Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Acatium

Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon (Rich, 1849)

ACAT'IUM (ἀκάτιον). A small, but fast-sailing vessel, belonging to the class termed actuariae, viz. which were worked with oars as well as sails. It was more especially used by the Greek pirates (Thucyd. iv. 67.), was furnished with an armed beak (rostrum). and had the stern rounded and bent inwards (inflexa, Plin. H. N. ix. 49.), a very common form in the marine of the ancients, as will be shown by many illustrations in the course of these pages. (See ACTUARIUS, APHRACTUS.) It is therefore highly probable that the distinctive characteristics of these vessels consisted more in the style of their rigging (see No. 2.) than in the form of the hull.

2. The same word is also used in connection with the rigging of a vessel, being sometimes applied to designate a sail, and sometimes a mast; but which of the sails or which of the masts is nowise apparent. Xenophon (Hellen. vi. 2. 27.) speaks of the acatia as sails, but contradistinct to the larger sails; Hesychius and Isidorus (Orig. xix. 3. 3.) on the contrary assert that the acatium was the largest sail on the ship, and attached to the main mast; while Julius Pollux (i. 91.) and Hesychius in another passage affirm that it was not a sail at all, but a mast, and that one the largest or main mast. Amidst all this apparent contradiction only one thing is certain, that the acatium was especially invented for fast sailing with light winds. If a conjecture might be hazarded all the difficulty would be got over by assuming that it meant both the mast and the sail belonging to it; and that it was a mast rigged after the fashion of the pirate vessels, to which the name properly belonged; a taller and lighter mast for instance than those usually employed, fitted also with smaller sails, probably with a top-sail over the main-sail, which would be handier for working and better for sailing in fair weather than the ordinary heavy mast, with its cumbrous yard. Thus Iphicrates, in the passage of Xenophon already referred to, before commencing his voyage, trimmed his vessels so as to be ready for any emergency. He left behind him the ordinary large set of sails (τἀ μεγάλα ἱστία), and consequently the heavy masts to which they belonged, and fitted the ships with masts and sails (ἀκατίοις), such as the pirates used in their vessels, for the rapidity they afforded in sailing, and the fewer hands they required for working, in case he should be forced to an engagement.