Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Ordo

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. 

ORDO. In a general sense, a row or series of things placed in regular order of succession one after the other, as a row of trees, rank or file of soldiers, &c.

2. In the ancient marine, a tier, file, or, as it is commonly translated, a bank of oars, varying in number, according to the class and size of the vessel, from one to fifty. The manner in which these banks or ordines were arranged or counted is still in some respects a subject of dispute, and will probably remain without a satisfactory solution, unless the lucky discovery of some artistic representation should enable future antiquaries to base their theories upon some better authority than mere conjecture; for amongst the many plans which have been suggested, there is not one entirely free from objection. Those which appear reasonable upon paper, and have, perhaps, some apparent classical authority to lean on, are found to involve mechancial impossibilities when reduced to practice; and those which are both feasible, and proved by actual experiment to be practicable, must still be accepted with hesitation, because they are wanting in classial authorities to support them. Up to the number of five banks, we have pretty clear evidence, both circumstantial and positive, that each one was counted by rank, and not by file; i. e. that the entire number of oars, no matter how many, extending in a line from the stem to the stern, formed an ordo or bank. Thus Tacitus describes a moneris, or vessel which had only one line of oars, by the expression, quae ordine simplici agebatur (Hist. v. 23.), as shown by the annexed illustration (Ordo/2.1), from a mosaic discovered near Pozzuoli. In the bireme or vessel with two ordines, it is equally clear, from other words in the same passage of Tacitus, and the following illustration (Ordo/2.2), from a marble bas-relief, that the second bank was placed under the first, and counted in rank from the bulwarks to the water's edge, the lower oar ports, and, consequently, the rowers' seats, being placed diagonally under the first, in order to diminish as much as possible the interval between one bank and the other. That the same principle was observed in the disposition of a trireme or vessel with three ordines, and each bank counted in a similar manner between the water and the bulwarks, is testified by the expression of Virgil — terno consurgunt ordine remi (Aen. v. 120.), and the annexed illustration (Ordo/2.3), from an ancient Roman fresco painting, which confirms it. A similar construction for four ordines is indicated by the illustration s. QUADRIREMIS, in which the banks are visibly four deep, in an ascending line from the water, though the individual details are less circumstantial and explicit, from the minuteness of the design, which is only the device upon a coin; and we may thence fairly conclude that a fifth ordo was disposed and counted in the same way, because it has been ascertained by experiments that a series of five oars ascending in a slanting direction from the water's edge to the gunwale could be arranged within the space of nine perpendicular feet, the highest point of elevation from the water at which an oar could be poised from its thowl (scalmus) to be handled with effect. (Howell, War Gallies of the Ancients, pp. 49. 51.) Beyond this number the difficulty of counting the banks commences, and conjecture alone takes the place of authority, whether written or demonstrative. If more than five parallel tiers were placed one over the other, it would be practically impossible to use the oar in a sixth tier, the fulcrum being placed so high above the water that it would elevate the handle above the reach of the rower, or hinder the blade from touching the water, or the oar must be of such an inordinate length that the part in-board would reach from one side of the vessel to the other, and beyond it. How then are we to account for a vessel with forty banks of oars, like the one builty by Ptolemy? The most plausible solution is, that, in all the larger class of vessels, the oars were disposed in five parallel lines, as in a quinquereme, but that the banks or ordines, after the number of five, were counted in file instead of in rank; i. e. each ascending file of five oars from the water's edge was called an ordo, but the number of banks or ordines were enumerated from stem to stern, instead of from the water to the gunwale. Thus a vessel with ten banks would have ten files of oars, counted from stem to stern, each one of five deep in the ascending line, as exhibited by the following diagram (Ordo/2.4); a vessel with forty banks would present the same arrangement of five deep in file, but each rank between stem and stern would contain forty oar ports instead of ten; a length quite within reasonable bounds, for even the moneris, a small vessel, in the first cut, has twenty-four.

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  Ordo/2.1
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  Ordo/2.2
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  Ordo/2.3
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  Ordo/2.4