Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Hexeris

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

HEXE'RIS (ἑξήρης). A vessel furnished with six banks of oars on each side. (Liv. xxxvii. 23.). It is still a matter of doubt and of difficulty even to surmise how the oars were disposed in a vessel rated with six banks (ordines); as it has been proved by experiments that an oar poised at such an altitude from the water's edge as would be required for the sixth seat of the rower, even when placed diagonally over the five others, would have so great a dip for its blade to touch the water, that the handle would be elevated above the reach of the rower; or, if the oar were made of sufficient length to obviate this inconvenience, being fixed as of necessity upon the thowl at one-third of its entire length, the part inboard would be so long that it must reach over to the opposite side of the vessel, and thus completely obstruct all movement within it. The most feasible construction seems to be that suggested by Howell (Treatise on the War Galleys of the Ancients), that when vessels had more than five banks of oars, the banks were not counted in an ascending direction from the water's edge to the bulwarks, but lengthwise from stem to stern; that these were placed in a diagonal direction, as in the trireme (see TRIREMIS, and illustration), and always five deep in the ascending line; but that they were rated, not by these, but by the number of oar-ports between stem and stern. Thus a hexeris would have five parallel lines of oars, with six oar-ports in each, placed diagonally over one another, as in the annexed diagram (Hexeris/1.1); a hepteris seven; a decemremis, ten; and so on. Compare ORDO.

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  Hexeris/1.1