ening sceptical trains of thought in the mind of the reader. And we believe the bad influence of all his works might be counteracted in a great measure, particularly among the youth in our Colleges and Seminaries, by a little pains on the part of the instructors. That words of caution are needed here, is but too manifest.

ARTICLE V.

ON AN EXPRESSION IN ACTS, 27: 17.

By Theodore D. Woolsey, Prof. of Greek Literature, Yale College, New Haven.

THE following remarks, suggested by a passage in Plato's laws (Lib. 12, p. 945, C.) are laid before the reader nearly in the order in which the subject presented itself to the writer, and with the hope of explaining the precise meaning of ὑποζωννύντες τὸ πλοῖον in Acis, concerning which some doubt has existed.

The passage in Plato is to this effect. He is speaking of the difficulty of finding a set of magistrates competent to supervise the other magistrates of the state. "There are many occasions," says he, "when a polity may be dissolved, as there are of dissolving those parts of a ship or of any animal, which having a common nature spread through them all, are in different circumstances called by the various names of cords, rowuara and tendons." As in this passage, Plato classes this thing pertaining to a ship, whatever it may be, with the cords and muscles of the body, and implies that the structure of a ship would be weakened or destroyed, if it were loosed or broken, it seems not improbable that a rówμa is something in a ship like a cord or cable, by which its frame is tied together. Ast, however, in his edition of Plato's laws, and after him Cousin in his translation (*) under

(*) Ast: tabulata quibus navis latera coutexebantur. Cousin: Rèces de bois qui ceignaient le corps des vaisseaux, et en soutenaient la charpente.

stand the word of boards, by means of which the sides of a ship were woven or connected together. It is singular that the very passages to which Ast refers after giving this explanation, and which Cousin borrows from him, are as well adapted as they can be to show that it is untenable The first is from Athenæus Lib. 5. p. 204, A. He is giving an account of an enormous galley of forty banks of oars belonging to Ptolemy Philopater, and among other particulars says: "it took (λáμßavs, i. e., the space upon it required) twelve browμara: each was of six hundred cubits." It would seem that something like cables going round the whole ship must be here intended. And there is the more reason for thinking so, because the length of the vessel is put down at 280 cubits in the same passage. The double of this length and forty cubits allowed for the curvature of the sides, would make the length of the hypozoma. In the other passage, (from Vitruvius 10. 15, near the end of the work,) the thing seems to be mentioned without the name. The architect is

describing a battering-ram, and says, "a capite ad imam calcem tigni contenti fuerunt funes quatuor crassitudine digitorum octo, ita religati, quemadmodum navis a puppi ad proram continetur ejusque praecincturae funes transversis erant ligati, habentes inter se palmipedalia spatia." That is "four ropes eight fingers' breadth thick, had been stretched from the head to the extreme part of the foot of the beam; so bound to it as a ship is held together (or girded) from stern to stern. The ropes which formed this girdle had been fastened together by other transverse ones, and had spaces of a foot and a hand-breadth between them." Here Vitruvius teaches us apparently, that ships were kept together by ropes passing horizontally so as to enclose the sides. What else could the rowua have been?

The only other passage in the early classics, where this word occurs, so far as I am informed, is in Plato's republic, Lib. 10. near the end. The context is embarrassed by certain difficulties which need not delay us now. The immediate passage may be translated thus; "for (he said) that this light is the connecting bond of the heavens, which like the hypozomata of galleys keeps their whole circumference together." Here Stallbaum explains the term by the general words, "cingula triremium, quibus navis latera quasi continentur;" and then adds, and then adds, "vocem alii aliter interpretati

४

sunt." Schleiermacher renders the word in question by "streben" props, or boards, or beams, I suppose, put along obliquely to counteract the strain upon the sides of the ship.

But even here the idea of a continuous rope seems more natural. For the light spoken of was one undivided thing, unlike the separate boards along the sides of a ship, but quite similar to a rope encircling the vessel. If Plato here refers to the milky way, as is not improbable, or if the passage was suggested to him by a dogma of Parmenides concerning something in the likeness of a crown,—(" stephanem appel lat continentem ardore lucis orbem, qui cingit coelum." Cic. de nat. Deor. 1, 11,) by which Parmenides also may have. intended the milky way,-at all events a girdle encompassing a ship answers well in the comparison.

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Passow, however, in his lexicon, with obvious reference to this passage defines ὑπόζωμα as a rowers bench running across to the side of the ship; also called dúvderuos, because it forms the connexion between the ship's walls." But this explanation, besides being for other reasons wholly inadmissible, hardly deserves notice, after the passage from Athenaeus given above, except on account of the respectability of the source from which it comes.

The view which we now seem obliged to take, that the hypozoma was a cable going around the sides of vessels, is confirmed by a passage of Apollonius Rhodius 1, 367, seq. When the heroes had chosen Jason to be their captain, and he had made his inaugural address, they stripped off their garments and went to work to get the vessel ready for sea. At the suggestion of Argus the shipwright, "they tightly girded the vessel (ἐπικρατέως έζωσαν) inside with a well twisted rope, (üorgεper evdodev örλw) stretching it taught on both sides, (revάuevo ExάTegev) in order that the planks might be well secured by the wooden pins, and might resist the opposing force of the running waves." It is obvious that this cable must have run along the sides and not under the vessel, for in the latter case only a single part,-say the middle, of the ship could be strengthened by one cord.

We may presume that Apollonius describes what was usual in vessels, or at least in vessels of war. Hence, when in Polybius (27, 3, 3.) "Hegesilochus advised the Rhodians Towvvus forty ships";-which is explained by Schweighauser, as answering to "reficere," and by Passow, as

meaning "to provide a ship with rowers benches, or in general, to equip it;"-it is evident that the sense is to fit a vessel for sea by girding it with cables, in order that it may the better resist the action of the waves.

It is possible, but in my view not probable, that this custom is spoken of by Thucydides (1.30), where, however, another term is used. "At the same time”—it is there said -"they manned their ships: (súgavrés Te ràs raλaids wote *λwiμous siva,,” i. e. having joined or bound together the old ones so that they might be fit for the water, and having made the rest ready for sea." Göller, in his excellent commentary on this place quotes a note of Vanderberg on Horace Carm. 1. 14, as explaining it. The passage in Horace is, nonne vides ut sine funibus | vix durare

"The

carinae possint imperiosius | aequor? And in this passage we may find the hypozomata referred to. ropes," says Vanderberg, "which Horace speaks of as used in repairing vessels, are what the French call des cables.' If a ship leaks, the keel is sometimes surrounded with those small ropes to which the French give the special name of grelins, and which serve, as far as possible, to bind the starting planks of the keel together. To bind ships in this way is expressed by the term cintrer in French." To this of Göller, Arnold gives his sanction; and adds, that "the Russian ships, taken in the Tagus in 1808, were kept together in this manner, in consequence of their age and unsound condition." Whether this be the true sense of this passage, or the phrase must be understood of timbers carried across from side to side, or of planks nailed on outside to bind the old planks together; it will be admitted, I think, so far as our enquiry hitherto throws light upon the hypozoma, that it must have been applied to the ship in a different way. For the passage from Vitruvius makes it necessary that these ropes should have run around the sides, and that from Apollonius-in which by the way a new ship is spoken of confirms the same point by assigning all the effect to a single cable. And the length of the hypozomata mentioned by Athenaeus (v. s.) is much too great for the supposition that they went under the vessel. To this too, we may add that the violent storm recorded by the Evangelist in Acts, rendered it impossible to do any such thing as passing cables under and around the keel. Moreover, if ropes had passed under the keel, one would think that

the boat would have been needed in this operation, and yet the boat was first lifted on deck.

A word or two may here find their place relating to this verse in general. The sense is," after they had hoisted up the boat, (v gavres) they made use of additional means to resist the storm (Bondeíais έxgvro) by undergirding the vessel. The connexion of events named in the verse seems to be merely that of time. The boat was floating behind the vessel; and as the storm grew harder, fears were felt that it would be staved in by the blows of the waves. It was secured and raised on board with much ado, and then the gale forced the crew to strengthen the side work of the vessel by additional

means.

The specific meaning which we have attached to iTOZWVVÚSIV and rua, accords well with the more common senses in which these words are taken. Of the former, Wyttenbach (Eclogae historicæ, p. 355,) observes thus: "iπolívvvada. succingi tria fere notat; inter reliquas vestes cingulum corpori circumdare; inferiores partes, id est lumbos et pudenda, tegere cingulo; longas vestes altius a pedibus sursum reductas cingere ad facilitatem incessus." This word is of not unfrequent occurrence in the two last senses. A remarkable instance of its use may be found in Plutarch's life of Demetrius, 47 χρυσοῦς τετρακοσίους ὑπεζωσμένος ; i. e. having in his girdle, which was used as a purse, four hundred staters of gold. 'Trógwua, which is a rarer word, denotes, 1. a girdle-properly, I suppose, but dare not affirm, either a girdle under the clothes, or especially, one worn below the hips. 2. The diaphragm in medical writers. 3. In one of the lexicists, Julius Pollux, some part of the rudder of a ship. It is obvious that any thing encircling a ship longitudinally, better answers to the notion of a girdle, than if, like a horse's girth, it went under the body of the vessel.

In opposition to all this, the only ancient authority, so far as I know, which can be adduced, is that of a scholiast on Aristoph. Knights, 279; where the demagogue Cleon, threatens to prosecute his rival, and accuses him of exporting Swusúpara for the Peloponnesian galleys. Of this word the scholiast says, ζωμεύματα, τὰ λεγόμενα ὑποζώματα εἰσὶ δὲ ξύλα τῶν νεῶν. The same scholium is found again in Suidas. But a gloss on this passage gives the correct definition: (wusúμara σχοινία κατὰ μέσον τὴν ναῦν δεσμευόμενα. The same words, with ropara inserted after the first, are found in Hesychius.