Mr. Howell, in confirmation, as he conceives, of this opinion, quotes Athenæus;[397] but, though there is nothing in the description of the great ship to lead to the conclusion that the _scalmi_ of her highest bank of oars were only nine feet above the level of the water, we agree with Mr. Howell that an oar could not be worked effectively at a greater height, and that the seats of the rowers were arranged by the system of obliquity, so as not to interfere with each other. We, however, differ from him in other respects. “A Greek trireme,” he remarks, “at the time of the invasion of Xerxes, had from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty rowers and forty armed foot, while the average-sized Persian triremes carried two hundred rowers and thirty soldiers.” Presuming these to be established facts, Mr. Howell endeavours to make his theory harmonize with them. “I have shown,” he says, referring to the French vessel, of which we have furnished particulars, “that a modern galley pulling fifty oars has six rowers on a bench. If I am correct,” he continues, “a trireme pulled thirty oars, that is, three banks, five oars in each, thus:— [Illustration] Now, to a vessel of her bulk, with elevated poop and stern,” he goes on to state, “less than five men cannot be allowed to each seat. Thus there are twenty-five rowers in each bank, and six times twenty-five make one hundred and fifty.” But though this mode of calculation (which, by the way, does not allow for any “watch-and-watch” or reliefs[398]) makes the Grecian galley agree with his scheme of manning her so far as regards the number of rowers, it is based upon the presumption that every oar had the same number of men. But this could not have been the case; for even if five men could be placed to advantage on each of the upper tiers of oars, two of them, at least, would be useless on the lower tiers of a vessel of this size, as they would not have space to work at it. The same fallacy runs throughout his arguments in other places. Thus he accounts for the Persian trireme with her two hundred men, by saying that she “must have had six men to an oar, which is not improbable, the Asiatics being not so athletic as the Greeks. Six times thirty,” he adds, “is one hundred and eighty, leaving twenty men for casualties, etc., etc.”