syracousia which had to accommodate high status guests and had luxurious fittings.

All in all 11 metres over the waterline would seem to be a maximum for a ship of these general proportions.

DIMENSIONS FOR THE MODEL

Erring on a slightly larger 'monstrous mass' I decided to go for the following dimensions.

LENGTH : 64 METRES   BEAM : 16 METRES   HEIGHT ABOVE WATERLINE : 11 METRES


This gives a hull more seaworthy than the Nemi ships, which, although built with the same quality as a sea-going ship are essentially barges not intended to be exposed to waves or swell. or to move under sail. Thus, ot as enormous as the greatest dimensions we know of from the classical world but somehwat according to modern era giants.

The large size of the hull allows stability, higher speed under sail and the carrying of sufficient defences to hold off pirates.

Equivalent of Syrakousia and pirates : 'Standy by to repel boarders!'

 FIGHTING PIRATES : just have to watch again..... HERE  and HERE


Next we will work out the ship's lines.

THE HELLENISTIC FLAT TOP

THE most remarkable ship we know about from the ancient world is
 the Syrakousia - the Maid of Syracuse.
 

Syracousia as reconstructed in 1798.

Despite some translations and reconstructions deciding the opposite, Syracousia was a sailing ship and not a galley. Even so,  it is more than worthy of discussion here. She led, for example, a small flotilla of support ships which were mostly galleys.

Flipped Prof is an Italian 3D graphics team(?) who produce reconstructions of the ancient world. They look great but have some errors of detail.

Flipped Prof show here a reconstruction of Syrakousia as a galley with 3 tiers of oars.

Youtube HERE

 

 The error is simply made, because the ancient Greek text is somewhat garbled, technical and difficult to understand if one knows little of ancient ships.

Having held the idea in mind for many years I finally decided that I had to make a model of this behemoth and try to make some sense of the ancient account.

SOURCES

The Syracousia was constructed in a special place and time which allowed for such futuristic, cutting- edge  projects to be carried out.

Hieron the Second of Syracuse was a hellenistic ing who had access to great wealth and great technologists. Hieron started the First Punic War(264BC)  on the Punic side but was obviously gifted in diplomacy for he ended it on the Roman side (241BC) and remained friendly with them until his death in 215BC. As if to demonstrate what a feat this was, within 4 year sof his death the romans had seen fit to sack Syracuse and swallow his kingdom.

Hieron II lived until 92. Barely a bad word written about him (enemies all very dead)

Hieron II was admired and successful and wealthy. Hellenistic kings were supposed to give public displays of their wealth and excellence as a kind of public and religious duty. What would today be seen as wasteful junket would have been interpreted as a demonstration of how the gods smiled on the kingodom's ruler and therefore the kingdom and therefore each individual citizen. Big parades, tours and festivals were de rigeur for an Hellenistic king.

Vulgar to Romans but essential to Hellenistic royalty

 Hieron was fortunate enough to have a bevy of beautiful brains at his disposal. Hellenistic courts loved knowledge, fine arts natural sciences and engineering. Just as his predecessor, Dyonisius I, Hieron patronised the wise and clever. He was lucky enough to have the great Archimedes at the head of his brains trust and this combined with a penchant for shipbuilding led to the Syracousia.

We shall see, Carl, we shall see....

We have an account, a detailed account, (but not wholly clear, dammit!) of the great ship. It comes, bizzarely enough, from a long and rambling work from the 3rd century AD known as 'The Philosopher-Gastronomes'  (Deipnosophistae), by the Egyptian-Greek  Athenaeus of Naucratis. In his work, which survives in incomplete form, Athenaeus manages to name-drop no less than 800 ancient authors and 2500 literary works. He is a mine, (some might say a pile) of information about the ancient world.

Athenaeus, then, scratched an account of a work by Moschion who was an earlier writer. How early we do not know. He could also have been writing AD. But Moschion had knowledge of the Syracousia project and preserved it due to his delightful profession of 'paradoxographer'. His bag was to create the 'wierd tales' or 'stranger than fiction' pulp of his day.

Just now we stick to construction rather than seduction...

Bored with scoffing for a while, the Philosopher-Gastronomes are treated to a lengthy morsel from Moschion which tells of how Archimedes was entrusted with a project to build the biggest and best grain freighter by Hieron II.

But the tall tale told for the delectation of the well-stuffed Hellenestic aesthetes has been a target for scepticism.

THE ENTERTAINMENT PUT ME OFF MY CUSTARD AND LARK-TONGUES...FOR A WHILE.

.WHY COULDWE NOT JUST HAVE STORIES AND POEMS ABOUT SHIPS INSTEAD ?

Dawe, Diggle and Page, in thier survey of the Greek epigram*,  (p. 27) see the tale as an 'absurd yarn' - as absurd as their Dickensian assemblage of names, no doubt. Part of Moschion's account includes an epigram attributed to one 'Archimelus'.( Incidentally, we know sweet Fanny Adams about these two apart from their naming in Athenaeus.)Epigrams should be pithy, witty, ingenious and brief. They originated as tombstone inscriptions and memorials  - our modern epitaph - where every letter cost money.

(Remember,  'Many archaic epitymbic epigrams are monostichs'  A sentence I have vowed never to remember)

'I told you I was Milligan!'

The problem Dawe, Diggle and Page have with the Syracousia epigram is that it lives up to none of these criteria. Get this.....

Who placed this monstrous mass upon the earth;
What master led it with untiring cables,
How was the deck nail'd to the mighty beams,
And with what axe did men the vessel form?
Surely it equals Aetna in its height,
Or any isle which rises from the sea
Where the Egean wave entwined foams
Amid the Cyclades; on either side
Its breadth is equal, and its walls alike.
Sure 'twas the giants' work, who hoped to reach
By such vast ladder to the heights of heaven.
Its topmast reaches to the stars; and hides
Its mighty bulwarks 'mid the endless clouds.
It holds its anchors with untiring cables,
Like those with which proud Xerxes bound the strait
Which between Sestos and Abydos foams.
A deftly carved inscription on the side
Shows what strong hand has launch'd it on the deep;
It says that Hiero, Hierocles' son,
The king of Sicily, pride of Dorian race,
Sends it a wealthy messenger of gifts
To the Aegean islands; and the God
Who rules the sea, great Neptune, convoys it
Safe o'er the blue and foaming waves to Greece.

You may notice that the 'epigram' is almost as large as the monster ship herself, but we must remember tha the form did get extended with time to allow flowery praises to be heaped on the subjects.
The judgement of DD&P is that this epigram is 'the most fatuous to have survived from the Alexandrian era'. Also . 'the hyperbole is grotesque'. Academics stamping their feet are never a pretty sight. DD&P conclude that the whole tale is a fanciful crock and dismiss it.

Unfortunately for the poetry-inclined latter-day dodgy legal firm, they were not naval architects nor were they sailors. Like Livy they write about nautical themes from the security of their bathtubs where the most complex vessel in sight is a plastic duck.

Now we can explain the most complex ancient ship ..Oh I can anyway because  I built it.....

 DD&P used a naval expert upon which to base their judgement. The one they chose was the intrepid, and impressive Cecil Torr. I will devote a whole blog page to Cecil Torr. He is one of my favourite writers and researchers on classical war galleys and ancient nautical topics in general, not to mention ancient Greek music.  To an Englishman he also has to his credit the publication of one of the most profoundly English books ever. Ranking with Tristram Shandy. But that was nothing to do with Syracousia. The point about Cecil Torr is that he is rather dead. Even in 1981 when DD&P published their tome he was long gone.Cecil's feet failed to retain their wooden enfurbishments in 1928.  Torr's classic  ' Ancient Ships' was published in 1894. DD&P missed out on almost a hundred years of research, discovery and debate and the birth of maritime archaeology. They dismiss Syracousia as an absurd yarn on the basis of an earlier generation's knowledge of ancient shipping.  Apart from that, they were probably correct about the poem's artistic merits....

The facts that we have from Moschion via Athenaeus are fabulous but can be shown to lie within the technical capabilities of the classical world.

The Nemi ships, Caligula's pleasure barges proved such colossi were constructed by the ancients. (may the German army be ever cursed for burning them!). Accounts of the Ptolemies' massive Nile-cuisers - Thalamegoi - back the concept up. Many authors have pored over the after dinner tale - probbly often after dinner - and worked out that Syracousia lies well within the realm of capability for men of the calibre of Archimedes. 

Queus to see ships excavted at Nemi in 1932

Caligula's pleasure-ships : 70 and 73 metres long. with beam 30 and 24 metres

I wanted to build a model of this thing and now I will lay out how I proceeded in the following blog entries.


HELLENISTIC FLAT TOP ?

If the Hellenistic world had aeroplanes they could have landed on this thing ! With the ingenuity of the modern era's early naval fliers a seaplane using a combination ofI Icarus' wings (with perfected non-melting glue!) Heron's jet engine, the torsion devices invented for artillery etc. could have allowed a microlite type thingy to have been produced and operated from a Syracousia type vessel, more than 50 metres long and with a flat top.

HUMAN FLIERS HERE

 Just a crazy thought which I will not pursue further ! ;)

(The silver lining in the cloud of Covid19 is that I have time for this ....  More follows...)


 *Further Greek Epigrams. Cambridge 1981

Back at the Helm. As in Helmet.

 

Another special  helmet found at Egadi..'...there have been found 2 very fine Montefortino types... with animal crests - along with 4 plain examples.

The first has a reclining cat-like figure ...

  Now the second is shown ,cleaned a bit.

Foto from Archaeology News Network

It reveals itself to be an ornate Roman type a Montefortino with extra ornamentation. A beautiful gryphon head which may be a holder for another fitting - see the mouth.Somehwat resembling later heavily ornamented cavalry helmets or even some infantry officer helmets. The cavalry and officers, especially in Republican times, had plenty of cash to display their status in their equipment.
There are small feather holdrs on the sides too.

This one shares its knob with the Egadi helm.

 A nice report at Archaeology News Network gives details HERE.

Did it fall overboard as the wearer stumbled under a blow or did it find its way into Davy Jones' Locker still attached to his noble head?

You can read a Master's Thesis about the 6 Montefortino helmetsfrom Egadi  HERE

This season has revealed 2 more bronze rostra and a sword ....
.... see RPMN website slide show HERE

You can see video of the recovery operations if you click on this foto.

Click to see video of recovery at TP24 Cultura via Facebook

 You can read more about Egadi under my previous posts or at the RPMN website HERE.

pROGRESS IN pRINTABLE pLASTIC

Some time ago I commented about the advances in 3D printing and what was coming down the pike.

Here is a splendid example of what is possible and what is happening..over at My Mini Factory.

A 'bireme' for the tabletop.

Iain Lovecraft has produced files to print this splendid galley at 28mm scale (or, presumably any scale?) fpr just 36 dollars. If you have tried to buy a resin galleyfor 28mm  you will know this is a reasonable price.

Of course, you need a printer, but if a friend has the machine a pint or two will see him right....

Sadly, they do not seem to have any other galleys in thier catalogue. Yet...

Print and assemble.

Heer and now is not the place to discuss how accurate the model is but it is a) glorious and b) perfect for gaming c) something to impress people that ancient war galleys are something to get into!!


You can find Iain Lovecraf'ts model here. ROMAN WARGALLEY BIREME