Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Quinqueremis

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. 

QUINQUERE'MIS (πεντήρης). A war galley equipped with five banks (ordines) of oars on each side; a class of vessel very commonly employed during the second Punic war. Liv. xxviii. 30. Plin. H. N. vii. 5. The absence of any known representation of an ancient quinquereme renders it impossible to show the disposition of the oarage in vessels of this class by reference to a model of undoubted authority; but there are fair conjectural grounds for believing that each bank was placed and rated in an ascending line, one over the other, the oar ports of all the five ranging diagonally in file, in the manner shown by the following diagram (Quinqueremis/1.1); because the biremis, triremis, and quadriremis are shown by existing monuments to have been rated and constructed upon that principle, as is proved by the illustrations to each of those words; and it has been ascertained by actual experiment that a fifth tier superimposed in the same manner would not be too high above the water's edge, for the blade to dip into the water without requiring the oar to be of an unmanageable length; though beyond that number such an arrangement is found practically impossible, because the handle would be hoisted above the rower's reach, from the great obliquity given to the oar by the height of the fulcrum on which it would be poised; or, if the oar were lengthened sufficiently to meet the water at a working angle, the handle would become so long that it could not be contained within the vessel.

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  Quinqueremis/1.1