Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Remex

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. 

RE'MEX (ἐρέτης, κωπηλάτης. A rower or oarsman who rows in a boat, galley, or ship. In vessels of war the rowers (remiges) formed a distinct class from the sailors (nautae) who managed the sails and navigation of the vessel; and from the marines (classiarii), or troops to whom its defence was committed; but the three together, the soldiers, seamen, and rowers, completed the manning of the vessel. Cic. Verr. ii. 5. 33. Id. ii. 4. 34. Caes. B. C. iii. 24.

In boats and small craft the ancients used their oars in most of the different ways still practised; a single man sometimes plying a pair of sculls (woodcut s. BIREMIS, 1.) when the boat was very small; or, in those of a larger size, handling only a single oar, and then either sitting and pulling towards himself, as we do, or standing up and pushing from himself, as is still the more common practice in the Mediterranean (woodcut s. ACTUARIOLUM).

In sea-going vessels of a large size furnished with a single line of oars, such as the naves longae, liburnicae, and others belonging to the class of moneres, which were equipped with oars of great weight and length, it is almost certain that more than one man pulled at the same oar, and sat on the same bench, as was the practice adopted in the galleys of the Venetians, Genoese, and French of Marseilles, during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, a method which is thus described in the memoirs of Jean Marteihle, a French protestant, condemned to the galleys in 1701. "The rowers sit upon benches" (the transtra of the Romans), "six men to an oar; one foot rests upon a low stool or stretcher, the other is raised and placed against the bench before them. They lean their bodies forward" (the remis incumbunt of Virgil), "and stretch out their arms over the back of those before them, who are also in a similar attitude. Having thus advanced the oar, they raise themselves and the end of the oar which they hold in their hands" (remis pariter insurgunt, Virg.), "and plunge the opposite one into the sea; which done, they throw themselves back upon their benches, which bend beneath their pressure."

In vessels which were furnished with more than one bank (ordo) of oars, such as the biremis, triremis, &c., the system of rowing was conducted upon a different plan. In these the rowers sat upon separate seats (sedilia) instead of cross benches (transtra), and each oar was pulled by a single man, the highest one from the water being of course the longest, and the labour of the man who worked it the most severe. But when vessels of very great size were constructed, such, for instance, as the hexeris, hepteris, decemremis, &c., even though they could not have more than five oars in an ascending line from the water's edge to the bulwarks, as explained in the article ORDO, yet it is clear that the length and weight of the oar must have borne a certain proportion to the width and length of the ship; and in such cases it is but reasonable to infer that both the methods of rowing hitherto described were united; the lower and smaller oars being managed each by a single man, the upper and larger ones by as many more than one as their size required. Thus when mention is made in the ancient authors of the oarage not being fully manned, it is not thereby implied that any of the oars are wanting, which could scarcely be, but that the proper strength or number of hands, required for their effective management, was not put upon some of them.